Jacob Townsend, 'Charting A Course For Afghanistan', Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 31 January 2008
EXCERPT: "The Rudd Government has inherited plans for a military build-up and a rising aid budget in Afghanistan. In December, the Defence Minister, Joel Fitzgibbon, assessed that ‘We are winning the battles and not the war...We have been very successful in clearing areas of the Taliban but it’s having no real strategic effect.’ In part, that’s because the ‘war’ is a state-building project. To have lasting effect, it must establish a functional government that can compete successfully for legitimacy and territory with its predecessor, the Taliban. Our alliance and counter-terrorism interests currently point in the same direction. We need a legitimate Afghan government that can lead the counter-insurgency campaign, a campaign whose success depends on external events and which stretches well into the future."
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