Q+A: Hearts, minds and boots on the ground in Afghanistan

LONDON (Reuters) - Stuart Tootal is a former British Parachute Regiment colonel who led a battalion in Afghanistan. Now a defense commentator and author of "Danger Close," an account of his experiences, he spoke to Reuters about the prospects for the NATO campaign.

"When you talk about winnable, the successful end state is going to be something short of a complete victory. It''s not conventional war. Is there an end state of stability, non-export of violence, achievable? Yes. How are we going to get there? With a proper counter-insurgency campaign where all the lines of development are properly resourced. An essential stepping stone is to win over the center of gravity, which is the people, so they don''t support the insurgent, they support something else that brings about betterment in their lives so they don''t feel the need to pick up a gun.

"I don''t think it''s going to be easy to get there. It''s going to take a long time and a lot of resources.

IS PULLING OUT AN OPTION?

"9/11 is a good starting point. You can''t have ungoverned space which has an ability to breed that sort of terrorist attack, and that''s Afghanistan.

"If we were to withdraw before the mission is complete, it would destabilize the region, not least in the relationship with Pakistan, and what is happening in north Pakistan is having an effect in Afghanistan. There is containment.

"The other thing is the enormous spur we would give to extremist movements across the world, particularly al Qaeda and its cohorts, at a time when many counter-terrorist strategies and initiatives, and I mean all lines of development, education, political, social as well as military actions, are probably having a positive effect in clamping down.

WHAT ARE THE LESSONS OF HISTORY IN AFGHANISTAN?

"This is not a rerun of the Soviets. The idea that Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires is a very simple way of looking at history and reinterpreting it. NATO are not an imperial, red-coated army, they are not the Soviets. NATO is an international mission of some 42 nations with a very clear U.N. mandate. The Russians had no such international mandate. It was driven by Cold War politics, a form of superpower imperialism, much in the way that our 19th Century interventions were.

"Afghanistan is not Vietnam. Vietnam was about superpower rivalry, about keeping the communists out of the south, it was an application of conventional warfare in a very unconventional environment and it probably didn''t have a great deal of ethical justification behind it."

HOW STRONG ARE THE TALIBAN?