NATO leaders to seek support for strife-torn Afghan mission
Foreign Desk Report

BRUSSELS—NATO leaders will strive this week to rally international support for their troubled mission in Afghanistan as internal divisions undermine the fight against a resolute Taliban insurgency.
At a summit in Bucharest starting Wednesday, NATO’s biggest ever, they will endorse a “vision statement” to remind doubtful publics about why the alliance has taken on such a formidable challenge and clearly set out its goals.
To emphasise their point, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, senior EU and World Bank officials, and heads of state and government from nations partnering their efforts will be present.
A separate political-military plan, to be kept secret and covering the next five years, will set benchmarks that NATO hopes will enable all international actors to monitor progress in rebuilding and providing security.
But as Britain, Canada and the United States take casualties in the east and south, tensions have mounted with allies like Germany and Italy, who believe reconstruction in calmer areas is as important as combat. More than 30 foreign soldiers have been killed this year.
Seething hostilities in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) — a 47,000-strong mission drawn from some 40 nations — broke into the open in January, as the United States criticised partners for failing to step up. Since then, Canada has threatened to withdraw 2,500 soldiers unless the allies come up with 1,000 extra troops and equipment, as public support at home declines, even though ISAF numbers have risen a third in a year. France is expected to commit at least that number at the summit, which runs until Friday, and probably send them east, freeing up more US forces for redeployment south.
Daniel Korski, Afghanistan expert at the European Council for Foreign Relations think-tank, fears the summit could become a “water-treading exercise”, as the leaders repeat old and worn pledges.
“Once seen as an event that could give NATO’s six-year-long Afghan mission renewed impetus, it is now about getting enough troops to placate Canada, and to allow the mission to hobble along until a new US president is elected and a genuinely new Euro-Atlantic approach can be forged,” he said.
As the dispute over burden-sharing simmers, ISAF’s exit date from the world’s biggest producer of opium and a key source of armed extremists seems further away. International troops can only leave when the Afghan army and police can take care of security alone. But on Thursday, Afghan Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak conceded that “the level of threat is much higher than was anticipated” and that military needs must be revised up from 80,000 troops currently.
A NATO official said a figure of 200,000 had been mentioned, while others acknowledge that it may now be necessary to build an Afghan airforce. Ultimately, Afghanistan’s military needs will depend on Pakistan, where a new government is in place but the position of President Pervez Musharraf — a top ally in the US “war on terror” — is shaky.
But while some 60 leaders will be at the summit — many whose interests lie in spreading Karzai’s rule — Pakistan will not be represented, despite its potentially crucial role. U.S. military, Afghanistan and Pakistan have established the first joint intelligence center in Afghan eastern Nangarhar province close to Pakistani border in an effort to check militants’ infiltration, an Afghan newspaper reported Sunday. “U.S., Afghan and Pakistani officers opened the first of six joint military intelligence centers along the rocky Afghan-Pakistan border on Saturday,” daily Outlook said.
Aimed at sharing intelligence information, the center was set up in Torkham border town linking Kabul with Islamabad. Staffed by some 20 personnel from the three nations, the center represented the latest step in American efforts to get Afghanistan and Pakistan to coordinate in the fight against Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents, the newspaper said. The trio would meet regularly to review the situation along the border and chalk out plans to control cross-border activities on the Durand Line which divides the two neighboring nations.