The US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq having resulted in the disaster it has, the forgotten war in Afghanistan is threatening to go down the same road. How bad the situation is comes out from the fact that even though a while ago Nato assumed increased responsibility for stabilising Afghanistan, its members, unnerved by the Taliban onslaught, are now reluctant to commit more troops.
Some of them are even unwilling to send the existing troops to southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban are most active. German Chancellor Angela Merkel averred the other day that German soldiers could go to help out in the south in emergency situations but they would stay in the north. "Our place," she averred, "is in the north where 40 percent of Afghanistan's population lives." It is no co-incidence that the north happens to be the most peaceful and hence the safest part of the country.
Canada, which has suffered substantial losses in the recent months, is also averse to any expansion either in troop numbers or in their role. Notably, at this year's Nato summit in the Latvian capital, Riga, US President George W Bush exhorted the alliance leaders to provide more soldiers for the campaign in Afghanistan and remove the caveats that keep their troops from taking on the Taliban in heavy combat areas.
In his pre-summit remarks he tried to remind the alliance members that "Afghanistan is Nato's most important military operation." British Prime Minister Tony Blair also warned before the summit: "Nato's credibility; is at stake here."
Yet none of these exhortations have produced the desired result. The summit decided to establish a Nato Response Force (NRF), but it is not Afghanistan-specific. The declaration issued at the conclusion of the summit on Wednesday says the force will stand ready to be deployed within five days for combat missions, evacuations, disaster relief or counter-terrorism work lasting up to 30 days.
It says nothing about the US demand that Nato nations commit more troops to Afghanistan, even though the alliance secretary-general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, had said earlier that it was unacceptable that the Nato force in southern Afghanistan was 20 percent below the required strength. Nor does it fulfil Bush and Blair's hopes that different alliance members would remove restrictions on their forces and allow them to move to 'dangerous areas'.
Most Nato countries, in fact, are more interested in an exit strategy rather than to fight for the restoration of peace. Apparently, it was to offer them the assurance they wanted that the alliance Secretary General expressed the optimism that there will be considerable progress by 2008, with "effective and trusted Afghan security forces gradually taking control." Aware of this weakening of the wills, former US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage, speaking at a seminar in Singapore on Monday, urged the international community to pay more attention to Afghanistan.
Said he "The stakes in Afghanistan are actually larger in the near term than they are in Iraq." The knock-on effects of a lack of success in Afghanistan, he added, will have enormous repercussions" and may jeopardise stability in neighbouring Pakistan.
Indeed, no other country has as big a stake in bringing peace and stability to Afghanistan as does Pakistan. It is yet to recover from the spillover effects of the last Afghan war; the role it is playing as a frontline state in the current war has already generated a serious backlash in the tribal areas as well as parts of NWFP and Balochistan.
As it is, the Taliban have gained so much strength that even Nato forces are reluctant to take them on. Hence it is hard to imagine that the Afghan government troops would be able to take control in 2008, when the Nato official has indicated the alliance is thinking about pulling out of Afghanistan. That will plunge the country into complete chaos, and Pakistan will be faced with a violence-ridden failed state across its northern border.
Such a situation may lead to dangerous consequences for the US and its allies as well, like it did in the case of the last Afghan war when the US left Afghanistan after the defeat of the erstwhile Soviet Union, without cleaning up the mess the conflict had created. It is in the interest of all parties concerned, therefore, that the present conflict ends in a way that leads to peace and stability in Afghanistan.
What is needed is a rethink in order to correct the mistakes that have produced the present difficulties. The major mistake, it is plain, has been the Western countries' misplaced confidence that they could establish control over Afghanistan through military means; the other a reliance on the corrupt local warlords; and yet another their inability to honour their own pledges of economic support made at the Tokyo conference. They must do all it takes to correct these mistakes before heading back home.