BASIC Comment

Double or quits for Nato in Afghanistan

Financial Times, 5 September 2006

From the minute that a US-led coalition, acting in response to the al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington five years ago, brought down the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, it became its obligation - morally and under the laws of war - to restore stability and try to set the country on a path to modest but self-sustaining prosperity.

That the size of that task has grown beyond all anticipation does not in any measure diminish the obligation.

Afghanistan has long suffered from the inconstancy of its well-wishers. The US, in alliance with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, was happy to arm, train and finance the Afghan mujahideen in their jihad against the 1979-89 Soviet occupation. But once Moscow had been forced to withdraw, Washington all but walked away from Afghanistan, leaving it a shell state in which al-Qaeda was able to incubate.

The aftermath of the 2001 invasion was not much better. The difficult task of rebuilding a nation that has been in a state of nearly constant warfare for the past quarter of a century has barely begun. But that is closely related to the triple failure to re-establish security.

First, insufficient commitment of military resources forced the Taliban and its al-Qaeda allies into tactical retreat rather than compelling their defeat. Second, allied reliance on tribal militias, plus the virulent re-emergence of the opium trade to finance and sustain both warlordism and insurgency, have meant the writ of the elected government of Hamid Karzai barely extends beyond the city limits of Kabul.

Third, of course, was Iraq. Not only did it divert vast resources towards the wrong target. It has led to the techniques of Iraqi insurgents - including roadside bombs and suicide attacks - arriving in the Afghan arena.

Last month, Lieutenant-General David Richards, the British commander of the Nato mission in Afghanistan, described the prolonged and deadly fighting in the south of the country as the worst involving British forces "since the Korean war or the second world war". Yet, at the start of the year, John Reid, then defence secretary, expressed the hope British troops would be able to rebuild Afghanistan and leave "without firing a shot". The extent to which the Taliban has regrouped has been badly misjudged.

The rash of recent casualties, particularly among British and Canadian troops, has highlighted the need for a significantly larger and better-equipped Nato force to take on the Taliban and establish an environment in which schools and roads can be built and water and electricity put in place.

That is a tall order, with available and competent peacekeeping troops already stretched thinly across the globe from the Balkans to the Congo, and from the Lebanon to Darfur, not to mention Iraq. But it has to be met. Not just the future of Afghanistan but the future of Nato is at stake.