NATO troops have been sucked into bloody combat with Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan that risks turning local opinion against them and undermining their ultimate goal of fostering reconstruction, analysts say.
When it pushed south this month, the 26-nation alliance aimed to maintain a clear distinction between NATO forces, which would go there to foster reconstruction, and U.S. special forces, out to smash insurgent bases.
But the involvement of British and Canadian troops in some of the heaviest violence since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 shows that logic was flawed, and has put the relatively benign image of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force in the country in jeopardy.
“It’s hard to convince people whose house you’ve just bombed that you are on their side,” said Colonel Christopher Langton, head of defense analysis at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
NATO estimates that it has killed more than 500 Taliban since it launched the Operation Medusa offensive just over a week ago in the southern province of Kandahar, heartland of the insurgency. The Taliban dismiss the figure as propaganda.
Some 20 NATO soldiers have been killed since the beginning of the operation, including 14 British military personnel who died when their aircraft crashed. NATO and Afghan officials say there have also been civilian casualties in the fighting.
'Fallen into the trap'
It was never supposed to be like this when the alliance, under intense U.S. pressure, agreed to push south in August from the relative quiet of the north, west and capital Kabul.
Then, the message was that ISAF would pull the rug from under the Taliban by winning “hearts and minds” by helping build new roads, schools and other infrastructure.
Instead, the violence has put any real reconstruction on hold and the news releases from ISAF are mostly battle reports.
“They have fallen into the trap of daily reports about the number of Taliban killed. But more important is how many people you persuade not to be fighters in the first place,” said Sean Kay, security specialist at Ohio Wesleyian University.
The IISS’s Langton said efforts by Afghan authorities to eradicate poppy crops -- key to the livelihood of many in the south -- would also hit NATO’s image with locals.
The international Senlis think-tank published evidence last week that rising poverty was fuelling Taliban support in the area.
The violence has also exposed the thin deployment of NATO troops in the south. It has just 6,000 men in an area the size of Britain, a number alliance chiefs originally said was sufficient so long as they had the support of ordinary Afghans.
Now they say they underestimated Taliban resistance and need up to 2,500 additional troops and extra attack helicopters and transport aircraft. But analysts say that too is insufficient.
“That is nowhere near the numbers they really need,” said Kay. “There is a huge disconnect between the challenges and the capabilities.”
Decisive campaign
Where reinforcements should come from is not clear. All the major NATO nations have existing commitments in multinational missions in Iraq, Kosovo, Congo and now Lebanon.
One idea is for Germany, which has 2,700 troops in the north, to send some south. But this looks awkward given Berlin’s insistence that the peacekeeping it signed up to do should be kept strictly separate from high-end warfare.
Tim Williams, head of the European Security Program at London-based Royal United Services Institute, said he was confident troop offers would emerge because NATO simply could not afford to lose in Afghanistan.
“The Secretary-General (Jaap de Hoop Scheffer) has said this mission is critical to the future of the alliance...The troops that can do this kind of job are out there,” said Williams.
Top NATO commanders say the next few months are potentially decisive to the campaign and fast reinforcements would allow them to deal a lasting blow to the Taliban before the onset of winter, when they expect a lull in fighting.
They reject suggestions that the Afghan violence is fiercer than that in Iraq. But the comparison is increasingly being made by commentators in the Western media, threatening to undermine already fragile public support for the mission.
“The good news is that at least the issues are finally out there, so European countries might bite the bullet and finally engage properly,” Langton said.
“We’re at the tipping point in the campaign.”
