NATO general expects offensive, says Taliban beaten
Source: Reuters
By Terry Friel KABUL, Feb 3 (Reuters) - The Taliban will launch an offensive within months once the snows melt, but they are effectively a beaten force, according to the outgoing head of NATO forces in Afghanistan. British general David Richards hands over command of 33,000 soldiers to the United States on Sunday and he says the Taliban were militarily trounced last year. "I think in a way last year was the crunch year. Certainly, militarily," Richards said. "Because last year they really did see that they had an opportunity to defeat NATO. As I've said, we foiled that attempt and much more. "The Taliban do talk about a spring offensive," Richards said in a joint news agency interview on Saturday. "I won't use that term because all they offer is more death, destruction and despair, against the vision of hope and growing prosperity of the government and the international community." Last year was the deadliest since U.S.-led troops toppled the Taliban in 2001 for sheltering Osama bin Laden after the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S.. More than 4,000 people were killed, mostly rebels, a quarter of them civilians and 170 of them foreign soldiers. GUNS AND DRUGS U.S. general Dan McNeill takes over Richards's troops at a ceremony on Sunday. The United States also commands more than 10,000 other soldiers under a separate operation. After being written off in 2002, the Taliban have staged a strong comeback, bolstered by money from record opium crops and safe havens and training camps in Pakistan. The United States and other Kabul allies are pressing Islamabad to do more to stop rebels and drug gangs crossing the porous and poorly guarded 2,500-km (1,550-mile) border. All insist Pakistan no longer backs its one-time Taliban proteges. "The international community is putting a lot of pressure on Pakistan, but let's just remember that Pakistan has also done a huge amount for the international community on the back of 9/11," said Richards, a regulation black vest under his uniform to ward off the sub-zero temperatures of a Kabul winter. "But this is not a 'them and us'. This is a common problem, with common solutions." Some analysts believe that if the Taliban are not convincingly defeated in 2007 they will linger as a threat to a stable and peaceful Afghanistan for decades. The United States last week doubled its ground combat forces, adding 2,500 soldiers for the next few months, and asking Congress for $10.6 billion more for Afghan security forces and reconstruction. The extra troops will mostly go to creating a rapid reaction force Richards and other commanders on the ground had always asked for but were never given. Many NATO nations still impose heavy restrictions on where and how their troops can be deployed. Britain and Poland will increase troop levels, too. "We are all soldiers together in this and I'm just delighted that some of the words I used ... may have helped in that sort of decision," Richards said. "I did have to perhaps give the odd warning ... because I could see that if things didn't go in the way they happen now to have gone then things could be difficult." "People are confident this is winnable. This is a good war, this is a winnable war."
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