Fight in Afghanistan
It's becoming clear that the war must be won by U.S. troops, and not by NATO.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

THE BUSH administration's decision to dispatch an additional 3,200 Marines to Afghanistan raises the question of whether NATO's participation in the war has been a failure. Though the United States already provides more than half of the 53,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, the additional Marines are needed because no other NATO country was willing, despite months of pleading and cajoling by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, to commit fresh forces to the troubled southern provinces where the Taliban has made a comeback.

What's more, Mr. Gates and other senior Pentagon officials seem to have concluded that the three NATO countries that have been willing to operate in the south -- Britain, Canada and the Netherlands -- have been relatively ineffective. Mr. Gates told the Los Angeles Times this week that "most of the European forces, NATO forces, are not trained in counterinsurgency"; the Pentagon believes they are too averse to casualties, too reluctant to patrol and too dependent on artillery and airstrikes. The Post's Karen DeYoung reported that U.S. commanders criticize British troops for failing to retain control over areas taken from the Taliban and for advancing a "colonial" strategy of backing local militias rather than working with the national Afghan army.

European diplomats and NATO's defenders furiously respond that the American complaints are unfounded. Almost all of the alliance's members have increased their commitment to Afghanistan in the past year, they point out, helping to raise the troop level under NATO command from 33,000 to 41,000. The troubles in the south, they say, are the result of NATO forces penetrating an area that U.S. commanders had neglected, allowing the Taliban to flourish. British officials say their strategy in Helmand province is comparable to the successful U.S. alliances with Sunni militias in Iraq.

Certainly, NATO's involvement in Afghanistan has done some good. Deployments in more peaceful areas of the country, as well as Kabul, fulfill a peacekeeping role that might otherwise fall to American troops. The commitment of 25 other NATO governments (as well as 13 other countries) to the Afghan mission makes the operation more palatable both to Afghans and to Americans. Though many countries restrict their troops from combat, the British, Canadians and Dutch have made contributions in blood, suffering a total of 177 fatalities; 480 U.S. soldiers have been killed.

It nevertheless is a good thing that Marines rather than European soldiers will deploy in Helmand province this spring to head off any Taliban offensive. Defeating the Afghan insurgency will require the United States to take on a larger part of the fighting. Success will also require U.S. commanders to insist that a more coherent, nationwide counterinsurgency strategy be pursued -- including aggressive training of the Afghan army and police, economic development that is centrally coordinated, and a focused attack on the opium business that supplies most of the Taliban's funding. If that means downgrading NATO's role or bruising the feelings of some allied governments, so be it.