OTTAWA/KABUL, 7 August 2004 — Afghanistan faces serious short-term problems and the world would be unwise to lose interest in the war-torn country now, the outgoing head of the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kabul said yesterday. Canadian Lt. Gen. Rick Hillier, who has been in charge of the International Security Assistance Force for six months, said the Afghan government could not cope with the dangers posed by the drug trade, warlords and militants.
“There are some significant threats in the shorter term, they’re not unexpected, they are manageable... I don’t underestimate the scale and scope of it, though, and it is going to be a challenge,” he said.
“Now would not be the time for the international community to get cold feet, that’s for sure ... (Afghans) clearly still need the help of the international community and they still need a significant amount of help to handle those threats,” he told reporters on a conference call from Kabul.
Canada, the largest contributor to the 6,500-strong ISAF force, is due to withdraw its 2,000-strong contingent in August. Around 800 troops and military support staff will remain in the country. Hiller, saying he was optimistic about Afghanistan’s long-term prospects, nevertheless predicted ISAF would have to stay in Afghanistan for years.
“One (threat) we see on a daily basis is simply the lack of a capacity in the Afghan government and the Afghan security institutions to be able to handle all the threats to this country themselves,” said Hillier.
While the Afghan National Army was being built up quickly with US help, “it is still going to take another three or four years to build an army that is sufficiently capable to handle the kind of threats they will have”, he added.
Hillier said there was a “very very good chance” that a presidential election set for Oct. 9 would go ahead despite attacks by militants seeking to disrupt the vote. Last month, NATO agreed to send up to 2,000 extra troops to bolster security for the election but the number fell well short of the amount Afghan officials say was needed.
Hillier said drug trafficking and the increasing poppy crop “threatens to undermine much of what is occurring and clearly is something that has to be tackled in a very significant way in the immediate future here.”
He also highlighted the risks posed by regional warlords he said were profiting from the drugs trade and also defying the Kabul government. “Clearly that’s a significant threat in the middle- and longer-term to developing Afghanistan,” he said.
“Their government structure, the pressures that they can bring, the security forces that they can deploy, cannot do all that needs to be done to set conditions both for successful elections and the continuation of the reconstruction process.”
The head of Europe’s five-nation military force, Eurocorps, flew out of Germany yesterday bound for Afghanistan where he is to take command of the ISAF. Gen. Jean-Louis Py and some 180 personnel left Cologne, western Germany for the Afghan capital Kabul, where Eurocorps will take command of the NATO-run peacekeeping force for six months on Monday, an air force spokesman said.
Speaking before the contingent flew out, Py said that he expected Afghanistan to become more tense in the next few weeks but that his troops would be ready for any developments. Eurocorps is made up of detachments from Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg and Spain.
