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2 Winning Afghan hearts and splitting
hairs By Philip Smucker
KABUL - Amid political bickering in
Washington and Brussels, the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO), which assumed command of
international military operations for Afghanistan
last October, is struggling to assert a new image
- one that Afghans can get their minds around.
"We are determined to build the NATO brand
here in Afghanistan," said the North Atlantic
Alliance's senior civilian representative in
Afghanistan, Nicholas Lunt. The differences
between a US-led 26- nation
NATO alliance and a US-led coalition, the latter
of which remains active and fighting in theater,
however, are lost on many Afghans.
For
one, NATO says it does not "do counter-terrorism",
which it contends is a US specialty. The new
"brand" of peacekeeping in Afghanistan, says Lunt,
is not a matter of, as the US ground forces often
say, "hunting down the bad guys".
"There
are different approaches needed," said Lunt. "We
have the Spanish, Italian and German efforts that
are essentially non-combative, and the Turkish
base in Wardak involves almost no
counterinsurgency. We'll win by working more and
more with Afghans, providing prosperity and
literacy." If that sounds as though the alliance
has gone soft, that is just the message NATO wants
to project.
The alliance's approach to
Afghanistan takes lessons from the past five years
in country. Many NATO officers now view a vigorous
hunt in hostile terrain for small cells of
al-Qaeda to be - more often than not -
counterproductive. Afghans tend to provide
unreliable and conflicting intelligence, which
often leads to collateral damage, spelled
"innocent deaths". In short, not an effective way
to win hearts or minds.
The "old" approach
led by the US military and Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) sometimes did more to anger Afghans
than to stabilize the nation, say some Western
diplomats in Kabul. Though "Abu Ghraib" is a dirty
word from another war, Afghanistan has been home
to a number of secret detention centers, all with
their own dirty little secrets, including
international rendition.
It is largely in
opposition to these US- and Afghan-controlled
detention centers, and reports that torture was
commonplace therein, that many leading NATO member
states decided to make it clear that they would no
longer be party to the "old" approach.
Taking the lead on the other side of the
Atlantic, Canada's defense minister has demanded
accountability for any prisoners, Afghan or
foreign, seized by Canadian forces and handed over
for any length of time to the Afghan police or
army. An often unspoken concern of NATO countries
such as Canada is that the CIA might be in the
next room in an Afghan detention center calling
the shots.
Distancing themselves further,
some European members refuse outright to enter the
thick of the fight against the Taliban and foreign
fighters, who stream in daily from Pakistan. Their
refusal to mount combat operations has prompted
rebukes from befuddled lawmakers on both sides of
the isle in the US Congress.
"They [other
NATO members] must also free their forces from
restrictive 'national caveats' that limit their
involvement in operations," Congressman Ike
Skelton, chairman of the House Armed Services
Committee, insisted last week. "Afghanistan is not
only a central front in the war on terrorism, but
the outcome there could well determine the future
of the NATO alliance."
NATO officials in
Kabul, however, appear unflustered by the growing
political chasm. Lunt insisted: "We are different.
Our efforts are not the same as those of some
other efforts here. We will also judge the mission
differently."
But are the differences
between NATO and the US-led coalition really that
great? According to the man who recently served as
a spokesman for the US secretary of the army,
Colonel Thomas Collins, "Not really." Collins
should know. He is now a
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