NATO's Jones Says Allies Growing More Flexible in Afghanistan
29 November 2006
Commander urges reconstruction, calls drug trafficking a "cancer" in country
Riga, Latvia -- NATO’s top commander says he is making progress in convincing allies to reduce or eliminate restrictions on troops in Afghanistan, but stresses that victory in Afghanistan depends on economic and political reconstruction.
U.S. Marine General James Jones also called narcotics trafficking a “cancer” in Afghanistan and pressed NATO allies to follow through on military commitments to the vital Afghanistan operation.
NATO’s 26 nations, plus 11 nonmember nations, have contributed 32,000 troops to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. Jones is NATO’s supreme allied commander until December 4, when his four-year term ends.
“When the alliance takes a decision, those missions have to be resourced, especially in Afghanistan,” Jones said November 28 in a panel discussion at the NATO Riga Conference. The high-level conference is taking place alongside a summit of the alliance’s 26 leaders.
NATO nations typically deploy about 85 percent of the forces required for a given mission, a ratio that is proving true in Afghanistan, the commander said.
“That’s a pretty high number historically,” he said. “But when you have a mission where people are actually being shot at, and you have combat operations, that 10 to 15 percent [shortfall] becomes more important.”
The shortfall of several thousand troops means “you lost one or two infantry battalions, you lose helicopter mobility, you lost reconnaissance capability, you lose some of the critical enablers that you need,” Jones said.
Jones also addressed geographic or mission restrictions that some nations place on their deployed troops, a practice known as “caveats.” During the 2004 Kosovo uprising, Jones said, many NATO forces were unable to help restore order quickly because caveats required approval from host governments, adding layers of bureaucracy. Contributors to NATO’s Kosovo Force (KFOR) since have agreed to lift their caveats and give on-the-ground commanders enough flexibility to respond to emergencies.
“We learned that lesson in Kosovo,” Jones said. “Our goal in Afghanistan is to do that as well.”
NATO commanders in Afghanistan have identified about 50 national restrictions that interfere with troop maneuvers and effectiveness. Recently, Jones said, his headquarters asked contributing nations “to restate their national restrictions.” In the process, some 10 to 15 restrictions have been modified, “effectively adding 2,000 more troops to the mission” due to increased flexibility, Jones said.
By lifting restrictions and fully manning the NATO force, commanders can improve the capabilities of their military operation significantly without expanding their commitments.
Jones also said he wants to see more cooperation between military forces and multinational reconstruction work.
“The exit strategy, in my view, for Afghanistan, has more to do with fusing the international reconstruction and development efforts than the support of … military operations,” Jones said.
ILLEGAL NARCOTICS
The commander also discussed the problem of illegal narcotics in Afghanistan.
“I believe personally … that narcotics [trafficking] is the single most important cancer that’s going to affect our success in the long run,” Jones said.
“We absolutely must tackle the counternarcotics problem more successfully,” he said. “We absolutely must help reform the judicial system, because that gets to crime and corruption. We absolutely must reform the police effort so that we have quality and quantity in the amounts that are needed to secure the villages of the region, so that reconstruction and development can go on.”
ANTI-GOVERNMENT FORCES
Jones said NATO forces have been highly successful in battling anti-government Taliban fighters responsible for much of the current violence in Afghanistan.
“I don’t think the Taliban is 10 feet tall,” he said, insisting it is possible to defeat the anti-government fighters. “And I think we should talk about Afghanistan in a total way, what’s going on in the entire country. We tend to focus on where the IEDs [improvised explosive devices] are going off and where the attacks are.” However, he said, there are “some very good things going on” in many parts of the country.
Jones said he’s optimistic about Afghanistan because “the answers and solutions are pretty clear.” The challenge is “a question of will” and whether 37 of “the most wealthy nations on earth, can find a way to make this work,” Jones said.
If NATO allies lose their resolve in Afghanistan, he said, “I think it will take a lot longer, I think we will have more casualties, and I think at some point we could be victimized by the enemy’s war of attrition.”
The strategy of anti-government forces is “death by a thousand IEDs,” Jones said. “All they’re trying to do is inflict [casualties by] twos and threes and fours and fives and tens and eventually hoping that the family of nations, all 37 of us, will get tired of it, and … the cohesion will fall.”
For more information on U.S. policy, see The United States and NATO, Rebuilding Afghanistan and Response to Terrorism.
(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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