We must hold fast in Afg, or we’ll lose all we have fought for
General Sir Richard Dannatt, the former CGS (UK's top soldier), has written this commentary:
Quote:
The audit of our 10-year involvement in Afghanistan looks gloomy in terms of casualties – but the underlying trends are more encouraging.
Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...ought-for.html
The last two paragraphs are aimed at the domestic front:
Quote:
f counter-insurgency is fundamentally about winning hearts and minds, we now have a real chance of success. Trust is being built in the Afghan people’s minds that their own tribal chiefs, district governors and national leaders can start to deliver a better alternative than a reversion to the oppressive and fundamentalist regime of the Taliban and its al-Qaeda sponsors. This offers real hope for the Afghan people. If they are beginning to believe that they have a better future, then that belief must be shared and nurtured.
That is the opportunity for 2011. The risk, however, is of that hope being undermined by a precipitate reduction in our troop levels for domestic political reasons. If the public at home start to understand the progress that is being made, then that temptation will be easier to resist.
Field Marshal Roberts, from 1880
Looking back to the British experience of Afghanistan, the National Army Museum in London currently has an exhibition entitled ‘The Road to Kabul: British Armies in Afghanistan, 1838–1919’.
The advertising poster, in an uncanny echo to modern times, quotes Field
Marshal Frederick Roberts, one of the most successful commanders of the Victorian era, as saying (in 1880):
Quote:
I feel sure I am right when I say that the less the Afghans see of us, the less they will dislike us.
Highway built to thwart Taliban bombers
The full title is 'Highway built to thwart Taliban bombers brings hope to farmers' by Robert Fox, in Evening Standard (of London); road building has featured before on SWC, so here is a small update an note the price for each mile of tarmac road one million UK Pounds.
Link:http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standa...-to-farmers.do