We'll hit the Taliban until their eyeballs bleed, says UK general

Allied troops will strike the Taliban "until their eyeballs bleed", a senior British military adviser said today.

General Sir Graeme Lamb, a former SAS officer and now special adviser to US General Stanley McChrystal, issued his warning as President Barack Obama unveiled a 30,000 troop surge.

He said British special forces had increased operations fivefold. "We are continuing to strike the Taliban, and have to, till their eyeballs bleed," Lt-Gen Lamb told the Standard.

President Obama said the surge would mean his forces could start withdrawing in 2011. But a Taliban spokesman said: "We are prepared for a long war. Obama will witness lots of coffins heading to America from Afghanistan."

Meanwhile, British and American politicians claimed that the president's decision to announce a pull-out timetable would allow Afghan militants to plot their resurgence.

President Obama said the troop surge was aimed at "degrading" the Taliban. But in an attempt to reassure American voters that the war would not be "open-ended", he also said that withdrawals would begin in 2011 — the year before he stands for re-election.

But in an exclusive interview with the Evening Standard, General Stanley McChrystal, commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, rejected the suggestion that a tight deadline for US and Allied withdrawals would allow the Taliban space to lie low, build up and counter- attack once the Allies had pulled out.

"The Taliban cannot afford to quit the battleground now, because if they try to come back they will find all the forces against them much stronger."

Republicans claimed that the pull-out date undermined troops in the field and, in Britain, Intelligence and Security Committee chairman Kim Howells warned it would be a gift to the Taliban. "I'm surprised that President Obama has said he is going to start pulling troops out in 2011 — if I was the Taliban I'd think I'd go back to my farm until then," Mr Howells said.

A former Cabinet minister told the Standard that a precise date could "make life difficult for the troops".

"We know Obama and Gordon have a domestic problem and are saying this can't be open-ended. But that doesn't mean you give a pull-out date the Taliban can work towards," he said.

Chief of the Defence Staff Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup said he was "delighted" with Mr Obama's announcement, but made clear that he felt withdrawal could not start in earnest before 2014.

He added: "I expect the British contribution to remain centred in Helmand for some time to come at the very least."

Britain is determined not to be left with a "Basra situation", where it was left under-resourced to fight insurgents in Iraq. UK commanders are willing to hand over control of their forces to the US in Helmand.

Gen McChrystal responded to Mr Obama's speech by echoing Winston Churchill's wartime claim that "this is not the beginning of the end — it is the end of the beginning". He told Allied and Afghan soldiers that it was time to "seriously degrade" the enemy.

Speaking via videolink, he said that he now had the forces to complete the task. In the summer Gen McChrystal drew up a counter-insurgency strategy for Afghanistan, which concentrates as much on defending the Afghan people, on building up their forces, government and economy, as attacking the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Key to the new approach will be accelerated training of Afghan army and police forces, a move that will allow a phased withdrawal of Western forces.

"We have a clear sense of our goal, and we are more united than before," Gen McChrystal told his commanders, "and we now know each other better than ever."

In his speech, President Obama made clear that although he was pumping in more troops to take out the Taliban, the American people did not want an "open-ended" commitment that was costing the country dear during a recession. The troop surge would take the bill to $30 billion next year. Mr Obama stressed that he was not providing a "blank cheque" to President Hamid Karzai's government and warned that US voters wanted more "nation-building" back home than abroad.

In a bid to create the sort of global unity that the US won in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, he said that "right makes might".

Despite the controversy over the recent re-election of President Karzai, Gen McChrystal emphasised the need to work with the government and build up its capacity in security, justice, governance and economic development. US Marine Captain, Brian Huysman, said: "There are the foreign Taliban and then there are the irreconcilable extremists and not much can be done about them except to kill them. But most of them are local country boys — and you just have to persuade them to quit being assholes — and that's pretty easy once you have the momentum."