Nato General: We Need One More Year to Defeat Taliban

The head of Nato forces in Afghanistan warns today that the military effort needs more money and more troops for a year-long push that he believes will defeat the Taliban. While Nato troops had frustrated the Taliban's plans to mount a winter campaign for the first time, it had been "against the odds" and the result of "exceptionally skilled and brave fighting", General David Richards told the Guardian.

It had been achieved with fewer troops than were required, he said. "I am concerned that Nato nations will assume the same level of risk in 2007, believing they can get away with it. They might, but it's a dangerous assumption to believe the same ingredients will exist this year as they did last. And anyway a stabilised situation is not a good enough aim. We should and can win in Afghanistan but we need to put more military effort into the country ... We must apply ourselves more energetically for one more year in order to win."

In a wide-ranging interview before he leaves Kabul next month, he said:

· The west must stop trying to impose western solutions on an Islamic society at a very early stage of development.

· Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, must step up the country's efforts to root out corruption.

· Relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan governments had to improve. "Currently they are passing in the night and the climate is not good," he said.

· Civilian agencies, including Britain's international development department, had to speed up reconstruction efforts.

· Nato countries responsible for security in different areas of Afghanistan must avoid the risk of treating operations in isolation, rather than as part of an overall plan covering the country.

Gen Richards said he thought the defeat of Taliban forces in a battle last September in which 1,000 of their fighters had been killed had changed the tide of the conflict, but added that ordinary Afghans "need to have faith in the prowess of the side they back". He added: "They just will not take the risk of backing the wrong side."

The general commands 31,000 troops, including 5,000 British soldiers, which make up the Nato-led international security assistance force, Isaf, based in Kabul. Nato commanders have been saying that is not enough and are urging governments to honour a longstanding promise to provide a 1,000-strong reserve battalion for Afghanistan.

Germany and France have been criticised for refusing to deploy their forces from the safer north and western provinces of Afghanistan to the more hostile south where the British, Canadians, Americans, and Dutch are based. But Gen Richards said criticism of the two European allies was misplaced. "What I need is more troops, not the ability simply to redeploy existing troops," he said.

Gen Richards said the military were "hugely frustrated". They were the first to admit that force alone could not solve the country's problems, but military commanders should be given more authority and money to "orchestrate the overall campaign, certainly while serious fighting continues", he said. "Our civilian colleagues are not geared up to serve in such an environment and are certainly not trained to do so in the energetic manner that alone can deliver success, keeping pace with people's expectations."

He made it clear that plans to eradicate opium poppies, Afghanistan's most lucrative product and the source of the bulk of the heroin that reaches Britain's streets, are fraught with disagreement and controversy.

"This effort will succeed - it must - but it will take many years and needs much more effort yet," he said.