Afstan: Dutch not fighting? "Bullshit"

That's their commander in Uruzgan speaking:

Dutch General in Afghanistan slams critics

TIRIN KOT, Afghanistan — Brigadier General Marc van Uhm has a blunt response for critics who say Dutch troops have avoided fighting Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan's Uruzgan province.

"This is bullshit," he told AFP in an exclusive interview at "Kamp Holland" in the provincial capital Tirin Kot, as his government debates pulling out of Afghanistan at the end of July.

Any country that takes over -- and other international forces in Afghanistan -- would do well to emulate the Dutch emphasis on winning hearts and minds over killing insurgents, Van Uhm said.

His comments come against the background of a build-up of forces that will lift US and NATO troop levels to over 150,000 by the middle of the year -- nearly nine years after the US-led invasion toppled the Taliban.

The hardline Islamists have staged a comeback, mounting an increasingly aggressive and deadly insurgency against President Hamid Karzai's government and international forces.

"We did fight the Taliban, we have lost 21 soldiers here, we have many wounded," said Van Uhm, the brother of Dutch military chief Peter van Uhm, whose son was killed by a roadside bomb in Uruzgan in 2008.

He said the nature of the fighting since the Dutch took the lead role in the southern province in 2006 had changed as the Taliban "learned that when you are engaging my troops, you will not win".

They now attacked indirectly, through roadside bombs and suicide bombers, across the province, which is about the size of the Netherlands, with a population of about 360,000.

"We do go out, we go out often, we fight against them and their way of doing their fight has changed," Marc van Uhm, the commander of Dutch forces in the province, said.

The insulting charge of avoiding the fight has been made by critics of the so-called "Dutch model," which stresses the "three Ds" of defence, development and diplomacy.

But the tactics -- which Van Uhm said he would rather describe as the "Uruzgan model" because other foreign forces including the Australians were involved -- have mostly won international respect.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is itself adopting the Uruzgan scheme, the general said.

"The strategy now is not about killing Taliban anymore, it's about protecting the people and we protect the people with a three-D integrated approach."..

The general said most fighters grouped under the name Taliban were "young guys who don't have a job and the Taliban pays them to fight for them.

"They are not ideological, they are just fighting us to get money. If we were able to provide them jobs, enable them to make a living another way, they don't have to fight."..

Neither the general nor [Dutch civil representative in Task Force Uruzgan, Michel] Rentenaar would comment directly on the political wrangling in The Hague over the future of Dutch troops in Afghanistan.

Rentenaar said that while the Dutch government had announced it would no longer be the lead nation in Uruzgan as of August 1, it was still in the process of deciding what form, if any, its involvement would take.

"All options are still on the table. It is very clear that the Netherlands government has said it has multi-annual commitments to development in Uruzgan and so we are not leaving in that sense," he said [more here on the Dutch debate and the Diggers]...

The Netherlands has a total of 2,100 troops in Afghanistan, with 1,500 in Uruzgan...

It should also be taken into account regarding Dutch casualties, as I have heard from someone well-informed, that the nature of the Taliban insurgents in Uruzgan is quite different from those at Kandahar and Helmand. Moreover the IEDs they use are (so far) considerably smaller than many of those used in the other two provinces.