Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
London Times
March 19, 2009
By David Charter, Brussels
Nato appealed to its member states for up to 4,000 extra troops for Afghanistan yesterday, amid fears that the Taleban will step up operations to try to sabotage elections there this summer.
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the Secretary-General, said that the alliance needed four more battalions in addition to the 60,000 troops already in the country — and on top of the additional 17,000 personnel pledged by President Obama — to provide security for the voting in August.
Mr Scheffer’s call came despite promises from Italy and Germany to provide several hundred extra troops and it piled pressure on members to announce more forces at Nato’s 60th anniversary summit in Strasbourg on April 3 and 4. Poland also said that it was prepared to find extra personnel as it continued to push the candidature of its Foreign Minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, as the replacement for Mr Scheffer, who steps down after the summit.
Mr Scheffer, speaking at a briefing alongside President Karzai of Afghanistan in Kabul, admitted that the elections would be a challenge. “But we are to meet this challenge because every Afghan citizen should have the right, wherever he is, to go to the polls,” he said.
The threat of insurgent attacks against the elections is highest in southern Afghanistan, where several districts are in the hands of the Taleban. “We will bring extra forces before, during and after the elections to make this possible, so I think it is viable,” Mr Scheffer said.
His call for four battalions marks the first time that he has put a number on the shortage of troops facing Nato, with a battalion made up of about 850 troops.
Britain, whose Defence Secretary, John Hutton, held talks in Washington yesterday, has the second-largest contingent of combat troops in Afghanistan at 8,300 and has lost 152 personnel since the Taleban was ousted from Kabul in 2001. Brigadier Gordon Messenger, the commander of British forces in Afghanistan, said yesterday that his troops in Helmand province were overstreched. “There’s a limit to what we can put in,” he told the BBC.
Speaking after he met Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, Mr Hutton acknowledged that it was proving difficult to persuade European allies that they should shoulder a greater share of the burden. “There have been disagreements about the direction of the strategy,” Mr Hutton said. “Some have tended to see Afghanistan more in terms of a traditional blue-helmet peace-keeping operation. But coalition warfare is a difficult thing to prosecute.”
Mr Gates did not ask Britain to deploy additional forces, added Mr Hutton, who said that a decision on troop numbers would be taken in the coming weeks after the Pentagon unveils its new strategy for the Afghan war.
This is expected to put fresh emphasis on improving security for the civilian population and encouraging Pakistan to tackle extremist elements in the border region. Some of the more idealistic aims of the Bush Administration of turning Afghanistan into a model democracy and self-sufficient free market economy are being abandoned.
Mr Hutton said that Britain and the US were “very much on the same wavelength” over these questions. He also rejected what he described as “unfair” criticism of the British military performance in Afghanistan, saying that this had been largely propagated by “some pretty low-level people”.
President Karzai used the press conference in Kabul to warn the international community against meddling in Afghanistan’s internal politics beforethe election. “Afghanistan will never be a puppet state,” he said.
March 19, 2009
By David Charter, Brussels
Nato appealed to its member states for up to 4,000 extra troops for Afghanistan yesterday, amid fears that the Taleban will step up operations to try to sabotage elections there this summer.
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the Secretary-General, said that the alliance needed four more battalions in addition to the 60,000 troops already in the country — and on top of the additional 17,000 personnel pledged by President Obama — to provide security for the voting in August.
Mr Scheffer’s call came despite promises from Italy and Germany to provide several hundred extra troops and it piled pressure on members to announce more forces at Nato’s 60th anniversary summit in Strasbourg on April 3 and 4. Poland also said that it was prepared to find extra personnel as it continued to push the candidature of its Foreign Minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, as the replacement for Mr Scheffer, who steps down after the summit.
Mr Scheffer, speaking at a briefing alongside President Karzai of Afghanistan in Kabul, admitted that the elections would be a challenge. “But we are to meet this challenge because every Afghan citizen should have the right, wherever he is, to go to the polls,” he said.
The threat of insurgent attacks against the elections is highest in southern Afghanistan, where several districts are in the hands of the Taleban. “We will bring extra forces before, during and after the elections to make this possible, so I think it is viable,” Mr Scheffer said.
His call for four battalions marks the first time that he has put a number on the shortage of troops facing Nato, with a battalion made up of about 850 troops.
Britain, whose Defence Secretary, John Hutton, held talks in Washington yesterday, has the second-largest contingent of combat troops in Afghanistan at 8,300 and has lost 152 personnel since the Taleban was ousted from Kabul in 2001. Brigadier Gordon Messenger, the commander of British forces in Afghanistan, said yesterday that his troops in Helmand province were overstreched. “There’s a limit to what we can put in,” he told the BBC.
Speaking after he met Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, Mr Hutton acknowledged that it was proving difficult to persuade European allies that they should shoulder a greater share of the burden. “There have been disagreements about the direction of the strategy,” Mr Hutton said. “Some have tended to see Afghanistan more in terms of a traditional blue-helmet peace-keeping operation. But coalition warfare is a difficult thing to prosecute.”
Mr Gates did not ask Britain to deploy additional forces, added Mr Hutton, who said that a decision on troop numbers would be taken in the coming weeks after the Pentagon unveils its new strategy for the Afghan war.
This is expected to put fresh emphasis on improving security for the civilian population and encouraging Pakistan to tackle extremist elements in the border region. Some of the more idealistic aims of the Bush Administration of turning Afghanistan into a model democracy and self-sufficient free market economy are being abandoned.
Mr Hutton said that Britain and the US were “very much on the same wavelength” over these questions. He also rejected what he described as “unfair” criticism of the British military performance in Afghanistan, saying that this had been largely propagated by “some pretty low-level people”.
President Karzai used the press conference in Kabul to warn the international community against meddling in Afghanistan’s internal politics beforethe election. “Afghanistan will never be a puppet state,” he said.