Denmark: One Euro country where people support their Afghan mission

Further to this post,

Canada after Afstan: Demilitarization?

a story you'll not see in the Canadian media (note the chart at the end):

Denmark Rallies Public Behind Afghan War

Among allied forces fighting in Afghanistan, few countries have deployed a bigger share of their armed forces than Denmark, and fewer still have taken higher levels of casualties. But the small Scandinavian country is emerging as an unlikely example of how to maintain public support for the war.

The popularity of the international campaign in Afghanistan has fallen across Europe and in the U.S. On Tuesday, the Dutch government set a June 9 date for general elections, nearly one year ahead of schedule. The move followed the unraveling of Netherlands' coalition government last weekend after it failed win support to extend the mandate of the nation's 1,600 troops in Afghanistan, presaging a likely withdrawal this year.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned Tuesday that the NATO military alliance is facing "very serious, long-term, systemic problems" sparked by European nations' unwillingness to adequately fund their militaries [as for us, see "The CF's budget--and missions--after Afstan"]...

the Danes have largely maintained public support for the effort, selling the mission as a humanitarian effort rather than simply protection against a terrorist threat, and building consensus among political parties. They have reaped the benefits of a largely supportive media and the country has, to some degree, rediscovered its pride in an active military.

"The key to sustaining public support is an elite consensus that includes politicians in government and opposition as well as key opinion leaders: influential intellectuals, academics and columnists," says Dr. Peter Viggo Jakobsen, a security expert at the University of Copenhagen.

Denmark has paid a high price in Afghanistan. Its 750 troops represent almost 5% of its entire military, including reserves—among the highest in Afghanistan. Of the total, 31 Danish troops have died there, an allied casualty rate behind only Canada and Estonia, which has just 150 soldiers fighting.

Yet throughout a difficult 2009, polls consistently showed around a half of Danes surveyed by TNS Gallup believed Danish troops should be in Afghanistan; only one-third said they didn't. In NATO nations such as the U.K., Germany and Netherlands, meanwhile, polls reveal over half wanting troops back home.

"If you can't win the public opinion, you have lost the war," Danish Defense Minister Søren Gade said in a recent interview [QUITE--and our government has not really made much of an effort--when was the last time you saw Prime Minister Harper give a speech, or television interview, about Afstan?]...

Denmark's forces in Afghanistan—along with Britain, the Netherlands, Estonia [see "Estonians fighting in Afstan"] and Canada—have formed a rump [a sad yet very true word] of non-U.S. allies essential to the U.S.-led war effort that do battle in Helmand province and other Afghanistan hot spots, contributing to high casualty rates for these countries' contingents.

Now some of those nations are growing weary of the effort. The Netherlands and Canada have set pull-out dates, and some foreign armies remain reluctant to fight in restive regions like Helmand. British politicians face a hostile media that chronicles the return of every dead soldier's coffin.

It's a different story in Denmark. "On editorial pages, there has been a total agreement that it is a necessary war," says Kristian Mouritzen, the foreign editor of Berlingske Tidende, one of Denmark's big three dailies.Mr. Gade, a former Danish army officer, said a key to winning the public was giving reporters deep access to soldiers, who were allowed to talk.

When troops say, " 'We did a job and we did it good, and it is worth doing,' then it is very hard indeed for a lot of people to oppose, because those are the men and women who risk their lives," he said [that certainly is not the case in Canada: "We support the troops but not the mission", say many]...

Danish defence ministry's Afghan page is here. Earlier:

President Obama recognizes Danish military effort in Afstan

Update: Good point in a comment by Brasidas at Milnet.ca (should have noticed myself, applies to all the countries in the chart):

Can't say I like how that table seems to say that one in twenty Canadians sent there's a dead man. One figure's talking about the number of troops actively deployed, another's the total number of dead over the course of the mission, and a third divides the two. When the losses were over several rotations.

Babbling made the same point in an earlier post on another subject:

...If one takes the 139 fatalities suffered by the Canadian contingent in Afghanistan since 2002, and divides it by the roughly 2,800 currently deployed personnel in country, one comes up with a number just shy of 5%. But dividing a current number by a cumulative number is a nonsensical operation. A less innumerate exercise would be to divide the total number of fatal casualties (139) since 2002 by the total number of deployed personnel since 2002 (somewhere north of 25,000 by my rough estimate). Call it about one half of one percent. Epic fail on the high-school math...