Afghanistan: Taliban Talks 'A Decade Overdue'

The top British officer in Afghanistan has said talks with the Taliban have come a decade too late after efforts to negotiate with the insurgents faltered.

General Nick Carter told The Guardian newspaper that it would have been more successful to approach the Taliban in 2002 after they were ousted from power.

The deputy commander of the Nato-led coalition said: "Back in 2002, the Taliban were on the run.

"I think that at that stage, if we had been very prescient, we might have spotted that a final political solution to what started in 2001, from our perspective, would have involved getting all Afghans to sit at the table and talk about their future."

He added that the problems since then have essentially been political problems, which "are only ever solved by people talking to each other".

The US and Afghanistan are still waiting to hear from the Taliban about opening peace talks, but remain willing to go ahead with negotiations despite a stir the militant group caused in opening a new office in Qatar.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai had to shut down the process after Taliban spokesmen presented the office as a de-facto embassy for a government-in-exile.

As the US and UK prepare to pull their troops from Afghanistan next year, Gen Carter said the Kabul government may have to accept it may only have shaky control over some remote areas of the country for some years.

Afghan forces would also need Western military and financial support for several years after Western combat troops head home, he said.

However, he insisted Afghan forces were strong enough to be taking over control from Nato, a move he believed would eventually bring the Taliban to the negotiating table.

"What the opponents of the Afghan government now realise is they are likely to be up against capable Afghan security forces who are going to be here in perpetuity and therefore that old adage that 'We have the clocks but the Taliban have the time', has now been reversed," he told the newspaper.

"They are now up against security forces who have the time, and they are also Afghan forces ... for those reasons I think that there is every chance people will realise that talking is the answer to this problem," added Gen Carter, who previously served as the top Nato officer in southern Afghanistan, the Taliban's birthplace.

The comments came as Britain was set to mark the fifth annual Armed Forces Day - recognising the relationship between the military and the public.

Ahead of the spending review, announced earlier this week, Gen Carter said the Treasury rather than the military would be to blame if Britain’s defence was weakened by cuts.

He said: "At the end of the day our politicians need to decide what they want the Army to do.

"If they determine that the Army is going to do less, it's reasonable for them to reduce it still further."

He added: "We are bound as military people to point out the risks during the course of this to our political masters and ultimately it's down to them to look themselves in the mirror each morning and determine whether or not those risks are manageable."

The review revealed no Army, RAF or personnel would lose their jobs and the equipment budget would be protected.

The budget cut of 1.9% in 2015 would be achieved through civilian job losses in the Ministry of Defence, changes to the way the department buys and commissions big items and by outsourcing the purchasing of non-military goods.