No Early Calls of Victory or Success From Our Man in Af/Pak

[bigtree]

“You can’t occupy every piece of terrain, so the real key is building and transferring control to the Afghan security forces,” Richard Holbrooke, the US special representative to the region, said in a Financial Times interview. “It’s much too early. . .  I’m not ready to predict how it is going to turn out because it is a difficult challenge.”

He added: “We need to work with the Afghans to produce a force structure which is trained, equipped, literate. . .  You can’t have a police 90 per cent illiterate. Police have to be able to read ID cards. . . They need to be off drugs. The attrition rate is very high.”

On Pakistan, which the White House sees as holding the key to quelling the insurgency in Afghanistan, Mr Holbrooke said he was “agnostic” about whether it had turned decisively against the Afghan Taliban, which it helped to create.

“Everyone has asked the same question. How do you know? Have we turned a corner? I’m not prepared to make those judgments, and you’ll have to ask the Pakistanis that,” he said. “I’m an agnostic at this point . . . as to whether this was a policy change by Islamabad or a serendipitous collection of discreet events.”


read more: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5f6f6690-27b4-11df-863d-00144feabdc0.html