Afghanistan: PM Knows Risks Needed
Updated: 4:49pm UK, Sunday 30 June 2013
By Joey Jones, Deputy Political Editor
For years, the focus of British involvement in Afghanistan has been reasonably straightforward.
Fight the Taliban; force them into some form of submission or docility; limit the casualties among British troops as far as possible; try to prepare the Afghans (politically and militarily) to go it alone.
Now that British military involvement is drawing to a close, things are getting more complicated.
The political situation is in flux. President Hamid Karzai is due to leave office next year, creating instability on the government side.
The Taliban are coming to the negotiating table, and are likely to exhibit all the same qualities of aggression, unpredictability, disunity and stubborn endurance as have characterised them on the battlefield.
The process is already chaotic, and even if it succeeds is bound to collapse and be resurrected again along the way.
But the fact David Cameron went to the presidential palace days after an attack on the outskirts of the compound shows he thinks the main protagonists should react with a shrug of the shoulders to such bumps on the road.
Meanwhile, neighbouring countries are weighing the situation with an eye to extending their own sphere of influence.
Amid this maelstrom, for a British Prime Minister, there are decisions to be made, all in the knowledge that each decision could lead to a trap; each judgment could come back to haunt him.
Mr Cameron plainly knows risks have to be taken. He acknowledged as much when he effectively endorsed General Nick Carter's view that the Taliban should have been engaged in a political process way back in 2001.
Speaking in Lashkar Gah, Mr Cameron told Sky News: "I think you can argue about whether the settlement we put in place after 2001 could have been better arranged.
"Of course you can make that argument. Since I became Prime Minister in 2010 I have been pushing all the time for a political process and that political process is now under way.
"But at the same time I know that you cannot bank on that, which is why we have built up the Afghan army, built up the Afghan police, supported the Afghan government so after our troops have left, and they will be leaving under the programme we have set out, this country shouldn't be a haven for terrorists."
Drawing the Taliban into peace talks months after 9/11 would indeed have been thinking the unthinkable, but the Prime Minister is of the view - though even he might not have been in 2001 - that unless all sides are engaged, a political settlement will not hold.
Then there is the involvement of neighbouring countries.
Pakistani links with the Afghan Taliban have been until now a source of considerable frustration for the British, who have decried the often malign influence of elements within Pakistan on Afghanistan.
Now, though, those very links are seen as an opportunity - an avenue through which Pakistani politicians might put leverage on the Taliban to show themselves reliable partners for peace.
The risk, as ever, is that if Pakistan throws its weight around within Afghanistan, there is a tendency for the Afghan leadership to rush to the arms of Pakistan's arch enemy India, with the potential only to escalate the problems.
All in all, it is hard to calculate what the situation will look like in a month, let alone a year. Come back soon, Mr Cameron!
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
Cameron Meets Newly-Elected Pakistan PM
Dengan url
http://kabarkomunitas.blogspot.com/2013/06/cameron-meets-newly-elected-pakistan-pm.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
Cameron Meets Newly-Elected Pakistan PM
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
Cameron Meets Newly-Elected Pakistan PM
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar