Though NATO has agreed this week to send more military personnel to Afghanistan for the all-important task of training Afghan Army and police to take responsibility for security, there is no getting away from the hard truth that there is still inadequate commitment of military resources to help with the fighting against Taleban and Al-Qaeda elements in the south, particularly Helmand province.
Nine nations including France and Germany, both of which already have troops in quiet areas, offered to send training personnel. But both these countries along with others such as Italy and Spain committed to the UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) have limited their involvement to avoid participation in much of the fighting.
The Americans who, apart from their own 7,000 troops in ISAF, have around the same number involved in an isolated action along the Pakistan border, had been pressing for other NATO countries to do their “fair share” in operations against the Taleban. The problem is that those states, including Canada, the Netherlands and the UK which have been playing a high-profile role in the conflict, have increasingly restless publics back home. There is, for instance, considerable pressure in Holland for the Dutch contingent to be withdrawn. Part of the problem is that some NATO countries see this as Washington’s war and are reluctant to be drawn into a conflict which has, as yet, still weak echoes of the US disaster in Iraq. It is easy to understand their fears but Afghanistan is not Iraq. For a start, the majority of Afghans welcome the international assistance which was called for by the democratically elected administration of Hamid Karzai.
This is not, however, to say that there can ever be a military solution to the Taleban insurgency. The British in the 19th century, the Russians in the 20th and the Taleban itself at the start of this century all learned to their high cost that a determined guerrilla enemy can never be defeated in detail. The only reason that foreign troops are on Afghan soil is to aid and protect the country while it is rebuilt. By deploying sufficient military force to contain Taleban fighters, the opportunity can also be created for the start of dialogue with them. For, in the end, it is only by dialogue that the conflict will be ended.
The fact that the Taleban have been able to gain in strength and daring, so that now the suicide bomber has come to the capital Kabul, has been because NATO has insufficient military resources to limit their activities to their mountain strongholds. Without stability, many of the promised infrastructural projects in the south of the country cannot get under way. That means that large part of the tens of millions of dollars that countries pledged at Bonn in December 2001 when the interim government was agreed, cannot be called upon. Without all that aid and then further generous subventions, all Afghans face an uncertain future. The current instability in Pashtun areas must not be an excuse not to pay up.
