The EU must be ready to resort to force

Chad and Afghanistan are currently among the two most violent and conflict-ridden corners of the world. That is just about the only common ground between them, since they are several thousand kilometres apart and afflicted by distinct ailments.

Chad is a post-colonial mess, rich in gold, uranium and more recently oil, but under-developed, among the poorest countries in the world and plagued by rivalry and recurring violence between the mainly Christian and animist south and the predominantly Arab-Muslim north. This pool of misery has been worsened by the mass influx of approximately 500,000 refugees from neighbouring Darfur, topped by a rebel attack on the capital Ndjamena last week that left many dead bodies in the streets.

Afghanistan, while not much happier, suffers from extreme inter-tribal rivalry that saw a Taliban victory, which led at one stage to the destruction of the very fabric of society and much of its cultural heritage, then the admission of Islamic extremists led by Osama bin Laden, who came to be known as al-Qaeda. These developments were both enabled and exacerbated by successive waves of failed foreign intervention - first Soviet, then American, which led in turn to the current NATO and broader international presence. Whereas Chad is a mineral mine for exploitative states and multinationals, in Afghanistan the only positive value is geographic - it controls a crucial region - set against the immensely negative value of heroin. It has the largest poppy crop in the world, recently aided and abetted by international aid money.

Yet for all their differences, Chad and Afghanistan now have one thing in common: in their very misery and neediness they have exposed the reality of what undermines Europe in its search for international political relevance - the willingness to use force. NATO is being torn apart by a very open dispute between the US, the UK and Canada on the one side, and more or less all the European continental allies on the other, over this issue in Afghanistan - known euphemistically as placing caveats on troops. Meanwhile the EU, which has taken six months just to muster agreement for a deployment to Chad to protect the Darfur refugee camps there, has announced that it is postponing the mission, because of a rebel attack.

A willingness to use force should not automatically be equated with a massive use of force, overwhelming death and destruction. It is not an automatic green light for a US-style invasion of Iraq without a UN Security Council resolution or even for a hi-tech invasion of Afghanistan. It is about a willingness to stand up to wrong and evil, backed up with might, until the wrong is righted and the evil retreats. In truth, that is not too complicated in our current circumstances because generally the perpetrators of evil are the likes of the Taliban, or the Bosnian Serbs, or the Janjiweed: non-state thugs, sometimes with state backers, who would respond to a short sharp show of force.

Put in other terms: Srebrenica might not have led to a massacre if the Dutch soldiers there had shown any inclination to use some force before being withdrawn. The genocide in Rwanda might have been smaller, though perhaps not averted completely, if the UN contingent, led by the Belgians, had not been withdrawn. We know that when a small deployment of French troops destroyed a small rebel force in the Congo a few years ago, the rest retreated in fear - then waited until the French left, before coming back. We also know that in Sierra Leone a not very large contingent of British forces took on the rebels and defeated them rapidly with a relatively limited show of force, leaving the country to sort itself out for the first time in decades.

NATO is suffering from a variety of problems, not all of them related to Afghanistan - but defeat there will be the end of the alliance and any sense of Western plausibility, not to mention a source of insecurity in the western world. Chad will not be calmed simply because a small EU force pitches up there - but it may be brought to a more manageable level of violence that does not threaten further the fragile status quo in the region. But as long as most European nations refuse to face the harsh reality that the use of force is necessary to attain these modest but very necessary goals, there is every chance of failure. Such failure will ultimately come at a massive cost to our continent: in refugees, trained terrorists, desperation and sheer hatred.

Europe can no longer hide behind its shameful past as an excuse to avoid employing, rather than deploying, its troops when necessary. An unwillingness to use excessive force is a value to be admired. A blanket unwillingness to use force is irresponsible.

• Ilana Bet-El is an academic, author and policy adviser based in Brussels.

Chad and Afghanistan are currently among the two most violent and conflict-ridden corners of the world. That is just about the only common ground between them, since they are several thousand kilometres apart and afflicted by distinct ailments.