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April 18, 2007

Dutch defend approach

MinisterkoendersSeveral readers took me to task for coming down too easy on the Dutch in my previous post. One Dutch reader who was recently in Uruzgan said "I’ve spent a lot of time traveling in these areas, and devoted quite a bit of effort to finding out exactly what the Dutch were up...I can find very little to praise in the attitude that the Dutch are taking...The terrain in Uruzgan is such that they have the luxury of avoiding the larger-scale clashes that are tying the Brits down in Helmand, but this doesn’t give them the right to preach in the way that they have been doing."

Rest assured, I don't (yet) endorse the Dutch model, but I do think it is a long-term strategy and must be evaluated on its own time-frame (In citing Musa Qala I was trying to illustrate that whether something  worked or not often depends on your time-frame.) MORE

Of course, if Dutch "passivity" undermines efforts elsewhere by allowing insurgents to project power then that's not just a Dutch problem. In any case, it's going to be very hard to establish what's really working because each commander has incentives to defend his own approach.

Speaking of Dutch preaching, Bert Koenders, the Minister for Development Cooperation, spoke Monday at CSIS (with an introduction by Julie Smith). The good folks at CSIS provide the audio here.

Posted by Carl Robichaud on April 18, 2007 at 04:54 PM in Economics, ISAF / NATO, Reconstruction, Security, Taliban, U.S. Policy |

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