Afghan clashes up in 2008 but in fewer places: NATO
Foreign Desk Report

KABUL—NATO forces in Afghanistan have clashed more times with Taliban insurgents in the first two months of 2008 compared to last year, though fighting has occurred in fewer places, the alliance-led force said on Monday.
NATO says it is making progress against the Taliban, but analysts say there is stalemate on the ground that is eating into Western support for keeping troops in Afghanistan and pulling out foreign forces would hand the Taliban strategic victory. In the first two months of 2008, there have been 595 armed clashes in 101 districts in Afghanistan, compared to 550 clashes in 88 districts in the same period last year, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said.
The increase in clashes was due to greater activity by troops going after Taliban rebels, an ISAF spokesman said. “It is indicative of the increasing activity on behalf of ISAF,” said Captain Mike Finney. “We have been more active than we were last year and, in fact, insurgent activities have gone down because we are going out to get them ... rather than them coming to us.” Meanwhile, the United Nations said there had been fewer security incidents this year, compared to the same period in 2007.
“We have quite simply not seen that kind of decline ever in Afghanistan,” the UN deputy special envoy to Afghanistan Christopher Alexander told a news conference. “It does not mean that Afghanistan is heading towards peace immediately, but it does mean that with hard work security can improve. ISAF and NATO measure incidents in different ways, another ISAF spokesman said, and pointed to the figures which showed fighting had taken place in fewer districts as evidence of improving security. But an organization which monitors security for the dozens of non-governmental organizations said there had been a marked increase in Taliban attacks so far this year.
Data collected by the Afghanistan NGO Security Office (ANSO) said there had been a 39 percent increase in Taliban attacks until March this year compared to the same period in 2007. The biggest increase had been in armed attacks rather than in suicide and roadside bombs, ANSO said, contradicting ISAF which has repeatedly said the Taliban are relying more on so-called asymmetric suicide and roadside bomb tactics due their inability to take on NATO and Afghan troops head on. While there was a divergence in the figures, the perception among many Afghans and of Western public opinion is of a conflict still dragging on more than six years after U.S.-led and Afghan forces toppled the Taliban with no foreseeable end.
The United States is pressuring reluctant European allies to take a larger role in combating a resurgent Taliban in the more volatile south and east of the country, an issue expected to loom large at NATO’s April 2-4 summit in Bucharest. Canada has already threatened to pull its 2,500 troops from the southern province of Kandahar next year unless allies come up with 1,000 extra troops to support it.
Other NATO nations will also be looking for definite signs of progress by the end of this year before re-evaluating their role in Afghanistan, analysts and diplomats said.
The EU “expresses its readiness to consider further enhancement of EU engagement, particularly in the field of police and wider rule of law,” the bloc’s foreign ministers said in written conclusions from talks in Brussels. They also welcomed “the progress of the EU police mission in Afghanistan towards full deployment at central, regional and provincial level by the end of March.”
When fully operational, the EU’s EUPOL Afghanistan mission will consist of almost 200 police, law enforcement and justice experts. It will help build the Afghan police force, as well as mentor and advise interior ministry officials. In September, NATO’s civilian representative to Afghanistan, Dan Everts, criticised the lack of EU efforts compared to the United States stressing that Afghan police remained widely corrupt and inefficient, aiding drug-trafficking.
Later that month, the US ambassador to NATO, Victoria Nuland told a German newspaper that some 5,000 instructors would be needed to help train Afghan police, a far higher number than the EU had planned for. According to another newspaper, Germany, which is leading the police efforts, is prepared to double the number of its officers in Afghanistan if other European nations do the same.