Pentagon Chief: NATO Allies Poorly Trained
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.
Secretary of Defense Gates expressed America’s frustration with its European allies yesterday when he said NATO troops in southern Afghanistan lacked the training and experience to fight the Taliban.
Britain contributes about 60% of the non-American soldiers deployed in Afghanistan’s six southern provinces, where the Taliban presence is strongest. Mr. Gates appeared to be critical of their performance — and of the ability of troops from seven other countries fighting in the south — in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.
“I’m worried that we’re deploying [military advisers] who are not properly trained, and I’m worried we have some military forces that don’t know how to do counterinsurgency operations,” he said.
Mr. Gates said most European armies were still trained for the Cold War.
“Most of the European forces, NATO forces, are not trained in counterinsurgency; they were trained for the Fulda Gap,” he added, referring to the region of Germany where Soviet tanks were expected to invade.
He said he had received no support from NATO defense ministers when he raised the inadequacy of training during a meeting in Scotland last month.
The British Ministry of Defense said it was assured by American officials that Mr. Gates was not “in any way” referring to the Britain. “The MoD was told that the British would certainly be last on the list if indeed he was criticizing NATO countries,” a Whitehall source said. “But it is self-evident that NATO does not have a history of counterinsurgency.”
A source at NATO headquarters in Brussels said: “We accept that some members of the alliance are not trained in counterinsurgency warfare, and a lot of it is ‘training by doing’ on the ground in Afghanistan. Not everyone has the expertise of the U.K. or U.S. We have also been assured that Secretary Gates was certainly not pointing the finger at any one nation.”
Britain has 7,700 troops in Afghanistan, while Canada provides 1,700 soldiers and Holland 1,500. American commanders are known to have reservations about the British approach. In particular, they have been wary of Britain’s willingness to make deals and hand over territory to former Taliban commanders.
America is sending 3,200 marines to southern Afghanistan to combat the insurgency.
