Germany and Afghanistan

Germany joined with the other European NATO members to declare the 9/11 attacks on the US to be an attack on the alliance, formally invoking the mutual defense clause of the NATO treaty for the first time in the history of the alliance. Given the alienation of the EU countries from the US since, it will probably be the last time.  It's hard to see how NATO can survive for much longer as a meaningful alliance.

They've all stuck by their commitment to the military effort in Afghanistan until now.  But now that NATO troops are being sent into more dangerous areas than the capital city of Kabul - which is about the only part of the country Hamid Karzai's government actually controls, and that only with substantial NATO troop support - doubts are starting to grow.

The Netherlands have been reluctant to send in a contingent. And now doubts seem to be getting stronger in Germany.  And they have been for a while. See, for instance, this piece from last September: Troops Aren't Answer in Afghanistan by Nina Werkhäuser, Deutsche Welle 09/28/05. She wrote then:

There are many parts of the country where not even the armed soldiers of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force fear to tread. It is a long and dangerous process to move forward in a country where it's impossible to get an overview of who is in control where.

Taliban supporters, drug barons and local warlords all want to get rid of the foreign troops - a fact they prove with their regular attacks on ISAF and the 20,000 additional US troops stationed in Afghanistan.

The situation in Afghanistan is so complicated that there are in fact two mandates from the German parliament for the soldiers it sends. Two mandates for a country with two faces: the one that was extended Wednesday for security troops and another for the fight against terrorism, that will be up for debate again in November. And it doesn't look like either one of them will be ending soon as the tasks for German troops are piling up.

It's understandable that the European publics would be having serious doubts about the Afghan War at this point. The US, the NATO member who was attacked on 9/11, is pulling out troops, even though our alleged public enemy #1 Osama bin Laden has been caught or killed yet. The situation has settled back into a pattern of local warlord rule.  And without a much larger force, they can hardly expect to run a successful counterinsurgency operation across the entire country.

The opportunity to put Afghanistan on a much more construtive path was much greater immediately after the outster of the odious Taliban regime.  But, as we Americans are learning once again the hard way in Iraq, other countries can be very resistant to receiving the blessing of Western civilization through wars of occupation.  Given Afghanistan's history, it is no surprise than Europeans would be hesitant to undertake such a task there.

Europe is the main recipient of the large amounts of opium and heroin now pouring out of Afghanistan.  So they have an interest in reducing that.  But will a military-based "war on drugs" do the job?  Look at the US in Colombia.  Not an encouraging precedent.

The European commitment to Afghanistan right now seems to me to be mainly a way to show some kind of continued military commitment to the United States.  But at some point, democratic publics are going to balk at sending their soldiers to war as a diplomatic sop to an unpopular ally.