Military

SHAPE News Summary & Analysis

26 February 2004

ISAF

• ISAF Commander Lt. Gen. Hillier said in Kabul Thursday NATO is discussing sending more international peacekeepers to northern Afghanistan to secure that part of the country ahead of the presidential elections, reports AFP. “The perception is that NATO will do more … for the elections but NATO has not yet decided that…. NATO is considering that,” the dispatch quotes Gen. Hillier saying. According to the dispatch, Gen. Hillier said the U.S.-led coalition force would focus on providing security in the south and southeast of the country but that ISAF could be used to ensure security in the north. He reportedly indicated that ISAF forces had already begun expansion out of the capital Kabul and were operating in the northern provinces of Badhakshan, Baghlan, Kunduz and Takhar from a base in Kunduz city. Gen. Hillier is further quoted saying that any expansion of peacekeepers into the north would not just be as part of PRTs but would include ground troops as well. “In other words it would be similar to Kabul,” he reportedly said. According to the dispatch, he did not put any figure on the number of extra troops he would need to expand across the north.

“GREATER MIDDLE EAST INITIATIVE”

• Based on an AP dispatch, the Washington Times writes that U.S. generals are touching down across Africa in unusual back-to-back trips, part of a change in military planning as U.S. interest grows in African terror links and African oil. Under the title, “U.S. eyes terrorism networks, oil in Africa,” the newspaper remarks that trips by two top EUCOM generals follow last week’s similarly low-profile visit by Gen. Jones. “The generals are leaders in U.S. military proposals to shift from Cold War-era troop buildups in western Europe to smaller concentrations closer to the world’s trouble spots,” the article stresses. Increased focus on Africa comes amid a push by some in the United States to do more to secure alternatives to oil from the volatile Middle East. Western security officials also are concerned about terror along Saharan routes linking Arab nations and north and west Africa, adds the newspaper. Yaoundé’s Cameroon Tribune, Feb. 23, reported that on behalf of the head of state, Prime Minister Musonge received Gen. Jones Saturday. The newspaper stressed that “the allied forces want to identify potential zones of risks, terrorist threats or of weapons of mass destruction, in order to intervene more efficiently whenever democracy or liberty is under threat of attack.”

Looking at security in the age of terror, the Washington Post observes that while America is at war abroad, Europe is on alert at home. Noting that these differing priorities and responses to Sept. 11 and its aftermath have led to two years of misunderstandings and controversy across the Atlantic, the article comments: “Both Americans and Europeans need to draw from each other’s approach and resources to reduce their mutual vulnerabilities to religiously inspired fanatics bent on destroying modern society. Governments on both sides of the Atlantic need to talk more directly and honestly to their publics about these differences in perceptions as well as the more publicized transatlantic differences in capabilities. Europeans have a larger role to play in the military campaigns to deny terrorists training camps in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. And Americans need to show that they can do more about the problem of Islamic fundamentalism abroad than shoot at it.”

OTHER NEWS

• Electronic media report that the President of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Boris Trajkovski, died in a plane crash in Bosnia-Herzegovina Thursday while on his way with six other officials to a conference in Mostar. Media generally credit him for helping to unite his ethnically-divided country. The BBC World Service carried a correspondent in Sarajevo noting that Trajkovski was seen as a key figure who helped broker a peace deal with ethnic Albanian rebels in 2001. In a similar vein, Reuters stresses that although his powers were limited and his role largely ceremonial, Trajkovski presided over a NATO-brokered peace deal in 2001 that ended months of armed clashes and prevented a full blown civil war. AFP quotes NATO Secretary General de Hoop Scheffer saying in a statement that in difficult circumstances, and in the face of opposition from many, President Trajkovski “guided the peace process and was instrumental in the signature and implementation of the Ohrid Agreement which reestablished peace and stability.” AFP also reports that the president’s death came as a senior Skopje delegation was in Dublin to submit the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’s application to join the EU. It adds that the formal application ceremony was abruptly canceled.