Support 'crucial' to Afghan success
Maintaining public support is "crucially important" to the success of the international military mission in Afghanistan, the senior British commander in the country has warned.
Lieutenant General Jim Dutton, the deputy commander of the international forces in Afghanistan, said people needed to understand that British troops were not being sacrificed simply for the sake of the government of President Hamid Karzai.
"British soldiers are not dying simply to provide an electoral opportunity for Afghans," he said in an interview with the BBC1 Politics Show to be broadcast later on Sunday.
"There is much more to the provision of stability in this area of the world, which is a project for which I have to say, yes, it is worth some soldiers having to die for because the consequences of it going wrong are far greater."
On Friday, Gordon Brown issued a warning to the Afghan president that he must do more to tackle corruption and build good governance if he was to continue to receive the support of the international community.
Gen Dutton said that he believed the public would continue to support the campaign in Afghanistan provided they understood what it was trying to achieve and how it could be done.
"I think I can say without any doubt that support back home is crucially important but I don't sense any lack of support for soldiers back home," he said. "I think the British people, and indeed all our populations back home, will put up with the cost of this sort of operation, and I mean the cost in human and financial terms, if they believe two things: one that we're right and two that we can win.
"We have to convince them of that - that we have a good plan, that we're right to be doing this. We have momentum along that path and they have to believe that we can win."
However, a ComRes opinion poll for the programme found that almost two thirds - 64% - now believe that the war is "unwinnable", while a similar proportion - 63% - wanted British troops to be withdrawn as soon as possible.
Gen Dutton acknowledged the mission was not making as much progress as they would like and that the situation was, as the US commander General Stanley McChrystal had warned, "serious and deteriorating".
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