LONDON: The United States and its Nato allies are losing in Afghanistan because of a lack of coordination and broad commitment, one of Britain’s top diplomats and defence experts said on Tuesday.

Paddy Ashdown, the former British representative for Bosnia and once tipped to be the UN special representative in Afghanistan, said the US- and Nato-led coalition faced defeat unless operational changes were made.

‘We’re losing,’ Ashdown told an audience of defence experts at the launch of a new British security strategy in London. ‘We’re on our way to losing and our young men are dying out there because politicians won’t get their act together,’ he said, referring to political leaders across Nato.

The British seem to think Helmand, a restive province in southern Afghanistan, is the biggest problem, he said, while the Dutch focus on Oruzgan, another province, the Canadians on Kandahar, the Germans on another portion in the north of the country and the Americans on a different set of priorities.

‘Everyone is pulling in different directions and that’s the worst threat in Afghanistan there is,’ said Ashdown, 68, a former member of Britain’s Royal Marines. There are around 90,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, 57,000 of them American and the remainder from more than 40 nations, from Britain to Bulgaria.

Ashdown’s comments were made at the launch of a new security and defence strategy put together by a team of defence experts assembled by the Institute for Public Policy Research, a leading British think-tank.

The 143-page report compiled by the panel, which included Ashdown, George Robertson, the former secretary-general of N, Jeremy Greenstock, Britain’s former ambassador to the UN, and the former head of UK’s defence staff, had stern proposals for resetting course in Afghanistan.

‘If we do not address the almost total lack of effective coordination of the international effort in Afghanistan, we will continue to make only slow progress and will pay the price in lives of soldiers and Afghan civilians,’ the report said.—Reuters