Military

SHAPE News Summary & Analysis

30 June 2004

ISAF

• According to AFP, an ISAF spokesman said in Kabul Wednesday NATO will command five PRTs scattered across northern Afghanistan to support the country’s elections. The new expansion will see ISAF peacekeepers increase from 6,500 to 8,000 soldiers in the country and push their reach into nine provinces, stretching some 530 kilometers across the north from Faizabad to Meymaneh, the spokesman reportedly said. He added that another 2,000 troops will be on stand-by to enter the country, if required. Up to 1,000 extra soldiers would be providing security for elections and another 500 would be stationed at five PRTs stationed in the north. British troops will be deployed to teams in the main northern city of Mazar-I-Sharif and northwestern Meymaneh, Germans will take over one in northeast Faizabad and Dutch soldiers in northeast Baghlan. In addition, there will be a British-run forward support base also in Mazar-I-Sharif and temporary satellite PRT operations in Sari Pul, Samangan, and Sherbegan, the spokesman reportedly added. According to the dispatch, he stated that the 2,000 troops who would only be deployed to Afghanistan if needed would consist of “up to two battalions and brigade headquarters which will be on high readiness if required.” Asked whether peacekeepers would extend into the troubled south, he replied: “ISAF has always stated that our expansion would first occur in the north and then to the west and continue to move counterclockwise.”

Focus remains on the Istanbul summit. Media center on reports of discord regarding a U.S. bid to deploy the NRF to safeguard Afghanistan’s elections.
The NATO summit ended Tuesday with an unresolved row between President Bush and President Chirac over who will supply the promised 3,500 extra troops for Afghanistan to help to safeguard elections there in September, writes The Times. “Bush and Chirac were at loggerheads over a U.S. proposal to assign the NRF to the Afghan mission. The force is not yet fully operational but there are currently 6,000 troops dedicated to (it), most of them Italian Infantry units,” stresses the newspaper. It notes that under the NATO proposal announced at the summit, the Alliance would send one reinforced battalion of troops—about 1,000 soldiers—to Afghanistan for the election period, and the rest would be held in reserve in a NATO country: Italy, if the NRF is deployed. The article recalls that, according to diplomats, France feels the force is “not ready for this kind of environment and should not be used simply as a sticking plaster for troop shortages on routine operations.” It claims that Chirac told Bush NATO should instead send its strategic reserve, which was created to provide quick reinforcements for the Balkans.

A related AFP dispatch quotes Chirac saying at a news conference that NATO leaders had decided “not to mobilize, as some had imagined, NATO’s rapid reaction force, because it isn’t meant for this.” NATO has decided “on the one hand to put the NRF on maximum alert” in case it should intervene urgently if the security situation were to deteriorate in the run-up to the elections planned for September. On the other hand, NATO will “immediately send an assessment mission (to Afghanistan) on the possible use of the NRF,” Chirac reportedly said.

“France led a pack of countries opposed to the use of the NRF. Diplomats conceded that the dispute was causing headaches but insisted that it could be resolved, possibly by using Italian troops from the NRF,” says another AFP dispatch, quoting one unidentified diplomat saying: “I think we can get the force another way if we have to.”

Corriere della Sera says meanwhile: “ Even if Prime Minister Berlusconi confirmed in Istanbul that we have at the ready for Afghanistan a battalion for September, when elections are to be held, there are truly few certainties concerning the upcoming degree of engagement by the Italian armed forces in that part of the world…. Italy has before it two alternatives: dispatching a battalion to ensure safe elections, but not necessarily sending it immediately, or subsequently directing the PRT in the province of Herat. In the former case, the most likely unit would be the Rapid Reaction Armed Corps, an elite formation headquartered in Solbiate Olona. In the latter, between 100 and 120 servicemen would be dispatched, and deployed to protect reconstruction activities.”

The Wall Street Journal observes that the NRF is supposed to give NATO an essential tool for reaching out beyond its traditional European theater of operations. “Numbering about 6,000 troops, with the French among the biggest contributors, the contingent has never been deployed, something the U.S. and its closest allies view as a waste. The U.S. and NATO’s military planners have argued Afghanistan is a perfect mission for the force, particularly because the Alliance is having so much trouble assembling the troops by other means,” the article stresses.

Commentators are assessing the summit’s results
“For all the efforts of the summit, it managed to squeeze out only a tiny band of soldiers to help quell the violence in Afghanistan. That was the only test NATO had to pass this week, and it failed,” says an editorial in The Times, adding: The offer to train Iraqi security forces, a miniature commitment, even a token, also represents a failure, and a fracture of the Alliance. The U.S. had wanted an active contribution in Iraq by NATO troops to take the burden off its own. The newspaper concludes: “Despite Istanbul’s failures, it would be wrong to write off the value of NATO entirely. Many of its members, particularly the newest ones, are delighted to be part of the club, and value the promise of protection if they are ever attacked. That is worth something. Yet this week, NATO’s fading reputation took a heavy hit. A popular quip has been that, if nothing else, NATO could help guard the Olympics. That is no joke; it may be all that is left.”

NATO this week trumpeted its recovery from the worst crisis in its 55-year history over Iraq, but resurgent discord did not augur well for the restored sense of harmony, writes AFP. “In Istanbul, allies have demonstrated once again their common will to act together to defend our shared security and our common values,” the dispatch quotes NATO Secretary General de Hoop Scheffer saying, noting that “that sort of mood music oratory resonated repeatedly” around the conference center. It adds, however: “Indeed, two key accords were celebrated. The Alliance notably agreed to train Iraqi troops after the historic handover of power in Baghdad. Its leaders also hammered out a deal to send extra peacekeepers to Afghanistan to protect planned September elections. But signs that not everyone was singing from the same hymn sheet were clear even before the summit started Monday, when the world, and evidently President Chirac, awoke to the news that Iraq was getting its power back two days early.” The dispatch also quotes U.S. Ambassador to NATO Nicholas Burns hailing the summit as proof that NATO had moved away from its Cold War origins and must now play a global security role. The summit “confirmed the U.S. view that NATO’s place has to be well outside of Europe on the frontlines of the war on terrorism,” Burns reportedly told a news conference.

Danish daily Berlingske Tidende considers the summit demonstrated that the conflict over Iraq between the United States and Europe is far from being forgiven and forgotten—and it hardly will be, as long as Bush, Schroeder, Chirac and Blair are in power. The question is whether a new generation of political leaders can breathe new life into Atlantic cooperation, the newspaper suggests. It stresses, however, that the positive message from Istanbul was that neither the United States nor Europe has yet written off NATO and that, in the future, NATO can be used for missions more important than helping the present U.S. government out of the quagmire in Iraq. “NATO will live to fight another day,” the daily insists.

Germany’s Der Tagesspiegel considers that the summit’s results were “meager” and argues that decisions made by the heads of state and government could equally have been left to their foreign ministers.

Rome’s La Repubblica asserts that the only clear and uncontroversial decision to have come out of the summit is the decision to handover the SFOR mission to the EU.