Allies Lukewarm to NATO’s Plea For More Troops in Afghanistan
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
KABUL, Afghanistan — The chances of complete success in NATO’s campaign against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan were jeopardized yesterday after it appeared that some key European allies will turn a deaf ear to an appeal for more troops.
At the alliance headquarters today, the 26 member nations will respond to a plea by NATO’s top commander, General James Jones, for 2,000 extra men.
But a senior NATO official said: “At the moment, there’s no indication of any substantive offers. The signs are that the conference will not produce what is needed.” Even a tentative offering by Latvia of 20 soldiers was in doubt, he said. The failure to provide the extra resources is bound to hamper the battle being fought by British troops who are part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force against the resurgent Taliban in Helmand province.
Canadian forces are engaged in fierce fighting to clear the militia from an area west of Kandahar. An ISAF official said last night that the absence of the extra troops meant that “the impact on success is considerable.”
General Jones is looking for nations to honor earlier promises and provide the extra 2,000 troops that it was calculated were needed to do the job.
The ISAF commander Lieutenant General David Richards said: “I don’t want more in the short term than what we originally agreed was the right amount.” That includes a hard-hitting reserve of about 1,000 men, which would allow him “to take advantage of fleeting opportunities and to swing my main effort where I want it to go rather than having to respond to Taliban attacks.”
About 8,000 ISAF forces supported by the Afghan army are currently deployed in the south. Operation Medusa, launched 12 days ago, has killed more than 500 insurgents. The rest of the 20,000 deployment is spread through less troubled areas.
The reluctance of NATO members to meet their commitments is partly due to the demands made on major nations for international operations elsewhere and wariness about getting sucked in to an open-ended conflict.
