yolland
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My impression from our non-US posters here in FYM is that Mr. Schmidt is right; public support for continued engagement in Afghanistan is running extremely low outside the US, while meanwhile few of us here seem to be thinking or talking much about it. Not a good situation, as it's extremely unlikely that the US can bring about much improvement there on our own.Rice Tries to Convince Europe on Afghanistan
By HELENE COOPER and NICHOLAS KULISH
New York Times, February 7, 2008
LONDON — With criticism of the war in Afghanistan increasing on both sides of the Atlantic, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday that European governments needed to convince their people that sending troops to Afghanistan—and keeping them there—should remain a priority for NATO. “I do think the alliance is facing a test here,” Ms. Rice said during a visit to London. “Populations have to understand that this is not just a peacekeeping fight.”
But underscoring the challenge for the United States, which wants Europe to significantly increase its troop strength in Afghanistan, Germany announced Wednesday that it would send only enough additional troops to replace a Norwegian contingent of about 250, a number that United States diplomats consider paltry. The German defense minister, Franz Josef Jung, rejected a sharply worded letter last week from his United States counterpart, Robert M. Gates, asking that Germany send soldiers and helicopters to southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban insurgency has increased in ferocity and the heaviest fighting has taken place. Instead, Mr. Jung said on Wednesday that it would deploy only a rapid reaction force in northern Afghanistan in the summer to replace a Norwegian contingent. “An expansion into the south is out of the question,” Reinhold Robbe, defense commissioner for the Bundestag, said on German television. “That is the consensus in all of the parties.”
As the Taliban insurgency has gathered steam, Bush administration officials have been trying to prod reluctant European allies to send more troops to bolster the United States contingent of almost 30,000. The Pentagon recently announced that it is sending an additional 3200 marines to Afghanistan.
Germany has come under perhaps the greatest pressure to increase its commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization force in Afghanistan. It has roughly 3300 troops there, making it the third-largest contributor after the United States and Great Britain. “Partners in an alliance have to also understand the domestic debates in a partner country like Germany,” said Peter Schmidt, a security analyst at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin. “The Americans quite often show up in Europe and the president tells us, ‘Look I’ll never get that through Congress.’ Something similar is happening here.”
Bush administration officials have been on the defensive about Afghanistan since a critical report released last week by a group whose co-chairman was Gen. James L. Jones, a former NATO supreme commander. The report concluded: “The U.S. and the international community have tried to win the struggle in Afghanistan with too few military forces and insufficient economic aid, and without a clear and consistent comprehensive strategy to fill the power vacuum outside Kabul and to counter the combined challenges of reconstituted Taliban and Al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan.” A United Nations report this week said that opium production, which officials believe has helped to finance the Taliban and Al Qaeda, has increased. And on Tuesday, the director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, told a Senate panel that Al Qaeda is gaining in strength from its refuge in Pakistan and is steadily improving its abilities to recruit, train and position operatives capable of launching attacks...
Regrets and fuming about past mismanagement of the situation aside--what should we do now?