US allies hope for continuity after McChrystal

By Raphael G. Satter

Associated Press Writer

London (AP) -- America's allies in the fight to stabilize Afghanistan are hoping that the ouster of Stanley McChrystal as commander of international forces there leaves the general's strategy intact, officials and analysts said Wednesday.

Both friends and critics of McChrystal said his plan for fighting the country's raging insurgency was still being tested - and that NATO partners fighting alongside the United States don't have the stomach for another change of direction.

In Brussels, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said, that while McChrystal will no longer be the commander, "the approach he helped put in place is the right one."

"The strategy continues to have NATO's support, and our troops will continue to carry it out," Fogh Rasmussen said in a statement.

Analysts of the war agreed.

"This is not the time for a new commander to come in to rethink strategy," said Malcolm Chalmers, a fellow at Britain's Royal United Services Institute who also served as special adviser to two British foreign secretaries.

A memo drawn up by one of Chalmers' colleagues, Theo Farrell, underlined the success of McChrystal's approach in Afghanistan, in particular in the Nad-e-Ali area of Afghanistan's Helmand Province, where many British soldiers are based.

Farrell, a professor at the Department of War Studies at King's College in London, said the "McChrystal effect" had led to a reinvigoration of the international campaign - and an appreciable drop in violence.

It's not yet clear what impact, if any, McChrystal's removal will have on America's allies, many of whom are wrestling with increasingly fraught domestic debates over the course of the war.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, whose country has some 10,000 troops in Afghanistan, had no immediate comment to make, according to his Downing Street office.

But Adam Holloway, a lawmaker from Cameron's Conservative Party and former member of the Defense Select Committee, said he doubted losing McChrystal would have a dramatic effect on British operations.

That sentiment was echoed by Chalmers, who said President Barack Obama and Cameron remained on the same page as far as Afghanistan was concerned.

"Both have made it very clear that there is a limited time period - really the end of this year - in which some significant success had better be shown," he said. He added that he wasn't sure the change in command "will make much difference to the British debate."

France, the third largest contributor to the NATO force in Afghanistan, declined comment on the shake-up, with French Defense Ministry spokesman Laurent Teisseire calling it an internal U.S. military matter.

The German government, whose 4,400-strong contribution to the Afghan mission remains highly controversial, also declined, as did officials in Pakistan.

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Associated Press Writers Slobodan Lekic in Brussels, Sebastian Abbot in Islamabad, Pakistan, Alfred de Montesquiou in Paris, and Verena Schmitt-Roschmann in Berlin contributed to this report.

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