NATO Staggers in Afghanistan as Some Can't Fight On (Update1)
By James G. Neuger
Oct. 8 (Bloomberg) -- NATO's campaign in Afghanistan is under threat from member countries on the front lines clamoring to get out and others on the sidelines refusing to go in.
With military casualties on the increase this year, the Netherlands and Canada are weighing full or partial pullouts within the next 18 months. Meanwhile, leaders in Germany, France, Spain and Italy, mindful of polls showing a majority of Europeans oppose the conflict, are resisting calls to send troops to relieve them.
The European reluctance to fight is making it harder for the 41,000-strong force to consolidate gains against the Taliban, which is battling on in the rugged terrain of southern Afghanistan six years after the U.S. drove it from power in response to the Sept. 11 attacks. It is also endangering the unity of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, raising the stakes for a meeting of defense ministers later this month.
``If NATO can't succeed with the task that it's been given, it's had it, it's lost all credibility,'' says Frank Cook, 71, a U.K. Labour member of Parliament who toured the war zone with allied lawmakers last month. ``Certain NATO members haven't fulfilled their NATO commitment.''
As the U.S. military hunkers down in Iraq, President George W. Bush is trying to shift more of the Afghan burden to Europe. The U.S. remains the dominant force in Afghanistan, with 15,000 soldiers under NATO command and another 11,000 in a separate counterinsurgency mission. Britain, which is shifting forces from Iraq to Afghanistan, now fields 6,700, the second-largest contingent.
Trainers and Helicopters
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates will use the Oct. 24-25 NATO meeting in Noordwijk, Netherlands, to prod the allies to provide another 3,200 trainers -- to build up Afghan military and police forces that are understaffed, underequipped and underpaid -- and 20 helicopters to relieve an American unit in Kandahar.
``We have been very direct with a number of the NATO allies about the need to meet the commitments that they made,'' Gates told a Sept. 27 press conference.
``It's important that the full coalition show as much solidarity as possible,'' NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told a news conference in Copenhagen today. ``Winning and keeping the hearts and minds of the NATO nations is as important as winning and keeping the hearts and minds of the Afghan people.''
Under Strength
Afghanistan's army now numbers 50,000 soldiers, according to NATO. It won't reach the desired strength of 70,000 combat- ready troops until 2009 at the earliest, the NATO commander in the country, U.S. General Dan K. McNeill, said last month.
As a result, NATO is conducting a two-tiered war, with the U.S., Britain, Canada and the Netherlands doing most of the fighting and dying while troops from countries such as Germany are confined to safer areas. In the first nine months of this year, 110 NATO soldiers were killed in action, almost double the 58 for all of 2006. The U.S. tops the casualty list, having lost more than 440 men and women since 2001.
The government of the Netherlands, with 10 of its soldiers killed and its reserves depleted, is weighing a cut in its force to around 1,200 soldiers from 1,700 next August and is negotiating with Norway, Slovakia and Ukraine to fill the gaps.
`They Can Do It'
For Hans van Baalen, a Dutch opposition lawmaker, there's one European country that can make a difference: France.
France's military is ``well-equipped, well trained to go down south -- they can do it,'' says van Baalen, 47, who chairs the Dutch Parliament's defense committee. ``The French should reconsider, the same with the Germans.''
So far, France has confined its 1,000 soldiers to the relatively safe Kabul region, and new President Nicolas Sarkozy's offer of six Mirage fighters to patrol the southern skies won't alter the balance of power on the ground.
Canada's 3,000-strong contingent has suffered more than 70 dead, on a par with Britain. With resentment brewing over the performance of other allies, the war may now claim a political casualty: Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
The three opposition parties that hold a majority in the House of Commons are pressing Harper to pull the troops out by February 2009. Confidence votes in late October may bring down the government and force new elections.
Hostage-Takings
War fatigue has gripped Europe, with the public troubled by the guerrilla fighting with no fixed front lines or exit strategy and by constant hostage-takings and casualties.
In the latest kidnapping involving westerners, four Red Cross workers were abducted southwest of Kabul on Sept. 27. At least 900 Afghan civilians were killed in 2006, Human Rights Watch estimates; for the first eight months of 2007 alone, the United Nations puts the figure at over 1,000.
``This was sold as an easier mission than it turned out to be, and once things got difficult, the governments have done a miserable job of explaining why we've got to be there,'' says Tomas Valasek, a former Slovak Defense Ministry official now at the London-based Centre for European Reform.
Opposition on the European continent to a shooting war -- 60 percent are against in France, 70 percent in Italy, according to a poll last month co-sponsored by the German Marshall Fund of the United States -- raises questions whether Europe has the muscle to back up its foreign-policy ambitions.
German Attitudes
In Germany, the culture of pacifism that took root after the two world wars is clashing with 21st-century realities. Opposition to the Afghan war is highest there, with 75 percent of people against active combat, the poll found.
Germany's parliament has to approve the dispatch of troops overseas, and some Social Democrats in the ruling coalition plan to vote against reauthorizing the 3,000-strong mission on Oct. 12, firing a warning shot at Chancellor Angela Merkel. More resistance is likely next month when the Bundestag considers whether to yank 100 elite German troops from the U.S.-led counterinsurgency force.
``It may in the end just be a purely symbolic gesture, but it won't help Germany down the road if the image that's given by the government is that Germany's commitment to Afghanistan will be costless, non-violent and purely humanitarian,'' says John K. Glenn, director of foreign policy at the German Marshall Fund in Washington.
Economy Neglected
One Social Democrat who plans to vote no, Klaus Barthel, blames the U.S. for overemphasizing military solutions and neglecting the buildup of Afghanistan's economy, which is still riddled with corruption and heavily dependent on poppy production.
``I don't detect readiness among the allies, rather a reliance on the military card in an increasingly fragile environment,'' says Barthel, 51. ``The policy doesn't seem to have any answers to the growing influence of the Taliban.''
One index of the Taliban's resurgence is the opium harvest, which rose 38 percent to a record 8,200 tons this year. Afghanistan produces 93 percent of the world's opium, the UN says, warning that the Taliban-infested southwest is taking on the traits of a narco-state.
Under pressure from Europe, the U.S. this year backed a ``comprehensive approach'' -- code for putting more resources behind civilian reconstruction.
``Insurgency, weak governance and the narco-economy'' may stall progress or throw Afghanistan back to where it was five years ago, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon wrote in a Sept. 21 report. One warning sign: Economic growth slipped to 8 percent in 2006-7 from 14 percent in 2005-6, according to the UN.
What remains, for visitors like Cook, the U.K. lawmaker, is a country reminiscent of 12th-century Europe: a ``positively feudal, pre-Magna Carta system.''
To contact the reporter on this story: James G. Neuger in Brussels at jneuger@bloomberg.net
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