‘Real test’ for NATO in Afghanistan: Rice
Foreign Desk Report

LONDON—NATO is facing a “real test” in Afghanistan but progress is being made to tackle the Taliban insurgency, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on a visit to London on Wednesday.
“Yes, I do think the alliance is facing a real test here but we shouldn’t underestimate the transformation that NATO itself has gone through in really learning how to fight this fight,” she told reporters.
Rice is in London holding talks with Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Foreign Secretary David Miliband as the United States and Britain bid to draft in more NATO forces to help fight the resurgent Taliban in southern Afghanistan.
The talks come the week after Germany rebuffed US calls for more troops in the area, the scene of most of the fighting against the Islamist militia, in a tiff played out publically. Rice said they were engaged in “a different fight than the one NATO was structured to do”, conceding: “It has taken some time”.
But she said progress had been made through the partnership of the international community with the Afghan government, particularly in the fields of good governance, healthcare and education. Proof of that was the change in tactics by the Taliban militia, who want to “intimidate, brutalize ... and terrorize” ordinary Afghans, she said.
“I think the Taliban has changed tactics and we have to be strong enough to deal with that situation,” she added. “This is a country that has made a lot of progress from a failed state in 2001, that was the epicentre of Al-Qaeda in its efforts against the world... “Yes it is hard, and yes it is going to take more time but it’s an effort that’s very much well worth it.”
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice played down fears that Afghanistan could become a lost cause but admitted Washington faced a “bumpy” ride to press allies into sharing the burden there. She made the comments before arriving in London for high-level talks with her close British allies about their common drive to draft more NATO forces into crushing a resurgent Taliban in southern Afghanistan.
Alluding to ruffled feathers within the alliance, Rice said she hoped the need to “tell the truth” about mission needs would not be taken as a “desire to denigrate” contributions some allies have made. She did not name the allies, but Germany last week rejected US appeals for sending combat troops to the south and barely disguised its irritation with the reportedly “stern” way they were made.
“We have made no secret about it that there are certain allies that are in much more dangerous parts of the country,” Rice told reporters aboard the plane from Washington to London. “And we believe very strongly there ought to be a sharing of that burden throughout the alliance,” she said. Washington has already publicly praised countries like Britain, Canada, Denmark and the Netherlands as well as non-NATO member Australia for taking on dangerous missions in Afghanistan. Her talks here with Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Foreign Secretary David Miliband precede meetings with NATO defence and foreign ministers over the next few weeks that will culminate in an allied summit in Bucharest in April.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates will discuss the situation in the south with his counterparts in Vilnius at the end of the week, she added. Rice said the summit would tackle “an assessment” for the next few years that she hopes will pave the way for Afghan security forces to hold ground captured from insurgents plus break militant links with the drug trade.
She admitted the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) was still grappling with the challenge of tackling the insurgency. “So it’s bumpy. There’s a lot of maturing that the alliance is having to do to do this,” she said.
The top US diplomat also played down fears aired in Washington and London in the last week that NATO may not defeat the Taliban — more than six years after the Islamist movement and their Al-Qaeda allies were ousted from Afghanistan.
On Tuesday the International Institute for Strategic Studies warned that Afghanistan risked becoming a “failed state,” while on Wednesday the Senlis Council thinktank warned the country was on “a precipice.”