BRUSSELS: Nato faces an uphill battle to bring security to violent southern Afghanistan and analysts question whether the transatlantic alliance is fully prepared for what will be the first true ground war in its history.
The handover of military operations there from the US-led coalition to Nato scheduled around July 31 will bring European soldiers into the thick of a battle against hardened Al Qaeda and Taliban insurgents fighting in their heartlands.
Doubts remain over whether Europe’s leaders have committed enough troops or understand what those soldiers will encounter on the ground, and whether they will pull out if rising casualties fracture delicate public support for the mission.
“It’s do-able, but it’s a matter of addressing the issue head-on,” said analyst Michael Williams at London-based thinktank the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).
“For me, Nato is not properly prepared. It has a confused and vague mandate and is short on both manpower and equipment,” he added, further accusing some European governments of having “sugar-coated” a treacherous mission to their publics.
A mere spectator of the US-led ousting of Afghanistan’s hardline Taliban leaders in 2001, and hopelessly divided two years later over the Iraq war, Nato knows that failure now would knock its claim to a meaningful post-Cold War existence.
Until now, the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) force has kept to the capital Kabul and safer north and west of the country, while US troops have borne the brunt of fighting the insurgency in the south and east.
That will change as Britain, Canada and the Netherlands lead an expansion into the south expected to pave the way for Nato to cover the whole country by the end of the year.
Nato’s estimate of the size of ISAF after the move south has ticked up from less than 16,000 to 19,000, including reinforcements from Britain, the Netherlands and others.
Nato stresses it will be backed by Afghan forces and the US-led coalition will continue the pursuit of Taliban and Al Qaeda insurgents. But some alliance officials acknowledge that is relatively few troops for a country larger than France.
“There are not nearly enough troops to get it right,” said Sean Kay, international security specialist at Ohio Wesleyan University, noting that Nato deployed 60,000 troops to keep the peace in tiny Bosnia after the 1990s Balkans wars and only started cutting numbers as security conditions improved.
“In Afghanistan we are going in with a smaller presence and should be bringing it up. That will be much harder to sell to public opinion (in Europe) given the likelihood of casualties.”
More than 400 soldiers from the United States, Britain and other nations have already been killed in Afghanistan and the insurgency is at its bloodiest phase since 2001.
The Netherlands could be the bellwether. The Dutch committed 1,400 troops to Uruzgan province only after a debate which rocked the ruling coalition and raised broad public concerns.
Nato Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, himself a Dutchman, argues that the debate braced his compatriots for the likelihood of casualties. But no one knows how much the Dutch — or other Europeans — will stomach.
“We are not worried when the first body bag comes there will be a huge clamour to withdraw,” said one Dutch political source.
“People accept that there is no point in having military if there is no risk. The question is: what level of risk?”
Acknowledging the violence in Afghanistan was worse than expected when Nato began planning its mission, ISAF commander Lieutenant General David Richards has warned that shortages of aircraft and easily deployable reserves were a problem.
“We are not unable to operate, but we could do it more efficiently,” he said in London last Friday.
Other concerns abound. Nato insists its job will not be to knock down doors and flush out Taliban insurgents. But that is what the US-led coalition will continue doing on its doorstep, potentially drawing Nato into battles it did not start.
The Nato strategy is to focus on the activity which US forces have been accused of neglecting — reconstruction.
Speed up the building of schools, clinics and roads, the argument goes, and local Afghan support for the insurgents, warlords and drug barons will fizzle out.
That in turn will lead to better security, allowing a faster pace of reconstruction to show to European people back home, and shoring up the authority of President Hamid Karzai and the often precarious situation of his provincial governors.
RUSI’s Williams said the question was whether European governments were committed to staying for the long haul.
“The political sentiment is confused,” he said. Is Afghanistan a primary issue for Europe or a secondary one?”—Reuters
