Afstan: Soft Euros/Reasonable Brits

Readers of this blog will know that we have had little time for Prof. Michael Byers (e.g. this post of Babbling's). However an article of his in the Globe and Mail, on attitudes towards combat commitments in Afstan in some European countries, makes some valid points (along with the cheap shots); our escapist doomsayers are far from alone:

Travelling through Europe this month, I've been struck by how national debates in different NATO countries take place in isolation from each other. Many Germans, for instance, assume Canadians support the counterinsurgency mission in southern Afghanistan. Similarly, many Canadians assume the 3,000 German soldiers in relatively safe northern Afghanistan aren't going anywhere soon.

In fact, 54 per cent of Germans think their soldiers should be withdrawn [but there is no indication the government has any plans to do so - MC]. In the Netherlands, 58 per cent want the 2,000 Dutch troops brought home by next year. Even in Poland, where the government strongly backs the mission and none of its 1,100 soldiers have been killed, a staggering 78 per cent oppose the Polish presence in Afghanistan...

...The Dutch will decide next month whether to extend their deployment. Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, who heads a fragile three-party coalition, finds himself on the wrong side of public opinion. This might explain why his government recently said that, even if Dutch troops were to stay, the mission would be scaled back because of financial limitations.

During the recent French election, presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy suggested that he would pull all 1,000 French troops out of Afghanistan. Having won office, he now says any such move is not "imminent [which means it is unlikely to happen, hostage crises aside]."

Other governments are setting limits on their contributions. Spain, with 650 soldiers deployed, lost 17 of them in a single helicopter crash in 2005. Two months ago, Defence Minister Jose Antonio Alonso made it plain that more soldiers would not be sent. "We do not plan to augment our troops and it is not necessary."

For a few European countries, Afghanistan provides an alternative to an even more unpopular mission in Iraq. In February, the British government announced 1,400 more British troops for Afghanistan at the same time it was releasing plans to withdraw 1,600 soldiers from Iraq [Brits may be sending even more]. And Denmark is bolstering its small [hardly, given its population] Afghan deployment by 200 soldiers at the same time it is pulling its entire 500-strong contingent out of Iraq...

The UK Commons Defence Committee meantime has produced an intelligent report on Afstan. Here are excerpts from a Times story:

Thousands more soldiers should be deployed to Afghanistan to take on the resurgent Taleban and to accelerate the pace of construction projects, a committee of MPs said yesterday.

The Commons Defence Committee, giving warning that the shortage of troops threatened to undermine the whole campaign in Afghanistan, said that the size and strength of the Nato-led force should be “considerably greater than the international community is at present willing to acknowledge, let alone to make”.

The committee, in a report on British operations in Afghanistan, said: “We remain deeply concerned that the reluctance of some Nato members to provide troops for the Isaf (International Security Assistance Force) mission is undermining Nato’s credibility and Isaf operations.” ..

...The MPs said that if Britain’s mission was to bring stability to Helmand province in the south, it would require “a long-term military and humanitarian commitment” [emphasis added - not the Canadian way].

The MPs said: “We recommend that the Government clarify its planning assumptions for the UK deployment to Afghanistan and state the likely length of the deployment beyond the summer of 2009 [not easy to do].” Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, has stated that the presence in Afghanistan will remain until at least 2009.

Part of the problem for the mission in Afghanistan was that the experts had been wrong when they said that the Taleban would fight with “asymmetric” tactics, such as roadside bombs and suicide bombers. Although both these tactics were being used, the Taleban had also conducted conventional attacks, relying on much larger fighting formations than had been envisaged when the Nato campaign began [so it would appear that the Taliban, having largely given up on conventional tactics against the CF, still think they have some point against the Brits--hmm].

The MPs queried whether this “misreading of the insurgent threat in Helmand represented a failure of intelligence”.

Mr Browne admitted that knowledge of the insurgency in southern Afghanistan had been limited because, before the arrival of 5,000 British troops in Helmand in May last year, Isaf had had only 100 American service personnel in the province [so it was a lot wilder than even Kandahar where there was a much larger US presence before Canadians arrived]...

And here's a BBC story with a very good map at bottom of which ISAF troops are where.

Note that the UK is improving its capabilities by ordering three Reaper UAVs (advanced Predators) for use in Afstan; rather grim that the CF will not have really capable UAVs for quite a while.

Regarding those NATO members who don't want to do much more, the Conference of Defence Associations (sorry, no link, in an e-mail) has two useful suggestions:

...a possible area where NATO nations could increase their commitment to ISAF efforts in southern Afghanistan could be the deployment of Army medium lift helicopters by nations such as Greece, Italy, France, Germany and Spain which could provide much-needed aerial support to the troops on the ground. These five nations have some 264 Chinook-type medium lift helicopters in their inventory, very few of which are deployed in Afghanistan.

Another area where NATO nations could contribute more would be the training and mentoring of the nascent Afghan National Army, similar to the role towards which Canada is recalibrating its mission in Kandahar province. The British Committee Report mentions that the Afghan Army is still “some way off operating independently”.The goal is to develop Afghan security forces to the point where they are able to assume responsibility for their nation’s security...