The next year in Afghanistan will be make-or-break time for Nato as a military alliance and the increasingly threadbare coalition held together by a US which has finally realised the folly of neglecting the country where al Qaeda grew to malevolent maturity and triggered events that have plunged the world into war on many fronts for the past six years. It is essential that the Taliban is defeated and driven back from its southern heartlands to allow the construction of the roads, hydro-electric schemes, hospitals and schools which will be the pivotal factors in winning Afghan hearts and minds. Anything less will be seen as a defeat, increase the perception of Nato as a foreign invader and further diminish the fragile authority of President Hamid Karzai's central government. To that end, the Australian, Italian and French premiers have said on flying visits to their troops there this weekend that they are committed for the long haul. It will be a message which will play well in Washington, where even senior commanders are talking openly of the prospect of tactical victories on the battlefields of Helmand, Kandahar and Oruzgan provinces, but strategic defeat because of the Taliban's seeming ability to field endless numbers of new recruits and the stagnation of infrastructure improvement programmes as a direct result of lack of security for the work to progress safely. The drawdown in British and now US troop numbers in Iraq has freed up vital military resources, yet the burden of combat and casualties remains shared unfairly.
More than half of the 50,000 western soldiers in Afghanistan are American. Another 7800 are British. Canada fields 2000 and the Dutch a handful more. These four countries have sustained between them the vast majority of dead and wounded since 2006. From a Nato alliance that could, on paper, deploy almost two million men and women under arms, calls for vital reinforcements continue to go unheeded. The German contigent in the north of the country is under orders not to engage in offensive action, can only open fire in self-defence and is barred from operations of any kind at night. Several other alliance members forbid their troops to take part in any activity more than two hours by helicopter from a major trauma hospital. In one recent incident, Norwegian commandos on the point of leading Afghan government soldiers to victory were forced to pull back because the German helicopters supporting them had to return to base before last light and the Norwegians themselves would then have been out of permissible reach of advanced medical care for their wounded.
A major test for Karzai and the west will be the performance of the fledgling Afghan National Army, the ANA. Its manpower is an eclectic mix drawn from all of the country's diverse ethnic populations. Early indications, such as its conduct under British direction in recapturing the symbolic town of Musa Qala in the Sangin Valley two weeks ago, are promising. The acid test will come when the insurgents counterattack. If the ANA holds its ground, the omens are good that it might be able to stand alone in five or six years and allow a gradual reduction in Nato deployment numbers. But even that requires trainers, patience and commitment in the meantime. The Afghan volunteers will never be the Scots Guards, but they need spit and polish far less than an imbued spirit of conviction that they are capable of taking on and beating their Taliban foes. It will not happen overnight and the west must hold the line until it does. That will take men and machines and, above all, the acceptance of inevitable casualties. For many of Europe's reluctant governments, the bodybag factor is paramount. In the end, it could prove fatal for Nato and Afghanistan.
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