Brit General backs troops request

Times:

Britain’s top general in Afghanistan backed calls for more troops, insisting it would be impossible to deny al-Qaeda their terrorist safe havens by “simply patrolling from the skies”. In an exclusive interview with The Times, Lieutenant-General Jim Dutton, said yesterday that he supported a formal request made by his boss, General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander, for up to 40,000 new troops.

On Friday General McChrystal submitted a formal request to Nato and the Pentagon for a surge in troop numbers to help to tame a growing insurgency.

General Dutton, the deputy commander of Nato’s International Security Assistance Force, insisted that “long-term stability” in Afghanistan was the only way to stop international terrorists using the country as a launch pad for attacks in Europe and the US.

...

General Dutton told The Times that victory was a matter of “straightforward force ratios”. “If you want to achieve long-term stability, and therefore a lack of terrorism potential in an area, you need to be doing more than simply patrolling the skies,” he said.

“The ultimate answer to this problem is a stable democratic state of Afghanistan in which their own forces are capable of maintaining the rule of law and security.”

...

General Dutton said the ideal ratio of civilians to security forces, according to the most up-to-date counterinsurgency doctrine, was 50:1. In Afghanistan that would mean 560,000 Afghan and international soldiers for an estimated population of 28 million. There are now 100,000 foreign troops and 174,000 Afghan security forces.

“It’s not 20 troops per thousand people throughout the country, but for a period of time [in certain parts of the country] it might need even more than that,” General Dutton said.

...

I prefer a force to space ratio because that leaves you in charge of the size of the force. Obviously you need more troops in areas where the population is more dense, but you have to have enough force in other ares to cut off the enemy's ability to maneuver to contact and make his retreat.

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