Military

SHAPE News Summary & Analysis

17 December 2003

ESDP

• Finland’s neutrality is likely to come under increasing strain as a result of the EU’s adoption of a landmark security pact, wrote AFP, Dec. 14. The dispatch quoted experts observing that if Finland participates in the EU’s developing military plans, it would indirectly become tied to NATO, since the EU would have to rely on NATO resources. It also noted that the argument about non-alignment has acquired a degree of urgency as a result of the Iraq war and the subsequent debate about defense cooperation at a European level. Helsingin Sanomat, Dec. 16, reported that according to a rough estimate by the Defense Ministry, NATO membership would cost Finland 40 million Euros annually. The daily stressed that the amount includes Finland’s obligation for the NATO budget (30 billion Euros) as well as the salaries of the staff officers who would be sent to the organization.
  
  
• According to Stockholm’s Dagens Nyheter, Dec. 16, Moderate Party representatives on the Defense Commission are calling for a debate on Sweden’s possible membership of NATO as well as what the increased requirements for solidarity among EU countries mean for Swedish security policy. The request is reportedly based on developments in the ESDP field as well as the Baltic republics’ forthcoming membership of the Alliance.

AFGHANISTAN

• The Financial Times quotes UN special envoy Lakdar Brahimi saying in an interview Tuesday that Afghanistan will not be stable enough to stage elections as scheduled in June next year. “June is already out of the question. We are already looking at August (or) September,” he reportedly said, adding: “If you know an election is going to blow the whole place up, you don’t do it just for the sake of respecting the deadline.” According to the newspaper, Brahimi said there was “no question” of the UN leaving Afghanistan “immediately in the present circumstances,” despite deteriorating security conditions that prompted the organization to evacuate some staff from the south last month. But he said he was frustrated by the international community’s reluctance to commit troops to a dangerous country like Afghanistan, despite being prepared to send civilian missions. UN member states must face up to their responsibilities to provide troops, if needed, when charting reconstruction plans for countries such as Afghanistan, he said. The newspaper observes that the UN in October expanded ISAF’s mandate beyond Kabul, but NATO has had trouble drumming up additional troops.
  
  
• According to AP, the EU Wednesday approved an extra 50 million Euros in aid to Afghanistan to help build up the local police force and fight the flourishing opium trade. The money comes on top of the 400 million Euros already committed from EU central funds for reconstruction in Afghanistan for 2003-2004. Part of the money will reportedly go to paying police salaries and supporting a German-led police training mission. The dispatch adds that aside from the new police funding, the EU said over a quarter of its reconstruction aid was aimed at rural development designed to find an alternative for farmers to opium cultivation.

BALKANS

• According to AFP, analysts said Tuesday that the Balkans’ top war crimes fugitive, Radovan Karadzic, remains at large because of a lack of political will by the international community to put him behind bars. Saddam Hussein’s capture near his hometown of Tikrit presented “yet another indication that the main problem with the arrest of Karadzic is not a technical issue, but obviously the lack of political will,” Senad Slatina, an analyst at the Brussels-based International Crisis Group reportedly said, adding: “It proved that it was rather simple to define a strategy and arrest Karadzic using regular police methods. If only 10 people within SFOR had been systematically working on Karadzic’s case,” he would have been arrested. According to the dispatch, he said he believed fear of sustaining casualties during an arrest attempt was the main reason preventing NATO countries from launching raids. In a CNN interview Dec. 16, after closed-door hearings at the ICTY, U.S. presidential hopeful and former SACEUR retired Gen. Clark said that eight years after the end of the Bosnian war, “it is very important that the NATO countries on the ground in Bosnia finish the job and arrest the remaining outstanding war criminals,” including Karadzic and his military commander Mladic.