NATO against ragtag warriors

The 28-member North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) is struggling to achieve victory, or should one say avoid defeat, in its maiden military engagement outside Europe. In fact, the Afghanistan conflict is the first real war that the Western military alliance, set up 61 years ago, has ever fought. Losing it, and that too against the ragtag Taliban fighters, could unravel NATO and raise questions about the strength and morale of the heavily-armed, hi-tech armies comprising the US-led defence bloc.
Meeting in Portugal’s capital Lisbon on November 19-20, leaders of NATO member countries and their allies discussed a host of issues, but the one that took up most of their time was the war in Afghanistan. Forty-eight countries that make up the NATO-led International Security Assistance Security Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan and represented at the summit signed an agreement with President Hamid Karzai to begin handing over control of the war to his government in early 2011 and cede command also by the end of 2014. Karzai, installed by the US and sustained in power by NATO forces, had little choice in the matter even though he would have liked the Western armies to stay longer in Afghanistan. However, it needs reminding that it was President Karzai who first mentioned 2014 as the deadline for handing over security to the Afghan forces. His Western supporters have gone by his word even though this could turn out to be a misjudgement by Karzai.
Staying beyond 2014 in Afghanistan in a diminished role is indeed the most debated issue in NATO member countries right now. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO’s hawkish Danish secretary general, made it clear that the 2014 withdrawal deadline did not mean that the military alliance would leave behind a vacuum in Afghanistan that could be filled by enemies waiting out the exit of NATO forces. Just like Denmark’s prime minister who annoyed Muslims worldwide by refusing to condemn the blasphemous cartoons of Holy Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) published in a Danish newspaper, Rasmussen insisted that NATO would stay committed to Afghanistan as long as it takes to finish the job.
The ‘job’ at hand, though, has changed over the past nine years when the US invaded Afghanistan to destroy Al-Qaeda and punish the Taliban as a revenge for the 9/11 attacks. Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda have survived the assault despite suffering painful blows and the Taliban are back and in a much stronger position after suffering defeat in 2001. Other aspects of the ‘job’ that the US-led Western powers took upon themselves were to do some nation-building in Afghanistan and turning it into a democracy. Achieving those goals would require years and a lot more money, some of it lining the pockets of those in power and contributing to making Afghanistan the second most corrupt country in the world.
The ‘job’ that Rasmussen has in mind right now is to prevent the Taliban from capturing power as NATO believes this would amount to providing safe havens again to Al-Qaeda and other likeminded groups in Afghanistan. The Western leaders have been talking about fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan in places like Helmand to stop them from attacking cities in Europe and Northern America. By drawing such parallels, they at times raise unnecessary alarm and make their own mission even more difficult and unachievable in Afghanistan.
NATO Secretary General Rasmussen, enthusiastic and confident in keeping with the demands of his job and not required to heed the anti-war public opinion in the West as he no longer is contesting elections, is already being contradicted by certain Western government functionaries, more importantly by the US. Among them is Vice President Joe Biden, who has been calling for scaling back the US military involvement in Afghanistan. He described 2014 as the ‘drop-dead date’ for troops’ withdrawal and said it did not mean that the US would still have near 100,000 troops in Afghanistan in 2013. He and President Barack Obama, along with civil and military officials, have been reassuring the American people that their soldiers would start coming home from July 2011 onwards as promised.
There were question marks about the July 2011 date until now due to statements hinting otherwise by certain US officials, particularly the ISAF and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, but the NATO summit’s joint communiqué and the deal signed with President Karzai should mostly put those concerns at rest. However, the beginning of the withdrawal of the US troops by July 2011 would still be symbolic instead of substantial and the military authorities could still come up with arguments to delay or alter the manner of the pullout.
More importantly, though, is the fact that the US decision to start withdrawing troops has opened a window of opportunity for its reluctant NATO allies to consider pulling out most of their soldiers from Afghanistan in 2011, or much before the 2014 deadline. Once the principal power, the US, is ready to withdraw, it would become easier for other countries to extricate themselves from a war that has become increasingly unpopular with their electorate. The Dutch have already left, more so due to political compulsions and the force of public opinion than any other reason, and the Canadians are preparing to fully pullout in 2012. Other countries would then come under growing pressure from their citizens to withdraw. Most NATO countries or their ISAF partners are promising to provide military trainers and resources after ending their combat operations to make amends and to quickly train Afghanistan’s security forces to take over responsibility from the departing foreign troops.
Here lies the crunch because the biggest challenge now would be training the Afghan national army, police and other security forces not only to reach the targeted strength but also make them capable enough to stop the Taliban and the Hezb-i-Islami (Hekmatyar) fighters from overthrowing the government in Kabul or capturing provinces in the south, east and even the west. The US and NATO military commanders until now are dissatisfied with the performance of the Afghan security forces and it is debatable if they would become satisfied with their capabilities in the remaining three years. The Afghan national army has been suffering from an unusually high rate of desertions and raise in pay might not be enough of an incentive to check this trend. The army has a serious ethnic imbalance due to inadequate Pashtun representation and this cannot be overcome unless a major restructuring is done and more Pashtuns in the officers’ ranks are recruited.
The Afghan government would need to win over more Pashtuns and induct them not only into the security forces but also other segments of the administration in order to deny the Taliban the opportunity to recruit from among the ethnic group to which most of them belong. More importantly, the Pashtuns and also sections of the other ethnic groups would have to be convinced that they would have a better future siding with the West-backed Afghan government than the Taliban.
As for the NATO, it cannot afford to lose the war that was a test of its capability to intervene in distant lands to fight potential enemies and bring regime changes to its liking. Its faltering military campaign against the lightly-armed Taliban guerrillas would have to be turned around to avoid defeat and embarrassment. The US is willing to put anything and everything into this war and its recent decisions to send tanks to Afghanistan and build and expand military airbases are indicators that it still believes it can achieve victory in a country that has been described as a graveyard of empires. All this is understandable because some experts think defeat for the US in Afghanistan could well herald the beginning of the end for America as the leading military power in the world.