Afstan: NATO and the problem of "caveats"

National Defence Minister O'Connor speaks about a situation bedevilling the NATO ISAF mission.

The shortage of troops in Afghanistan would be solved if many NATO nations removed the tight restrictions that keep many of the soldiers from seeing combat, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor says.

While the 26-member alliance has just expanded its operations to include all of Afghanistan [not quite yet - MC], just a handful of countries, including Canada, are on the front lines confronting the insurgency...

...those restrictions — known as national caveats — are emerging as a thorny political problem for NATO amidst strong hints that countries such as Canada that bear the burden in Afghanistan are growing increasingly frustrated with those that aren't.

At a meeting of NATO defence ministers last week in Slovenia, there was backroom arm-twisting on some nations to remove the shackles and, like the Canadians, let their troops go where needed.

"The nations that have caveats know who they are [e.g. Germany, France, Italy, Spain]. They're under increasing pressure to remove them," O'Connor said in an interview after the meeting...

...caveats allow a country to make the goodwill gesture of dispatching troops while quietly slapping on restrictions to keep them out of harm's way.

Germany, for example, has more than 2,000 troops in the safer northern part of Afghanistan. Last week, it again rebuffed pressure to move its force to the more dangerous southern regions.

"The Germans are satisfied to stay and work in the relatively quiet north, undertaking reconstruction activities," said one official familiar with the Afghan mission...

[O'Connor is] confident that other nations will relax their restrictions as they realize that the rules are hindering, not helping, the coalition effort to curb the insurgency.

"Over time, these caveats will be removed as some of these countries realize it's not practical from a military point of view," he said...

Unlike the minister I am not confident at all. Even this is seen as controversial in Germany:

A defense ministry source has revealed that German military aircraft are seeing action in the volatile southern region of Afghanistan. The report comes days after German help in the south was officially ruled out...

Der Spiegel said German Transall transport aircraft and helicopters had made some 60 flights this year into the south, ferrying allied soldiers and evacuating wounded...

The weekly said the operation, hitherto kept secret, was largely aimed at deflecting pressure on Berlin to switch forces to the south from the more peaceful north, where it has some 2,750 troops deployed...

Back in Canada: "Military worried about Tory failure to defend Afghan mission". An earlier post: "Afstan: The media and government need to do better".