Departing UN envoy says Afghan strategy is too 'military-driven'

Hours before boarding a flight out of Kabul , Norwegian diplomat Kai Eide delivered a final warning Saturday as he wrapped up his two-year tenure as the top United Nations diplomat in Afghanistan . "This year can become a year when negative trends are reversed, but it will require a tremendous effort and mobilization of political energy," Eide told a small women's conference. "So far, I do not see that mobilization of political energy . . . . If this does not happen, then I believe the negative trends will become unmanageable." In his final weeks, Eide stepped up his push for political talks with the Taliban as the best way to end the eight-year-old war, and in his final press conference, he expressed concern that President Barack Obama's decision to send 30,000-35,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan is coming without a concurrent political surge. "I believe that the focus is too much on the military side and too little on the civilian side," Eide said. "And that our strategy has unfortunately been too much military-driven with a political agenda as an appendix to military strategy, instead of a political strategy being the basis for the military operations."