This is from the same speech. Again, another fairly sober and reasonable analysis. While one does not have to subscribe to it entirely, it is refreshing to hear him acknowledge that the word 'Taliban' is almost meaningless now. In Afghanistan, according to Dannatt,
Again our adversaries are also quite complex and I would prefer to once more use the term militant and to be careful not to demonise the people we fight in Afghanistan. There is a lazy tendency for them all to be lumped under the term “Taliban”, but it is not as simple as that. Yes, there is a hard core of Islamist extremists of varied ethnic and national origin, but the great majority of the people we are engaged with are those who are fighting with the Taliban for financial, social and tribal reasons. So we must beware of tarring them all with the same brush, as I am sure that one day we will need to deal with and reconcile the majority of these people. And the character of the people who oppose here is different to that of the people in Iraq. Afghans are a hardy people, who respect force and the warrior ethos. They are generally more impressed by a company of infantry, fighting bravely with bayonets fixed than by high tech ISTAR and offensive support. Their current choice is to fight in the cultivated areas where the visibility and fields of view can be measured in tens of metres, where basic skills, not technical prowess are most important. Indeed, it is a form of operation that our forefathers would recognise from the Normandy bocage – indeed on their part it is clever, because we are denied the hi-tech advantages of stand off and range.
Dannatt's remarks on Iraq still seem to be getting little coverage, although Richard Norton-Taylor does mention them in today's Guardian.
Update:
You can download Dannatt's speech, in full, here.
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