There was a rather interesting development in NATO yesterday, as the alliance members agreed to shoulder a little more of the burden in Afghanistan.
NATO foreign ministers approved plans yesterday to send up to 6,000 troops into southern Afghanistan, a major expansion of the alliance’s peacekeeping mission into some of the most dangerous parts of the country.
The deployment next year of mostly European and Canadian troops will free United States forces to focus on counter-insurgency operations against Taleban and al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan’s volatile south and east.
“They will bring peace to more people in Afghanistan,” said Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the secretary-general of NATO.
“They will help to ensure that terrorism cannot take hold again of this country and use it as a base from which to threaten the world.”
[…]
The Pentagon has yet to say how many troops it is likely to withdraw.
The plans give the NATO peacekeepers a stronger self-defence mandate and guaranteed support from US combat troops if they face a serious attack, and set out rules for handling detainees – all issues which have concerned some European allies mulling participation in the expanded force.
Why is this interesting? NATO has been dragging its heals on any deployment to the Afghan hinterlands, forcing the Brits and the Commonwealth to express a willingness to step up to help the Americans (previously discussed here and here). Obviously, this should then be considered quite a step forward. However, I do not feel that it is as big a step as the following article seems believe.
Analysis: ‘Zombie’ NATO springs to life
“A zombie organization,” is how former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar described NATO in an interview with United Press International last week.
Some zombie.
At a meeting in Brussels Thursday foreign ministers agreed to expand alliance operations in southern Afghanistan and boost the number of troops in the war-torn state from 10,000 to 16,000. They defused an increasingly bitter transatlantic row about alleged C.I.A. camps in Europe after receiving reassurances from U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that suspected terrorists would not be tortured or sent to countries where they would be tortured. And they penciled in two summits of NATO leaders on transforming and enlarging the military bloc in 2006 and 2008.
That is just the tip of the iceberg of the alliance’s activities.
Since the terrorist attacks against the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, NATO ships have been monitoring the waters of the Mediterranean to help prevent rogue strikes against vessels and ports. In just over four years, 60,000 ships have been monitored and almost 500 non-military vessels escorted.
In the mid-1990s there was a torturous debate within the alliance about whether NATO forces could act out of area — that is, outside the borders of its member states. As leaders argued, hundreds of thousands of civilians in Bosnia and Croatia were killed before NATO planes finally forced Serb strongman Slobodan Milosevic to the negotiating table.
The next time violence erupted in the Balkans — in Kosovo — NATO had less qualms about leaving its cozy confines. After a robust intervention lasting just 78 days, the bloodletting was ended, although there are still 17,000 alliance troops keeping a fragile peace in the country.
Since Kosovo, the 26-member alliance has not just gone out of area, it has gone out of Europe altogether. It leads the 16,000-strong International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, is training Iraqi officers outside Baghdad and helping the African Union airlift troops and equipment to the Darfur region of Sudan.
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For all the alliance’s slights, setbacks and self-doubts, it is difficult to argue — as Aznar does — that it remains mired in a cold-war mind-set based of tanks facing each other across the Fulda Gap. By the end of next year it will have a 25,000-strong rapid reaction force capable of intervening anywhere in the world within five days. It is slowly acquiring airlift capacity to transport troops long distances and its primary focus is now fighting terrorism and preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, not stopping a land invasion of Europe from the east.
This transformation is set to continue in the run-up to the next leaders’ summit in the Latvian capital Riga next November. The very fact that NATO is holding a top-level meeting in a member state that was a Soviet republic less than 15 years ago is testimony to how much the alliance has changed. It also reflects its magnetic pull for neighboring countries. An organization that started off with 12 members in 1949 now has 26. Three more states — Croatia, Macedonia and Albania — are expected to join shortly after the 2008 enlargement summit and Ukraine and the remaining Balkan countries look set to come on board next decade.
NATO may have its problems — it is under-funded, its mission statement is in need of a rewrite and there is a chronic capabilities mismatch between its European and American members — but this does not seem to dissuade states applying to join the Brussels-based club. Nor does it seem to put off people calling for the alliance to intervene when there are humanitarian disasters or looming conflicts. If it is a zombie organization, NATO is doing a good impression of looking like an body in rude health.
I’d say it’s not very complimentary to brag that NATO, an alliance based upon mutual defense, can heartily be relied upon for humanitarian disasters but is rather pick-and-choose on military assistance, always quite willing to find a reason to avoid exposure to potential danger. That is not a strong foundation for mutual defense. NATO really must be re-envisioned or cast away as a Cold War relic.
To be honest, part of the hemming and hawing about commitment into southern Afghanistan is understandable, as there are lessons to be learned from previous NATO efforts.
‘Shades of Srebrenica’ overshadow Nato’s mission in Afghanistan
The Srebrenica massacre, the worst atrocity in Europe since the Nazi era, cast a shadow over Afghanistan yesterday when the Dutch government demanded guarantees that its troops would not face a similar disaster again.
A plan by Nato to send 6,000 troops into southern Afghanistan was subject to last-minute wrangling as the Dutch government voiced fears that its troops could be stranded.
Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, and other Nato foreign ministers, offered reassurances that around 1,000 Dutch troops would be supported when the new peacekeeping mission was launched next year.
The intervention by Ben Bot, the Dutch foreign minister, shows what a sensitive issue Srebrenica is in the Netherlands, a decade after 8,000 Muslim refugees were massacred by Bosnian Serb forces under the eyes of Dutch peacekeepers in what was meant to be a safe haven. A report on the massacre, which found that the peacekeepers handed over the refugees to the Serbs knowing what awaited them, prompted the mass resignation of Wim Kok’s Labour government in 2002.
“There were shades of Srebrenica in today’s talks,” one Nato official said yesterday.
The last-minute wrangling came as Nato foreign ministers approved plans to send 6,000 troops to southern Afghanistan to expand its peacekeeping mission. Under the plans, which are expected to come into effect in May, the number of Nato peacekeepers will increase to 16,000 as the alliance takes responsibility for security in 75% of the country. Washington has been pushing for the extra troops, who will mostly be Dutch, British and Canadian, to allow US forces to concentrate on Taliban and al-Qaida forces.
Nato has responded to European fears that peacekeeping troops could become embroiled in offensive operations by improving links between the two missions. It insists that its troops will be equipped to deal with threats. Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the Nato general secretary, said: “There should be no doubt, our forces will have the equipment and the support they need to do the job.”
I find it sad that an alliance was relied upon to fight tooth-and-nail across Europe against the feared onslaught of the Red Horde has to provide assurances that it can be equipped to provide security and handle some patrols in a handful of Afghan provinces.
All that said, thumbs up for this development.
