Utrecht, 29 december 2005


Onderstaand verslag over Afghanistan in The Times van vandaag is interessant ivm met het uitzendingsdebat hier in Nederland. Opmerkelijk zijn de volgende punten:

  1. Intensivering van de oorlog: "Four years after the fall of the Taleban, insurgent attacks on US and Nato forces are increasing dramatically." en: "In the south and east of the country, where mainly US forces are deployed, there is widening daily combat against Taleban and al-Qaeda forces."
  2. Afwijkende operationele afspraken tussen de verschillende NAVO troepenmachten
Karel Koster


Nato facing a critical test of its resolve from resurgent Taleban

As Britain prepares to take command, there is cause for concern in allies' timidity

Gerard Baker, The Times, December 29, 2005

Opening the sliding door of our rickety minibus, the cheerful Italian soldier who had been our escort for the day had a surprise for us. "You have time for some shopping," he said, motioning towards the little makeshift market set up on the dusty perimeter of the Nato air base near Herat in western Afghanistan, 200 mountainous miles from Kabul.

There had been no retail activity scheduled for our brief visit to this teeming city of more than a million people, 30 miles from the Iranian border, so evidently something was wrong. By now we should have been on a military plane headed back to our base at Kabul.

"There is no plane," the soldier said, anticipating our question with a smile intended to be apologetic yet authoritative.

As we strolled in the gathering dusk among Afghan traders and small boys eagerly offering us best prices on carpets, Afghan pakol hats and chess sets, the full story emerged.

Our group, a mixed bunch of "opinion leaders" from think-tanks and media organisations, had spent three days with Nato forces in the country. That morning we had flown from Kabul in a Danish C130 military transport aircraft that had been hit by debris, sustained propeller damage and returned to Kabul to be repaired.

Another plane, a German transport, had been assigned to fly to Herat to collect us. But like almost all Nato forces, the Germans serve in Afghanistan under rules called "caveats", decided by each nation, which impose tight restrictions on what they may and may not do. These caveats are infuriating for the Nato commanders but are imposed by political leaders terrified that the slender public support for the operation in Afghanistan might be shattered completely by serious military reverses.

In our case we had fallen foul of a caveat that stated that German military planes were not to fly at night. That's right. Germany, the second richest member of Nato, a country whose government expresses full commitment to the War on Terror, says that it can take part only in daylight hours.

As it turned out, there were worse places you could be stranded for the night. Our Italian hosts put us in roomy, well-heated tents and over a fine dinner of prosciutto, gnocchi all'arrabiata and prosecco, generously shared some of their personal experiences. And it is fair to say that in the long list of priorities facing Nato's hard-pressed forces in the country, shepherding a bunch of so-called experts back from western Afghanistan to the capital must have ranked quite low.

But the incident captured the challenges Nato faces at what may be a crucial moment in the war in Afghanistan.

As Britain prepares to take over command next year of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the 9,000-strong Nato force in Afghanistan, the noble struggle to build a free and stable country from the husk of a ruined nation is at its most critical phase since the US invaded the country after the attacks on September 11, 2001.

Yesterday two US soldiers were killed and three wounded in an explosion in Kunar province, the provincial governor said. With violence steadily increasing and the political process producing only limited results, the commitment of Nato countries to the effort there may be the biggest risk to the success of the project. And this challenge is all the greater because next year Nato countries, led by Britain, are scheduled to increase their forces in the country sharply as they take over from the US in one of the most volatile and dangerous regions.

Four years after the fall of the Taleban, insurgent attacks on US and Nato forces are increasing dramatically. The day we eventually left Herat (by Dutch transport), a suicide bomber drove a car into an Italian convoy, wounding three airmen close to the air base where we had stayed.

In Kabul, after a spate of recent attacks that have claimed several lives, including that of a German soldier this month, Nato officially describes the situation as "tense and unstable". Allied forces patrol the city in heavily armoured convoys. Nato and US commanders as well as the Afghan Government shelter behind high walls and bombproof barriers that look more like the Green Zone in Baghdad by the week.

In the south and east of the country, where mainly US forces are deployed, there is widening daily combat against Taleban and al-Qaeda forces. More than 200 American soldiers have died in Operation Enduring Freedom this year, making 2005 the bloodiest since 2001.

Islamic extremists have been making gains through intimidation of the population. Shortly before Christmas a teacher was taken from his classroom in Ghazni and shot in front of his students for the anti-Islamic crime of teaching girls.

Meanwhile the drugs trade goes on largely unmolested, indeed often, it seems, abetted by a fledgeling Afghan national police force, in which corruption is rife and recruits on $70 a month are easy prey to the more lucrative appeals of the traffickers.

In all this, the biggest risk to this fragile operation may be the seriousness of the commitment that Nato governments bring to the fight.

"We’re not going to win this war militarily any time soon," Ronald Newman, the US Ambassador to Afghanistan, said. "If we throttle back the effort, we face trouble."

Real progress has been made since Nato took military responsibility for peacekeeping here two years ago. It is clear that in much of the country the presence of Nato troops is a welcome relief from three decades of war. Half the eligible population turned out to vote in September in a remarkably successful election. President Karzai enjoys genuinely widespread support.

But there is steadily rising frustration among the population with the deteriorating security. "They’ve heard a lot of words. They want some results," Barbara Stapleton, of the Agency Co-ordinating Body for Afghan Relief, said. "Just saying we are here to support the Afghan Government doesn’t have a lot of purchase with the people right now."

The Nato operation in Afghanistan was an historic step for European countries. Even now, its success should not be understated; and on the ground the professionalism and hard work are impressive. In Herat, one of the more prosperous Afghan cities, Nato forces are greeted with thumbs-up signs, applause and smiles.

But the contradictions are evident. At the headquarters of the local provincial reconstruction team, Italian soldiers spend much of their day working to rebuild schools, hospitals and bridges.

Meanwhile just outside town, local warlords, including the infamous Mujahidin leader Ismael Khan, who is a member of the national Government in Kabul, carry on a struggle linked to the region’s rich opium poppy crop.

Nato, however, is largely excluded from the effort to counter narcotics, leaving it to the Afghan Government. And it is clear that it is not working.

"Soldiers are doing development work here, when what is urgently needed is security," Ms Stapleton said.

At the presidential palace in Kabul, Amrullah Saleh, the Afghan intelligence chief, said that while the Government had been successful in reducing poppy-growing areas, the small reduction had been outpaced by increased production from the remaining fields.

"The yield went down less than the total area devoted to poppy," he said, his dry arithmetic masking the devastating nature of the challenge.

"We are at a turning point in Afghanistan," a senior military commander there said.

The challenges will get much more serious next year. In spring the US, already stretched with more than 18,000 troops in the country in addition to the 136,000 in Iraq, is to hand over command of a key area around Kandahar, the old Taleban headquarters, to Nato, at about the same time as Britain takes over national command. But the plan has run into trouble. The Dutch Government, which is supposed to lead the Stage II mission, has raised humanitarian concerns about the Afghan Government; critics say that it is looking for an excuse to pull out of a commitment.

"My fear is that governments may have signed up to a mission and are only now thinking through the implications," a senior diplomat in Kabul said.

The obvious danger is that an increasingly emboldened insurgency will see the weakly supported new Nato deployment as an opportunity to strike a critical blow. Too many European governments are already nervous about political support in their countries for what they are doing. What might happen if one of them suffers a violent setback?

"Does Nato as an institution understand the mission which they’re going to have to do?" Mr Newman said.

The coming year may provide the answer to his question.

TimesOnline



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