Nato in for long haul in Afghanistan
IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency
London, July 24, IRNA
UK-Afghanistan
Nato troops are in Afghanistan for a long haul and the number is more likely to increase than decrease in the short-term, according to Captain Mark Heffron, former UK chief of information coordination at ISAF HQ in Kabul.
Heffron, who has recently returned from Kabul, has no idea how long Nato's troops, in their first out-of-area operation, are likely to remain in the country.
It has commonly been predicted that the western alliance will be there for at least 10 more years and the British officer did not disagree. It could even be an underestimation.
Heffron was brought into the new post of information coordinator following concern that Afghanistan may prove to be an even greater catastrophe for the US and Britain, the two lead countries, than the Iraq war.
Parallels have already been drawn with the Russian occupation in the 1980s, dubbed as Moscow's Vietnam War. So far the US and UK have been in Afghanistan for approaching seven years, two years less than the Russians.
The number of Nato troops has slowly built up to 52,000, still half Russia's deployment at its peak. More than half are committed by the US and UK.
During a briefing on Afghanistan, Heffron freely admits that Nato's operation is "under resourced." In terms of comparison, he goes as far as saying that Afghanistan would need no less than 800,000 troops for what Nato numbers achieved in the Balkans.
No one is talking of pouring in anywhere near that number. It has been a struggle to reach the size of the present deployment, which has gone up by some 20,000 in the past two years or so.
For Britain, its contribution has more than doubled to over 8,000 since it was given responsibility for the southern region two years ago, suffering more than 100 fatalities in the process.
The frequent complaint is that the intervening Iraq war was a distraction, if not negligent. At one time, British numbers in Afghanistan dropped as low as 300, but that was before ISAF operations under Nato extended to cover the whole of the country.
Heffron emphasizes the size of the task in a country with a 31 million population, 16 times more than in Kosovo, and over 30 times the land mass. It also has a porous 2,430 km border with Pakistan in terrain that is impossible to police.
"Our first and immediate priority is to get Afghanistan right," Nato Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said back in 2004. "We cannot afford to fail," he warned. "If we don't go to Afghanistan, Afghanistan will come to us."
Despite his plea, alliance countries have remained reluctant to put troop numbers in the frontline, even though it is publicized as an operation with contributions from a total of 40 nations, including 14 non-Nato countries.
Returning from his six-and-a-half tour, Heffron argues that the security situation in three of the five ISAF regions is "mainly stable." More than three-quarters of what Nato describes as significant acts occur in only 10 districts.
The two troublesome regions, in the south and east, are under British and US command, where the threat is described as "insurgents Taliban." Elsewhere, it is seen as more as criminals and local power brokers.
It seems likely that in August, as scheduled, Afghan forces will take on responsibility for security around the capital. That would be a symbolic first step towards the eventual reduction in the number of Western soldiers in the country, which the commander of NATO forces, General Dan McNeill, wants to begin in 2011.
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