NATO Demands More Troops for Afghanistan
    By Adrien Jaulmes
    Le Figaro

    Thursday 02 November 2006

The International Force complains of not being powerful enough to conquer the Taliban.

    NATO forces in Afghanistan are insufficient to hope to chalk up a rapid victory against the Taliban. "I don't have enough troops available to win, in, let's say, the next six months," British General David Richards, Commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, warned yesterday. This 54-year-old officer, who has already commanded peace-keeping forces in East Timor and Sierra Leone, nevertheless assured that NATO's strategy was "good." He deems that the ISAF has succeeded in recent months in "stabilizing security" within the country. "I can continue to bring about enough progress for the Afghans to continue to trust us and their government," added the leader of the biggest expeditionary corps NATO has ever sent outside of Europe since the organization was created in 1949.

    Iraqi Tactics

    But, by highlighting the ISAF troop shortfall, General Richards concedes the deterioration of the situation. Deployed in 2001 as a stabilization force immediately after the fall of the Taliban, the 33,000 Canadian, British, Dutch, French, German, Spanish, and Italian soldiers have seen their mission morph into an ever tougher counter-insurrectionary war. Since the beginning of the year, the Taliban have returned in force to the country's southern and eastern provinces. While 135,000 American soldiers in Iraq don't win through against the Sunni uprising in a flat country furrowed with highways, the ISAF's 33,000 men, along with 8,000 Americans under autonomous command, must contest control of an impossibly mountainous and roadless Afghanistan with a Taliban the leaders of which have fought the Red Army.

    When he took over the ISAF command in February, British General David Richards announced his intention of breaking with American methods and of no longer systematically resorting to aerial bombardments. To win "hearts and minds," NATO's soldiers were to devote themselves from then on to reconstruction missions, taking care to respect the Afghans and their customs.

    But the Taliban uprising in the southern provinces blew these beautiful intentions into bits. Lacking helicopters and tanks, British troops in the Helmand province are facing ever more pugnacious insurgents who deliberately seek out contact.

    Imitating the tactics of the Iraqi insurrection, the Taliban launch suicide car bombs against Canadian convoys in the center of Kandahar. Kabul, the capital, has also been the target of several deadly attacks. Since the beginning of 2006, 150 NATO soldiers have been killed, including seven French troops.

    The ISAF must also resort to air attacks to disengage its troops, sometimes as nearby as Kandahar's suburbs. Last week, several dozen civilians were killed by bombing raids in the Panjwahi district, adding to the NATO troops' growing unpopularity in the southern Afghan provinces.

    The specter of the disastrous Anglo-Afghan wars of the nineteenth century during which British troops suffered stinging defeats, including that of Maiwand in 1880 in the same Pashtun province of Helmand, has suddenly resurfaced in the United Kingdom. Criticism against Tony Blair's government is becoming ever more virulent as it is accused of launching troops cruelly lacking in materiel into a high-risk military adventure. Even as corroborating intelligence indicates the Taliban intend to launch an offensive against Kabul this winter ...