Bush, Rice Concerned About Afghanistan.

By MATTHEW LEE
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON, December 20, 2007  — President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed concern Thursday that the commitment of NATO allies in Afghanistan may be flagging and warned against allowing the country to again become a cauldron for extremism.

In separate news conferences, Bush and Rice made clear that the United States cannot accept Afghanistan as a failed state where al-Qaida is able to regroup and possibly use as a stage to launch future terrorist strikes like the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Afghan police men talk while they take a security position on a hill top near Pol-e-Khomri, (225km/140miles north of Kabul), Afghanistan,  Dec. 20, 2007. AP Photo/BelaSzandelszky)

“My biggest concern is that people say, ‘Well, we’re kind of tired of Afghanistan and, therefore, we think we’re going to leave’,” Bush said at the White House. “That would be my biggest concern.”

Later, Rice made the same point at a joint news conference at the State Department with Canadian Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier. The Canadian government and parliament will begin debate early next year on whether to extend Canada’s military operations in Afghanistan beyond its current mandate that ends in February 2009.

“Afghanistan as a failed state was, of course, very much the near-term cause for the emergence of a trained and capable al-Qaida,” Rice said. “It is an absolutely essential mission to stabilize Afghanistan. We learned the hard way what happens when we allow a failed state to emerge in Afghanistan.”

“It was the United States that was attacked on September 11 but, of course, it could have been any of us, and it has been others, as well,” she said. “We just have to remember that in the war on terror, what we’re trying to do is to help states like Afghanistan become self-sustaining states that are not going to be safe havens for terrorists.”

The Bush administration has launched a wide-ranging review of its policy in Afghanistan to ensure that gains made since the radical Islamist Taliban regime was ousted in 2001 are not lost and to bolster Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s nascent government. Bush is holding regular secure videoconferences with Karzai to discuss the situation.

Bush and Rice lavished praise on Canada, other NATO allies and non-alliance members that have troops in Afghanistan.

“I would like to praise the Brits, the Canadians, the Dutch, the Danes and other countries for their contributions — the Aussies for their contribution of shooters, fighters, people that are willing to be on the front line of this battle,” Bush said. “These are brave souls.”

Australia is not a NATO member but in her comments Rice stressed the need of “the entire alliance to share in the responsibilities of this most important mission that NATO has taken on … we are working with all of the allies to make sure that the responsibilities are spread more evenly.”

Speaking specifically about Canada, which has 1,700 troops in and around the southern Afghan city of Kandahar where insurgent activity is high, Rice called Ottawa’s contribution “invaluable and effective.” “Canada is sharing in that responsibility. Canada is pulling its weight.”

Because of their deployment in Kandahar, Canadian troops are taking high numbers of casualties, with 73 combat deaths, and there is growing public unease in Canada about the mission. A panel appointed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper is due to present a report on Canada’s role in late January after which parliament will consider how the country should proceed.

Bernier said he hoped “that will be a vote to have a strong commitment for the international community.”

“Yes, we suffer a lot of casualties,” he said. “But that being said, we still have to be sure that this part of the country will be secure. You cannot have economic development without security. You cannot have prosperity without security. It’s a dangerous mission, but it’s a mission that we’re proud of.”

In addition to fears that Canada night waver in its commitment, the Bush administration is concerned that other members of NATO are not stepping up to do their fair military share in Afghanistan.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been pressing for months — without success so far — to get 16 more helicopters into southern Afghanistan to relieve a U.S. helicopter unit that will be leaving soon. He is also looking to fill other needs, including 3,500 NATO trainers for the Afghan police as well as a minimum of three battalions of ground troops.

But last week in Scotland, at a NATO conference on Afghanistan, Gates said the administration had decided to tone down its appeals to NATO allies for more troops and other aid.

After two days of talks in Edinburgh with his counterparts from Britain, Canada and five other NATO countries whose troops are doing the bulk of the fighting in Afghanistan’s violent south, Gates said he would continue making the case for greater allied military assistance.

However, he said he would be doing it differently, keeping in mind the “political realities” faced by some European governments whose people may see less reason to intervene in Afghanistan.

The United States has the largest foreign troop contingent in Afghanistan now with about 26,000. while Britain is the second-leading contributor with some 7,800. Gates has said there are no short- term plans to fill gaps left by NATO allies with more U.S. soldiers.

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  Afghanistan Fatigue
By Mario Roy
La Presse

Saturday 22 December 2007

December 22, 2001, six years ago today, Hamid Karzaï was placed at the head of the interim Afghan government several days after the defeat of the Taliban. Since then, we have seen a guerilla movement gradually move in, particularly in the South where Canadians are fighting. This year, we’ll count 6,000 deaths, a record.
So, on December 22, 2007, where are we, exactly, with all that?

Seen from here, the landscape is the one formed by our 73 troops killed in combat, the Canadian population’s hostility (70 percent in Québec) to this intervention, and doubt about its success that sometimes approaches certainty of its failure. For there is no longer anyone today who predicts “victory” in the short term. That is to say, the establishment of a stable government, a functional democracy, an economy that is actually working, and domestic security assured by a correct police force and legal system.

This doubt about success - or certainty of failure - has slithered up to the highest levels of the administrations involved.

The day before yesterday, President George W. Bush himself said that what he feared above all was that “people will get tired of Afghanistan and think about withdrawing” - he was, obviously, thinking about the armed forces of some 35 countries that are present there.

This doubt also translates into the repeated refusal of NATO members, especially the European ones, to engage in combat zones. “French involvement is already very significant,” protests French Defense Minister Hervé Morin in this vein, refusing to commit troops in the South. “We are concentrated in the North and that’s what we expect to continue to do,” adds German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The Degree of Zero Enthusiasm Has Been Reached

In consequence, a process of mission revision is underway. That’s the case for the United States, both at the Pentagon and at the State Department. NATO countries will meet in Bucharest in April in order to define a new strategy. Here, the Harper government has given John Manley a mandate to study the situation; his report is expected next month.

We know Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s desire to extend the Canadian mission up to 2011, the issue eventually having to be submitted to Parliament.

It would be wise not to make any decision before knowing the intentions of the other NATO members in general and of Washington in particular. Crudely put: we need to know first of all whether the international community still has any real interest in Afghanistan.

Since, to be frank, that was never very obvious.

From the beginning, the United States bolted to Baghdad, neglecting Kabul. The security forces deployed in Afghanistan have been nearly 20 times less dense than those sent to Bosnia (one versus 19 per 1,000 inhabitants). The sums allocated to nation building were eight times less in the case of Afghanistan than in that of Bosnia ($57 versus $679 per inhabitant). There has never been a coherent strategy for “conquering hearts and minds.” The crucial problem of the Pakistani border has been neglected, as has that of opium poppy cultivation.

Given all the foregoing, and if nothing changes radically, I must repeat: Canada has done more than its share in Afghanistan. And there would be no reason to continue to sacrifice lives for a cause no one any longer believed in.

Afghanistan: France Thinks Military Action Is Not the Sole Solution
By Arnaud De La Grange
Le Figaro

Monday 24 December 2007

A war against time is being played out in the Afghan Greater South. Rather than the Taliban, the al-Qaeda henchmen or the drug barons, the great enemy of NATO force leader General McNeill is time, which flows at such a different pace depending on whether it’s seen from Western capitals or from the Pakistani-Afghan tribal regions. Won’t the allies, headed by Europeans, chicken out on their military commitment before the Afghan forces are capable of holding the ground on their own? The rebel Pashtuns have the time. If NATO leaves in two, 10 or 20 years, they will still be there. General McNeill, whom Nicolas Sarkozy met Saturday in Kabul, undoubtedly pleaded for a stepped-up French commitment in Afghanistan.

Can or should France do more there? Today, it deploys some 1,600 soldiers there, mostly around Kabul. To avoid being bogged down in an uncertain conflict, it has legitimately emphasized beefing up “trainers.” Rather than commit to more direct action or reinforce the Afghan army, Paris is now deploying teams of instructors (OMLT) to work inside Afghan operational units, including those in combat zones. During the summer, the Élysée decided to send three additional OMLT teams and, one month ago, still another team to the South. In Kabul, Nicolas Sarkozy let it be understood that he could beef up these kinds of units still further.

So France makes one little gesture after another. Only, now here we are, and the popular assertion “the more one does, the more one is asked to do” also applies to the “war against terrorism.” The pressure from the great barons of the Alliance, headed by the United States, is very intense for Paris to commit itself still further. It’s very clear that there are two “sides” among the allies: those who fight in the South and those who confront fewer dangers in the North. Last week, very symbolically, the defense ministers from the eight countries engaged in the South met in Scotland. A sort of “Club of the Eight” warrior nations to which Paris does not belong….

French timidity, long the order of the day, has been poorly understood by the Anglo-Saxons. The Germans’ excessive caution is better accepted because people know about their Constitutional and historic curbs. But France? Isn’t it, along with Great Britain, “the” country that counts in Europe in defense matters? In Afghanistan, all the allies have been able to observe the excellence of French troops, notably the Special Forces engaged alongside American commandos between 2003 and January 2007. And today, in Kandahar, the allied chief of staff was unstinting in his praise of the operational capabilities of French Mirage jets, which assure a good third of ground troop support missions. These last few weeks, with the American F15s grounded for technical reasons, the French fighters even played a premier role.

If, at the NATO summit in Bucharest in April, France had to go beyond its reinforcements in instructors, two paths are being explored: the dispatch to the South of a French battalion that finishes its assignment in the Kabul environs in July 2008, or the return of 200 men from the Special Forces. This latter solution is preferred by the Élysée for the moment. It, in fact, presents a triple advantage: a muscular display, good acceptance of the risks by public opinion, and economy in men.

The problem is that France has been very uncomfortable with the Afghan situation since the beginning. It is divided between the necessary unity among the allies mentioned by Nicolas Sarkozy in Kabul, and the conviction that the solution “is not solely military,” as the French president also reminded people Saturday. In other words, Paris deems that the Afghan affair has, ever since the beginning, dramatically lacked any real political leadership. At the end of 2006, Jacques Chirac had tried to launch the idea of a “contact group” on Afghanistan. In vain. So France will have to condition its heightened effort on a redefinition of Afghan strategy, or risk appearing to be the European auxiliary in an endless war without clear objectives.

The chief of American forces in another convulsive theater - Iraq - and author of Washington’s new counter-insurgency doctrine, Gen. David Petraeus, noted that “forces conducting counter-insurgency operations generally start out badly.” In Afghanistan, they did, in fact, start out badly. In Paris, people wonder whether the strategic aggiornamento is not perhaps already too late, since conflicts that persist have their own mechanics. After sweeping out the Taliban and their al-Qaeda guests in a flick of the wrist in the fall of 2001, the allies are engaged today in a “Seven Years War.” One that, unfortunately, could last thirty.

 Arnaud de La Grange is Le Figaro’s Foreign Service Defense correspondent.