Strategy change
October 22, 2009
Afghanistan tops the agenda of NATO foreign ministers as they meet Thursday and Friday in the Slovakian capital, Bratislava. The United States is pushing its NATO allies to change tactics in Afghanistan, a move supported by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
US General Stanley McChrystal, the supreme commander of the NATO-lead International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), wants to increase the focus on protecting civilians and supporting Afghanistan's security personnel. McChrystal has also hinted that he wants to send 40,000 additional soldiers.
Elections add to security concerns
In the months leading up to Afghanistan's presidential poll in August, NATO had increased the number of international troops in the country. While the elections went forward, widespread fraud marred the results.
This week, incumbent President Hamid Karzai and his challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, agreed to a run-off election.
For NATO, the decision to hold a run-off vote in November means one less problem and one additional one. On one hand, NATO's military mission is only credible if it leads Afghanistan down the road to democratization. For that reason, NATO welcomed the decision to hold a run-off vote.
But the run-off election poses new, acute security concerns. The level of violence in Afghanistan has increased in recent months, and as more NATO soldiers put their lives at risk there, on the home front, opposition to the mission is on the rise. Many Europeans oppose the mission, seeing no end in sight to the fighting there.
Investing in Afghanistan's future
Rasmussen realizes that the stakes are high. Before the announcement of new elections, he said it was important for Afghanistan to take a lead role in its own security. But to get the country there, NATO allies will need to do even more.
"This means more and better reconstruction and development … and it means building Afghan security forces, so that they can take care of the security with us in a supporting roll," Rasmussen said. "If we want to be able to do less later, we have to invest more now."
McChrystal recently said that without a massive increase in troops, NATO cannot win the war against the Taliban. But it remains unclear whether US President Barack Obama will support a large troop increase.
Relying on Russia
Yet one thing has become clear. To be successful in Afghanistan, NATO needs the support of Moscow. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russians "do not want the international security effort to fail in Afghanistan."
"We will do everything we can to support it," he said. "A failure would mean that for the international community and also for Russia the problems of terrorism, the drug trade and organized crime would grow worse."
Russia is also a key figure in another topic that is to come up during the NATO meetings in Bratislava. NATO allies are to discuss a modified plan for a US missile defense system. The first US proposal, which would've located the missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, was strongly opposed by Russia.
Rasmussen says he hopes that new American plans for missile defense will involve NATO "to a higher degree" than in the past.
But, just as with sending troops to Afghanistan, it remains unclear how much support European governments are willing to provide.
Author: Christoph Hasselbach (th)
Editor: Chuck Penfold