Afstan Update: Calls for Euros to do more/ Canadian overview

Note that the UN's main man in Afstan (a German), wants NATO, and German troops in particular, to do more fighting (2)). Someome please tell Jack Layton what the warmongering UN is up to.

1) "NATO calls for overhaul of Afghanistan strategy; Alliance leader wants to revamp training"

NATO's secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, is calling for a radical overhaul of military, civilian and development operations in Afghanistan that would involve the U.S.-led military alliance in playing a greater role in training the Afghan Army and the European Union taking over the entire training of the police forces...

NATO, he added, "should do much more to train and equip the national army. Why? Because that is part of an exit strategy. We want to have the Afghan national army to do what any normal army does - that it be responsible for security in its own country."..

He said one of the biggest problems facing NATO in Afghanistan was "national caveats." Almost all of the 37 countries contributing to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan have set restrictions on their troops or the use of their equipment, de Hoop Scheffer said.

"The caveats are poison," he said. "They significantly reduce the amount of forces a commander really has at his disposal."..

2) "UN Envoy Urges Deeper NATO Involvement in Afghanistan"

The UN representative in Afghanistan Tom Koenigs, warned that NATO and especially German forces must step up efforts to keep the strife-wracked country from sinking into chaos.

Koenigs told Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung that the international troops serving in Afghanistan had reached a key crossroads.

"The conflict cannot be won by military means alone but NATO must not lose it," he said, calling for an "enormous military effort" against insurgents in the country.

He said that while diplomatic and humanitarian aid was essential, attacks mounted by the hard-line Taliban movement and other militants had to be stopped.

"Otherwise the entire NATO alliance is absurd and not usable for peacekeeping in the Third World," he said...

Koenigs, a German citizen, called for German troops to join NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in the violence-plagued south of Afghanistan...[my emphasis - MC]

I'm afraid the German troop skull uproar will be a major barrier to this.

3) An overview of the whole Afghan situation (and a rubbishing of "exit strategies") by a professor at the Royal Military Collenge, Kingston. The para below states what is simply obvious, even if not to Mr Layton. Read the whole piece
for excellent analyis of how to achieve our goals, especially the perils of trying to force-feed Western institutions and values into a very traditional society.

What, then, are the conditions for the withdrawal of the International Security Assistance Force and, thus, Canadian military forces? In broad terms, Afghanistan has to be able to protect itself from external and internal threats to its security. Afghanistan must have viable civil institutions that can provide or facilitate the basic needs for its population. Reconciliation of grievances is also an important component of the program. There are, however, numerous obstacles to meeting these conditions in the near-term.