Afghanistan: new manoeuvres

The recent attack against the hotel Serena in Kabul fi ts into an emerging pattern in which military escalation is increasingly met with more sophisticated terrorist attacks by the Taliban. Tension within NATO between member states is now palpable. Countries which have entered the country’s trouble spots in the South – the USA, the UK, Canada and The Netherlands – want others to join them. Other countries such as Norway, Spain and Germany, amongst others, are sceptical. Many advocate an “Afghanization” of the military effort. NATO will discuss escalation plans in April at a meeting in Bucharest. In the meantime, it’s important to take stock of the experience to date and to establish what the alternatives are at present. The strategy of additional military force and an increasingly offensive war have, up until now, led to an experience both as generally negative as it is relatively clear cut. The international military escalation has taken place gradually, albeit with a noticeable jump in 2004 when the United States government more than doubled its presence from around 8,000 soldiers to approximately 20,000. At present, NATO has more than 40,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, besides a further 8,000 troops under US command who are waging their own war against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. In total, the USA and NATO have more than tripled their forces since 2002 and numbers are now approximately half of those which the Soviet Union had in the country for most of the war in the 1980s. What outcome has this led to? The Taliban have gone from carrying out isolated attacks in 2003 to becoming an effi cient guerrilla organisation. Taliban resistance really got going in 2005, the year after the Americans doubled their military presence. From a military point of view, the Taliban are the weaker side in the confl ict, but they have learned quickly and increasingly use the tactics of “asymmetrical warfare”, such as suicide bombing, roadside bombs, and hostage taking. Each time NATO has sent more troops, the Taliban have risen to the challenge and met it. The number of attacks on foreign forces, humanitarian aid workers, the Afghan police and other government agencies has steadily increased – most recently with a 20 percent jump between 2006 and 2007. Suicide bombings have gone up from three in 2004 to 17 in 2005, climbing to 123 in 2006, before reaching 137 last year. In 2002, there were none at all.