By John Simpson
World affairs editor, BBC News
Gen David Petraeus, who has recently taken command of Nato forces in
Afghanistan, has told the BBC that if he felt the deadline of July
next year which President Barack Obama has set for the start of an
American withdrawal was too risky, he would tell the president so.
In such circumstances, he said, "you are determined to provide the
most forthright advice you can".
The general is doing very much what he did in Iraq: injecting a new
note of confidence into the campaign, while simultaneously being
careful to limit expectations.
It worked remarkably there. Gen Petraeus staged, if not a victory,
then certainly a remarkable turnaround in the country's fortunes. He
clearly plans to do the same in Afghanistan.
I put it to him that almost everyone in Kabul seems to believe the
Taliban are winning, while almost 60% of Americans and more than 70%
of Britons are against the war.
The perception had to be changed, he said: Nato had already reversed
the momentum which the Taliban had built up in the last few years in
Helmand and Kandahar provinces, and around Kabul. It would be reversed
in other areas as well.
This would involve capturing and clearing the strongholds which the
Taliban had occupied. But they would fight back hard, and the campaign
would get harder before it got easier.
I put it to him that it was a huge disadvantage in fighting an
insurgency to have Washington breathing down his neck and imposing a
deadline of next July for beginning the withdrawal of American troops.
Tactfully, he stressed that the process would only begin then: it was
not the date for an American exodus, when the US looked for the exit
and a light to turn out. It was the date when some functions would
start to be transferred to the Afghans.
But if he believes this deadline is unrealistic, or even dangerous,
will he tell the president? "I'll offer my best professional military
advice."
But his predecessor and former subordinate in the post had been sacked
for, in effect, challenging President Obama's line. Was Gen Petraeus
worried that, like him, he might be sacked as well?
"When you go into a job like this, you always think it's your last
job. That's what I did in Iraq - you are determined to provide the
most forthright advice you can."
But Gen Petraeus is equipped with better-developed political and
diplomatic antennae than Gen Stanley McChrystal.
'Failure of intelligence'
Perhaps, too, he also realises that it would be an unthinkable
disaster for President Obama to lose two Afghan commanders. Gen
Petraeus must know that as long as he is careful he can get the July
deadline moved back without difficulty - if he even needs to, given
the vagueness of it.
He made it clear he supported the anxieties of Afghanistan's President
Hamid Karzai about civilian casualties, and would continue Gen
McChrystal's policy of restricting Nato's scope for fighting back
against attack in civilian areas.
Civilian casualties could, Gen Petraeus said, turn a victory into a
setback. He speaks to President Karzai every day, on average.
Did it matter that Nato had never found Osama bin Laden? Very much
indeed, said Gen Petraeus; it was a real failure of intelligence.
But manhunting, of which he had had great experience in the former
Yugoslavia, was always very hard.
Where had the Afghanistan campaign gone so wrong, given that the vast
majority of Afghans had been delighted at the defeat of the Taliban
back in 2001? Was it that America had taken its eye off the ball here
in order to invade Iraq?
It was noticeable that the general did not disagree, though he said
this was over-simplistic.
The former Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, asked him to visit
Afghanistan in 2005 to assess the situation.
He came back and said the Afghan war would be longer than the Iraqi
one. It was not the answer Mr Rumsfeld wanted. "It did not elicit wild
applause on the third floor of the Pentagon," the general commented
drily.
There was a growing feeling in Britain that the British army had not
performed as well as it might in Afghanistan, I said.
Gen Petraeus, known for his Anglophilia, denied this hotly. "The
British have done superb work," he said; not just their conventional
forces but also their special forces, which have been "absolutely
magnificent".
But he made it clear that the job required much larger numbers than
the British had at their disposal.
I asked him finally if he could look the families of American,
British, Canadian and other Nato soldiers who had died here, in the
face, and say the sacrifice of their sons, husbands and brothers was
worth it.
He showed a noticeable degree of emotion as he answered. He described
how, in Iraq, he had once lost 17 of his men in a collision between
two helicopters.
"My head was literally down as I came out of the command post. A young
trooper put his arm round my shoulders and said: 'You know, sir,
that's 17 more reasons to get this right'."
So you do care about casualties, I said?
"Absolutely," Gen Petraeus answered.
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