NATO and Afghanistan. Reinforcements needed

European countries are failing to provide the soldiers Afghanistan badly needs

THE German colonel paused in Kunduz spice market, in northern Afghanistan, and sniffed at a pile of cloves. Beaming, he informed the bemused stall-holder that his wares were first-rate. Outside the market, his men - the first contingent of a NATO-led peacekeeping force to venture outside Kabul - were supervising the removal of mounds of dung from Kunduz's reeking streets.

No doubt, the locals were glad of this service. But it may have failed to convince them that the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), comprising 6,500 mostly European peacekeepers, is capable of protecting them from the factional and terrorist violence raging in Afghanistan. After 25 years of war, many Afghans have an eye for military might. They would have spotted that, while Kunduz's unruly local militia has a fine fleet of tanks, and while Kunduz is still about the safest city in the country, the 250-strong German contingent is only lightly-armed.

More was expected of NATO when it took over ISAF last August. Unlike Afghanistan's other foreign army, an American-led coalition of combatants who are hunting remnants of the former Taliban regime and its al-Qaeda friends, ISAF was at that time restricted to Kabul. NATO vowed to lead it into the wilds beyond, to secure the provinces ahead of the elections that were supposed to take place this month.

The elections have been postponed until September, partly because NATO has not kept its promise. Since the Germans took over in Kunduz on January 1st, there have been no further deployments outside Kabul. Meanwhile, the insurgency that has terrorised southern Afghanistan since the Taliban were toppled has spread northwards. On June 16th, a roadside bomb destroyed a car used by the Germans in Kunduz, killing four Afghans. Earlier this month, five employees of Medecins Sans Frontieres, a European aid agency, were killed by remnants of the Taliban in north-western Badghis province, bringing to 21 the toll of aid workers murdered in Afghanistan this year.

Against this grim tide, ISAF recently pledged to post regional garrisons - known as Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) - throughout northern and western Afghanistan, and to deploy an additional force to secure the elections in those areas. Accordingly, it would be up to the American-led coalition forces to police the more violent south and east, where UN election officials are already under attack. But even this fairly modest ambition, for which around 4,000 extra soldiers were requested, is now being pegged back.

At a summit in Istanbul at the end of this month, NATO is expected to reveal plans for four or five more PRTs in northern Afghanistan, though several of these will merely replace existing coalition troops. Germany will contribute a small garrison to remote Faizabad - which its troops in Kunduz already visit. A British-run coalition PRT in Mazar-i-Sharif will now come under ISAF's command, as will its outpost in nearby Maimana, close to the border with Turkmenistan. The Netherlands may open a new PRT in northern Baghlan province; as may Turkey elsewhere. But these measures will not bring peace to an increasingly dangerous land.

That makes the proposed election-security force, which NATO would also run, especially important. Yet plans for it are still hazy: America and Britain want NATO to send a few hundred men of its Response Force, a pool of several thousand elite, mostly European, troops. But others, notably France, are resisting - despite the plea for more NATO troops made by President Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's leader, during his visit to Washington this week. America's already hard-pressed soldiers in Afghanistan may have to plug the gap.

Why is NATO failing in Afghanistan? First, because several of its member states are foot-dragging, as the composition of ISAF's forces shows. Excluding Germany and Canada, the force's remaining 33 contributing nations muster barely 3,000 troops. They are reluctant to contribute money and men to a country which many experts privately expect to slip back into mayhem. Nor, it would seem, do they feel bound to NATO's new peacekeeping duty, now that the cold war is done.

The second reason for ISAF's travails is that its commanders appear hamstrung by restrictions imposed by their governments. Take the German PRT in Kunduz. It is a particular blessing that the town is relatively calm, given that German soldiers are constitutionally barred from performing riot control. They might nevertheless have found an opportunity for some rough stuff in the booming local drug trade - the biggest source of insecurity in northern Afghanistan - had they not been forbidden to intervene in it by Germany's parliament.

In fact - and though frustrated ISAF officials utter the acronym almost reverently - the PRT model was not meant for peacekeeping. It was designed by the coalition as a public-relations exercise, in a bid to compensate Afghans for kicking in their doors and trampling their fields in searches for Taliban fighters. The coalition's dozen American-run PRTs have built schools across southern Afghanistan, but often where they are not needed, aid workers say - and without improving security.

The British-run PRT in Mazar-i-Sharif has a better reputation. Its 80 soldiers have trained local policemen and brokered ceasefires between feuding warlords. While the Germans in Kunduz rumble around in heavy convoys, the British patrol on foot. They have not stopped two local warlords, Rashid Dostum and Atta Mohammed, from fighting, but have probably curtailed their battles. Such policies look wise given NATO's troubles raising troops. A few PRTs look like all the peacekeeping most Afghans are going to get.

European countries are failing to provide the soldiers Afghanistan badly needs.

http://www.nato.int/docu/update/2004/06-june/e0629a.htm http://www.nato.int/docu/update/2004/06-june/e0629a.htm

http://www.nato.int/issues/afghanistan/040628-factsheet.htm http://www.nato.int/issues/afghanistan/040628-factsheet.htm

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