AFGHANISTAN: NATO Mission Sees Death Toll Zoom This Year

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Saeed Zabuli - Pajhwok Afghan News*

KABUL, Dec 2 2006 (IPS) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s surprising claim that NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) troops are “winning” the military mission against the Taliban has to be verified on the ground in Afghanistan.

Blair told journalists in Riga, Wednesday, at the end of a two-day NATO summit dominated by the alliance’s biggest military mission outside Europe: “I think there is a sense that this mission in Afghanistan is not yet won, but it is winnable and, indeed, we are winning.”

Just hours before the press conference, two NATO soldiers were ambushed on the road, south of Kabul. Details have not been released to the press but in recent months attacks on western convoys that were confined to the southern provinces have spread to in and around the Afghan capital.

The war in Afghanistan has intensified since Washington announced that it intended to withdraw 4,000 troops from the volatile south last December. NATO troops from Canada, Britain and the Netherlands, part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) that took over combat duties, are engaged in hand-to-hand combat with a resurgent Taliban force in strongholds in southern Helmand and Kandahar provinces.

On Monday, a suicide bomber attacked a NATO convoy exiting the heavily guarded Kandahar airport. Two Canadian soldiers were killed – taking Canada’s death toll in Afghanistan this year to 36.

Suicide bombers have emerged for the first time in three decades of war in Afghanistan. There have been over 102 suicide attacks this year that have resulted mostly in civilian deaths in addition to 17 foreign soldiers.

On Thursday, another NATO soldier was wounded in a clash with Taliban fighters in Helmand province. A military spokesman confirmed: “One ISAF soldier received minor injuries during the operation, which included close air and military support.”

The Taliban, which was ousted by U.S-led coalition forces from Kabul in 2001, have regrouped in five years to challenge the authority of Afghan and foreign security forces. . Some 4,000 people are believed to have died in fighting this year – about a quarter of them civilians in the war-torn south.

The Hamid Karzai government in Kabul is propped up by 32,000 ISAF troops. The main troop contributors are U.S (11,800) Britain (6,000), Germany (2,700) Canada, (2,500) Netherlands (2,000), Italy, (1,800) and France (975)

But NATO’s first mission outside Europe has deeply divided the 26-member alliance. Major members like France, Italy, Spain and Germany, have refused to risk their troops in military operations involving the Taliban, which have killed some 100 foreign soldiers, including 36 Britons, this year.

Even in their peace-keeping role, every country has a different concept of reconstruction, which makes any kind of unified reconstruction programmes in the provinces next to impossible. Each NATO member has a list of what they will do and not do – national caveats û that has paralysed alliance commanders in Kabul.

Following years of war, a majority of Afghans counted on the west to provide security and fund reconstruction. But the public wrangling among NATO members over troop deployment to secure the country from the Taliban û every decision on troop and aircraft movements has been challenged by one or other member û has disappointed Afghan watchers.

“NATO has not developed a positive image in the minds of Afghans outside Kabul,” commented journalist and writer Ahmed Rashid, author of the authoritative ‘Taleban’.

Alliance commanders won a small concession at the Riga summit from French, Spanish, Italian and German leaders who pledged to provide “emergency” assistance outside their areas in exceptional cases. But the definition of an emergency remains unclear,

Spanish troops based in relatively peaceful western Afghanistan have rarely left their compound. Now, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has offered the use of Spanish helicopters in exceptional circumstances to help evacuate wounded NATO solders, but not for combat in the volatile south.

Chancellor Angela Merkel turned down a plea from NATO commanders to increase Germany’s existing 2,900 strong force in Afghanistan. But she pledged to back up other NATO members in military emergencies.

French President Jacques Chirac agreed to send more aircraft and helicopters, and allow one army unit to move out of Kabul. While Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said a decision to move his soldiers from western Afghanistan to the main battlegrounds in the south and east would be taken on a case-by-case basis.

Several smaller countries offered to send additional troops. The Dutch and Romanian delegations are reported to have lifted all restrictions on their troops, while the Czechs, Danes, Hungarians and Greeks have agreed to ease some caveats.

NATO commanders, demanding greater flexibility and resources, welcomed the small relaxation on curbs. Chief Jaap de Hoof Scheffer said 20,000 of the 32,000 troops in Afghanistan were more usable in combat and non-combat operations, but admitted that it still fell short of troop requirements. Blair’s optimistic predictions of victory clash with the Afghan reality. (*Released under agreement with Pajhwok Afghan News)