AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE,
NATO's military commander has called for allied nations to provide more troops to combat a surprisingly strong insurgency in the south of conflict-scarred Afghanistan.
“We are talking about modest reinforcements,” US General James Jones told reporters at NATO's military headquarters in Mons, southern Belgium.
“There is increased violence in the south,” he said Thursday.
While the intensity of some fighting “is predictable, we should recognise that we are a little bit surprised at the level of intensity, and that the opposition in some areas are not relying on traditional hit-and-run tactics.”
Jones said he would urge members of the transatlantic military alliance to provide more soldiers at a meeting of NATO chiefs of defence staff in Warsaw on Friday and Saturday.
In its most ambitious mission ever, NATO took command on July 30 of international troops in southern Afghanistan in the face of a tenacious insurgency by the former ruling Taliban militia.
The transfer brought around 8,000 British, Canadian, Dutch, US and other troops under its command in six southern provinces expanding the number in the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to some 18,000.
But ISAF's move south has met with strong resistance not only from the fundamentalist Taliban militia, but also from drug runners and fighters loyal to various warlords in the region near the Pakistan border.
Nearly 30 foreign troops have been killed in hostile action since the takeover, most of them in southern Afghanistan, with Canadian and British casualties sparking some calls in those countries for a withdrawal.
Jones described the area as lawless and “the heartland of Taliban, the heartland of narcotics production” but the US Marine general said he was confident NATO would succeed in its mission.
He said the Taliban, ousted by a US-led coalition in late 2001 for harbouring Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and members of his network, had adopted new tactics showing that it was prepared to stand and fight.
“We are confident that this period is a test period … to see if NATO has the capacity to take casualties,” he said. “We have that capacity.”
In terms of the reinforcements, Jones said NATO did not need a great number but it was important for them to have the capacity to act in a robust manner.
“We are talking about reserves that would give more flexibility to the commander” in the south, he said, denying claims that the strength of the insurgency rivalled that in Iraq.
“There are too many caveats,” he noted, in reference to the conditions that contributing nations place on the use of their troops. “The number is not important but the capacity is.”
He did not single any no country, nor did he specify who might be in a position to provide the personnel.
Jones also underlined that he did not want to take ISAF troops from their established positions in Afghanistan to areas where NATO is trying to help spread the influence of President Hamid Karzai's weak central government.
“We are not looking to collapse the north, the west, in order to reinforce the south,” he said.
Last weekend, the ISAF commander in Afghanistan, Lieutenant General David Richards, said the force had to prove soon that Karzai's administration had the upper hand in the battle against the Taliban and its allies.
“We have to show in the next six months that the government is on the winning side,” he told Britain's Financial Times business newspaper.
