Washington, July 01: A top British diplomat says that all foreign troops are losing in Afghanistan because their leaders do not know how to handle the war.
“We’re losing,” Paddy Ashdown, the former British representative for Bosnia, said on Tuesday.
He also added the US- and NATO-led coalition faced defeat unless operational changes were made.
“We’re on our way to losing and our young men are dying out there because politicians won’t get their act together,” according to Ashdown.
He argued that the British seem to think Helmand province is the biggest problem, while the Dutch focus on Oruzgan, another province, the Canadians on Kandahar, the Germans on another portion in the north of the country and the US troops on a different set of priorities.
“Everyone is pulling in different directions and that’s the worst threat in Afghanistan there is,” said the former member of Britain’s Royal Marines.
US President Barack Obama is ramping up Washington’s presence in Afghanistan, sending up to 20,000 additional troops.
There are around 90,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, 57,000 of them from the US military and the remainder from more than 40 nations from Britain to Bulgaria.
—–Agencies