London, September 5, 2009 - Gordon Brown on Friday insisted that the mission in Afghanistan was not doomed to failure, but was instead based on "realistic, achievable and justifiable goals".

Seeking to rally the British public, the prime minister used a lengthy speech to the International Institute for Strategic Studies to make clear that Britain cannot walk away from Afghanistan.

In the speech, timed to coincide with a new phase marked by the Afghan presidential elections, Brown admitted: "This has been the most difficult of summers," but said the war was designed to prevent attacks launched on Britain and the rest of the world.

Brown, often seen as ill at ease with the military, revealed he challenged himself over the war's wisdom and disclosed he had been "heartbroken" by meeting British casualties and their families.

His speech came as the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, suggested the country was near a tipping point in which withdrawal would be the right option since the war cannot be conducted properly.

Eric Joyce, the parliamentary aide to the defense secretary, Bob Ainsworth, quit over the war on Thursday; cabinet sources said Joyce was fighting for his reselection, and needed to distance himself from the American-led war.

Brown conceded the situation in Afghanistan was serious, "but it is at times like this when we must strengthen, not weaken, our resolve". He defined the war's aim, saying success would come when Nato forces were able to leave the country once a professional Afghan security force was in place, capable of keeping the Taliban at bay.

This policy of "Afghanisation", mirroring the way the Iraqi army took over administration on a province-by-province basis, could be achieved by "a radical step up in the training of Afghan forces". Brown argued that the key to success will be to double the rate at which the Afghan army is trained, from 2,000 soldiers a month to 4,000, so the force reaches 134,000 by November 2010, a year earlier than previously proposed by Nato.

The Afghan army will in future no longer be trained by specialist units, but instead be embedded with Nato forces, he said. "The bulk of our combat forces would be dedicated to working side by side with the Afghan army – where British troops would eat, sleep, live, train, plan and fight together with their Afghan partners to bring security to the population.

"We will have succeeded when our troops are coming home because the Afghans are doing the job themselves." Brown also proposed a new approach to strengthening district-level government, rather than putting so much emphasis on strengthening the national state in Kabul. He argued that Afghans saw security in terms of the locality and the tribe.

He admitted: "I think there is some truth in the suggestion that, post-2001, all the allies did not appreciate sufficiently the long history of Afghanistan and the weakness of a national state." He said "constant contact with local tribal leaders and the build-up of district governance is in my view a better way forward than relying … on a central state, to build an army, a police force and dispense justice."

He also proposed a fresh drive on corruption, and a jobs programme offering better pay than offered by the Taliban.

While restating the original justification for war – "so al-Qaida cannot again use this region as a base to train and plan terrorist attacks across the world" – Brown admitted the main terrorist threat to Britain lay with al-Qaida in Pakistan, but said the most positive development over the last year was the Pakistan government's determination to root out the terrorists.

But he argued the extremists regarded Afghanistan as fundamental in the establishment of a pan-Islamic caliphate. Therefore, he said, "a peaceful and stable Afghanistan would be a severe propaganda blow and strategic failure for al-Qaida."

He made little reference to the allegations of corruption surrounding the Afghan presidential election, saying simply "turnout was not as high as we had hoped".

In a question and answer session, he was confronted by the former foreign secretary Douglas Hurd, who said there was "a haze of anxiety" over the war's strategy and the lack of benchmarks for success.

Brown said: "We can move faster if Afghan forces can take more responsibility. If transfers are done district by district or by province, then we can reduce the number of our forces."

He refused to be drawn on whether a faster Afghan army training programme will definitely require British troops. But he did refer to the imminent withdrawal of 2,800 Canadian and 1,880 Dutch troops.

The shadow defence secretary, Liam Fox, called the prime minister's speech underwhelming and short on detail.

Clegg was even more scathing, saying: "After pursuing an overambitious and under-resourced strategy for eight years, it's hard to believe that increasing the training of the Afghan police and army will now do the trick. We need a bolder change of strategy to turn things around."

Source: The Guardian, September 4, 2009

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