The Economist, 12 July 2007
BRINGING peace and development to Afghanistan was always going to be, as Britain's ambassador has put it, “a marathon not a sprint”. The resurgent Taliban is betting that the countries sending troops to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) do not have the stamina for it. In some, the steady drip of depressing news of casualties among their own soldiers and Afghan civilians is wearing away whatever support the troop deployments ever had. Governments, even those whose “caveats” ensure their troops are kept out of the most serious fighting in the south, are finding Afghanistan a political millstone. The coalition is not crumbling; but there are worries about whether it can stay the course.
America still provides nearly half the 37-country ISAF's 35,500 soldiers; Britain, the next biggest contributor (see table), will have sent around 7,500 by the end of the year. France's new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, said during the election campaign earlier this year that he does not want to keep French troops in Afghanistan indefinitely, but has since said that withdrawal is not “imminent”.
In Canada, however, all three opposition parties are calling for the military part of the country's mission in Afghanistan to wind up in February 2009 at the latest. The army is deployed in Kandahar, a dangerous southern province. Next month French-speaking Québécois forces will take over, bringing a higher risk of casualties to the Canadian province in which opposition to the mission runs highest.
Stephen Harper, the prime minister, at the end of last month subtly shifted his own position. Whereas before he has hinted at extending the mission beyond February 2009, he now says that any extension will be put to a vote in parliament. As things stand, it would be defeated. Yet even NATO's most optimistic commanders think it will not be until 2010-11 at the earliest that Afghan security forces are ready to take over.
Six Canadian soldiers were killed on July 4th, bringing to 22 the number killed this year, and further eroding public support for the deployment, which has in any event been below 50% for the past year. The government has commissioned research on how to sell the mission to sceptical Canadians. It has to counter a powerful legend that, since the second world war, its army has been a peacekeeping operation not a fighting one, and that Afghanistan has sullied this noble ideal.
Similarly, in Germany, where even today there is squeamishness about seeing the country's soldiers going into action, Afghanistan is a huge political issue. The troops have been deployed in the north of the country, away from the fiercest fighting. But the army has lost 21 soldiers, bringing home to the public that in combat there are no halfway houses: assisting one side means becoming a target and needing, at times, to strike first.
There are in fact three German missions (“mandates”) in the country: a commitment to America's “Operation Enduring Freedom” (OEF); the deployment of six Tornado fighters for reconnaissance (approved by the constitutional court, despite fears that it broke the constitutional commitment to non-aggression); and the contribution to ISAF. The role in ISAF is not in doubt; but more and more MPs from the Social Democrats (SPD) are against the renewal of the OEF mandate, which comes up for parliamentary debate in November.
Like Germany's, Italy's soldiers in Afghanistan are not in direct combat roles. Even so the deployment has been a source of continual discomfort to Romano Prodi, the prime minister, who offered to resign in February after his government lost a vote in parliament on foreign policy, and particularly the Afghan mission. (Mr Prodi kept his job after the president rejected his resignation.) The soldiers have recently been given some smart new kit: helicopters, tanks and armoured cars. But the defence minister has insisted that this is simply to defend them from insurgent attacks, not a sign that Italy is to bow to pressure from NATO allies to take on a combat role.
Dutch troops were until recently spared the worst of the violence. But last month two soldiers died in combat, and this week eight were wounded in a suicide attack in the central province of Uruzgan. This is awkward for a government that has to decide in the next few weeks whether to stay in Afghanistan beyond 2008. The defence minister has said it has a “political intention” of doing so. He then had to apologise for a “slip of the tongue”—it was bad form to announce such a plan before a parliamentary debate due after the summer.
If NATO's old guard has troubles with public opinion, its new recruits seem positively gung-ho. Poland has a reinforced battalion of around 1,000 in Paktika, a dangerous province that borders the Pakistani tribal areas. Hungary has sent several companies to Kandahar, where they will be joined by a Bulgarian contingent. Estonia has had a small force of around 100 fighting in Helmand with considerable credit for the past year.
That these various eastern European powers have been so willing to shoulder the burden seems to stem from their greater enthusiasm for NATO as an institution. The desire to see NATO succeed in the new role it is carving out for itself outside Europe probably stems from greater interest in its old role—providing a shield of mutual defence in Europe at a time when they feel an increasing pressure from Russia.
Some of them also seem more willing to accept that there is a war in Afghanistan. Some Western governments, portraying their Afghan missions as humanitarian reconstruction efforts, find it hard to justify the deaths of their soldiers.
-------------------------------
Citation: "No rush for the exit, yet; But an orderly queue is forming," The Economist, 12 July 2007.
Original URL: http://www.economist.com/printedition/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=9485544
-------------------------------