MEDIA, NEWS & EVENTS
Wallace Wurth Memorial Lecture
2009 Wallace Wurth Memorial Lecture
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| Dr David Kilcullen |
One of the world's leading counter-insurgency experts, Dr David Kilcullen, has delivered the annual Wallace Wurth Memorial Lecture.
Dr Kilcullen, a two-time alumnus of UNSW, outlined the challenges of defeating a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan and NATO's new strategy to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people.
Recently appointed as senior advisor to General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Dr Kilcullen has served as special adviser for counter-insurgency to former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and General David Patraeus in Iraq.
Speaking to a packed Leighton Hall, Dr Kilcullen said the Allies' tactics in Afghanistan had failed, creating a crisis of legitimacy that was playing directly into Taliban hands. "The Taliban has side-stepped our top-down approach and has been able to out govern the Karzai government at the local level."
Dr Kilcullen said counter-insurgency efforts had been captured by an elite - the same warlords that the Taliban over threw in 1996.
"The election result has just underlined that fact, and made visible to the international community something that Afghans have know all along," he said.
"I don't think the war is lost....we can still turn this around, but we have to act now and we have to focus on governance, anticorruption and protecting the Afghan people at the local level."
Dr Kilcullen's lecture was also the keynote address for the symposium Catalysing the Rule of Law in Afghanistan: Challenges and Opportunities, hosted by the Faculty of Law.
The video of the 2009 Wallace Wurth Memorial Lecture can be viewed here:
Dr Kilcullen, a two-time alumnus of UNSW, outlined the challenges of defeating a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan and NATO's new strategy to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people.
Recently appointed as senior advisor to General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Dr Kilcullen has served as special adviser for counter-insurgency to former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and General David Patraeus in Iraq.
Speaking to a packed Leighton Hall, Dr Kilcullen said the Allies' tactics in Afghanistan had failed, creating a crisis of legitimacy that was playing directly into Taliban hands. "The Taliban has side-stepped our top-down approach and has been able to out govern the Karzai government at the local level."
Dr Kilcullen said counter-insurgency efforts had been captured by an elite - the same warlords that the Taliban over threw in 1996.
"The election result has just underlined that fact, and made visible to the international community something that Afghans have know all along," he said.
"I don't think the war is lost....we can still turn this around, but we have to act now and we have to focus on governance, anticorruption and protecting the Afghan people at the local level."
Dr Kilcullen's lecture was also the keynote address for the symposium Catalysing the Rule of Law in Afghanistan: Challenges and Opportunities, hosted by the Faculty of Law.
The video of the 2009 Wallace Wurth Memorial Lecture can be viewed here:
http://tv.unsw.edu.au/video/wallace-wurth-memorial-lecture-dr-david-kilcullen