[R-G] White House and NATO set review of Afghan mission

[Anthony Fenton]

  International Herald Tribune
White House and NATO set review of Afghan mission
By Thom Shanker and Steven Lee Myers
Sunday, December 16, 2007
http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=8764452

WASHINGTON: Deeply concerned about the prospect of failure in  
Afghanistan, the Bush administration and NATO have begun three top-to- 
bottom reviews of the entire mission, from security and  
counterterrorism to political consolidation and economic development,  
according to U.S. and alliance officials.

The reviews are an acknowledgment of the need for greater  
coordination in fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda, halting the rising  
opium production and trafficking that finances the insurgency and  
helping the Kabul government extend its legitimacy and control.

Taken together, these efforts reflect a growing apprehension that one  
of the administration's most important legacies - the routing of  
Taliban and Qaeda forces in Afghanistan after the attacks of Sept.  
11, 2001 - may slip away, according to senior administration officials.

Unlike the administration's sweeping review of Iraq policy a year  
ago, which was announced with great fanfare and ultimately resulted  
in a large increase in troops, the U.S. reviews of the Afghan  
strategy have not been announced and are not expected to result in a  
similar infusion of combat forces, mostly because there are no U.S.  
troops readily available.

The administration is now committed to finding an international  
coordinator, described as a "super-envoy," to synchronize the full  
range of efforts in Afghanistan, and to continue pressing for more  
NATO troops to fight an insurgency that made 2007 the most violent  
year since the Taliban and Al Qaeda were routed in December 2001.

"We are looking for ways to gain greater strategic coherence," said a  
senior administration official involved in the review process.

One assessment is being conducted within the U.S. military. Admiral  
William Fallon, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, has  
ordered a full review of the mission, including the covert hunt for  
Taliban and Qaeda leaders.

"It's an assessment of our current strategy and how we are doing,"  
said a senior military officer. "It's looking at whether we've done  
enough or need to do more in terms of expanding governance and  
economic development, as well as wrestling with the difficult  
security issues that we have been dealing with in Afghanistan."

Senior State Department officials also said that R. Nicholas Burns,  
the under secretary of state for political affairs, was coordinating  
another internal assessment of diplomatic efforts and economic aid -  
the sorts of "soft power" assistance beyond combat force that  
officials agree are required for success.

A third review, one that has previously been part of the public  
discussion, involves the strategy of NATO, which last year assumed  
control of the security operation in Afghanistan and has since been  
accused by U.S. officials and lawmakers of not being aggressive enough.

At an alliance meeting in Scotland on Friday, Defense Secretary  
Robert Gates of the United States successfully gained a commitment  
from NATO to produce what senior Pentagon officials called an  
"integrated plan" for Afghanistan.

"The intent is to get people to look beyond 2008 and realize this is  
a longer-term endeavor," said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press  
secretary, who was with Gates in Scotland. He said the plan would  
"start off by acknowledging the success we're having in terms of  
reconstruction and education and governance and so forth, but it also  
will state where we want to be in three to five years, and how we get  
there."

The NATO assessment is to be completed for a meeting of alliance  
heads of state in Bucharest next spring. The other reviews are due  
early next year.

Publicly, administration officials have expressed optimism that the  
war in Afghanistan can be won, but Gates told Congress last week that  
his optimism was "tempered by caution."

In recent months, though, Bush's senior advisers have expressed a  
growing unease.

While there is a sense that the troop buildup in Iraq this year has  
turned around a dire situation, the effort in Afghanistan has begun  
to drift, at best, officials said. That prompted Bush's national  
security adviser, Stephen Hadley, to oversee internal deliberations  
that resulted in the push for the new reviews.

The NATO-led security assistance mission in Afghanistan has about  
40,000 troops; of those, 14,000 are American. Separately, the U.S.  
military has 12,000 other troops in Afghanistan conducting  
specialized counterterrorism missions.

Gates has declined to name specific allies that have not fulfilled  
pledges for combat troops, security trainers and helicopters for  
Afghanistan, or whose governments have placed restrictions on their  
combat forces. But he has noted that Britain, Canada and Australia  
had met their commitments and carry their full combat load.

Some members of Congress have not been so diplomatic.

"The Germans, the Spanish, the Italians don't send any troops to the  
south except for 250 troops by Germany," said Representative Joe  
Sestak, Democrat of Pennsylvania. A retired three-star admiral who  
worked on the staff of the National Security Council in the 1990s,  
Sestak complained that some allies "refuse to do combat ops at night,  
and some don't fly when the first snowflake falls."

As part of the NATO review, alliance diplomats and military officers  
are closely watching the actions of Britain, which may be able to  
commit additional troops to Afghanistan as it reduces its deployments  
in Iraq.

To that end, Britain has opened its own "strategic review" of the  
Afghan mission, especially in the turbulent southern provinces, which  
will shape the alliance's assessment, according to a senior diplomat  
of a NATO nation.

"Essentially what's driving it is that a year ago, we were regarding  
Afghanistan as an outstanding success - we established democracy, we  
were in control of many parts of the country," the NATO diplomat  
said. "Now we have significant issues with certain areas producing  
opium and the Taliban coming back in certain parts of the country, as  
well."

The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Representative  
Ike Skelton, Democrat of Missouri, was more direct in assessing  
possible failure in Afghanistan.

"I have a real concern that given our preoccupation in Iraq, we've  
not devoted sufficient troops and funding to Afghanistan to ensure  
success in that mission," Skelton said. "Afghanistan has been the  
forgotten war."

Strained by commitments in Iraq, the U.S. military has few troops  
available to expand its forces in Afghanistan. "It is simply a matter  
of resources, of capacity," Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the  
Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress last week. "In Afghanistan, we  
do what we can. In Iraq, we do what we must."

Both Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Gates have urged Hamid  
Karzai, the Afghan president, to consider proposals for eradicating  
poppy fields by aerial spraying to halt the rapid increase in opium  
production. But Karzai has thus far rejected the idea, and even U.S.  
officials admit that vastly increased eradication efforts would be  
counterproductive unless alternative livelihoods were immediately  
available to the poppy farmers.

The Karzai government is said to be reluctant to endorse having an  
international coordinator with expanded powers, fearing its own  
legitimacy and credibility could be undermined.