Nato/Afghanistan

Obama's Afghan plan faces tough test in Europe

Article published on the 2009-04-03 Latest update 2009-08-12 08:13 TU

Canadian soldiers patrol in Kandahar province
(Photo: Reuters)

Top of the agenda at the Nato summit is Afghanistan, where the alliance has 70,000 troops. US President Barack Obama's new strategy for the war-ravaged country won backing at a special conference in The Hague on Tuesday but it faces tougher going when it comes to concrete commitments.

The Hague conference seemed enthusiastic about Washington's plans, welcomed by the Afghan government, to win defectors from the Taliban insurgency, clean up corruption and "Afghanise" security. That means putting extra resources into training the military and the police at the rate of 2,500 a month to reach 130,000 soldiers by 2011.

The US is to send extra troops itself and Obama will encourage allies to contribute more, too.

The previous administration of George Bush failed to persuade Nato members to send the troops it wanted.

President Nicolas Sarkozy has already said that France will not send more soldiers, although it wants more say for Europe in training paramilitary police.

German politicians say that they cannot convince their public that the country's security is being defended in central Asia. And British officials have denied press reports that the UK may agree to sending 2,000 more soldiers.

So, the allies may send civilians, rather than soldiers, and they may send military trainers but not more combatants.

Training troops may not solve all the country's problems. At the moment, Afghan soldiers tend to quit as soon as they have seen combat, according to French Afghan expert Gilles Dorronsoro.

And President Hamid Karzai's government is weak and widely criticised for corruption and inefficiency. The plan proposes to strengthen the provinces, which may still further undermine the central government in a country already riven by tribal and ethnic loyalties.

The Obama plan is supposed to lead to disengagement from the country after the security forces have been built up and professionalised.

"An exit strategy presupposes at least the bare bones of a state,"  Dorronsoro told RFI's French service. "There are contradictory policies on this objective."

The international force in Afghanistan announced today that one soldier was killed and another wounded, in fighting in the east of the country.