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Vol. 72/No. 13      March 31, 2008

 
Washington pushes for more
NATO troops in Afghanistan
(front page)
 
BY OLYMPIA NEWTON  
The governments of the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada are working to secure additional troop and combat commitments in Afghanistan from other NATO powers ahead of an April 2-4 summit of the military alliance.

Having toppled the Taliban government in 2001, occupation forces now face guerrilla war tactics, including suicide bombings, assassinations, and kidnappings. A March 6 UN report said that the level of insurgent activity in Afghanistan jumped sharply in 2007 and estimated more than 8,000 combat-related deaths last year, the highest toll since the 2001 war. The report noted that international forces trained in conventional warfare are at a disadvantage in the changed situation.

Of the 43,000 troops under NATO’s command in Afghanistan, those from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada are engaged in combat in the turbulent south, while those from Germany, Italy, France, and Spain are carrying out reconstruction in the relatively pacified north.

Speaking in Berlin March 10, NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer argued against any “division of labor in which one side takes care of the fighting and the other specializes in the aftermath of the conflict.” But German chancellor Angela Merkel, who shared the platform with Scheffer, said her government would not deploy forces to the south. Berlin is scheduled to send additional troops this summer to augment the 3,300 already there.

Washington is sending 3,200 additional marines to Afghanistan. Canadian Parliament voted March 13 to extend its troop commitments there to 2011 as long as other NATO powers reinforce their efforts in the south with troops and equipment.

In pushing for additional troop commitments, the Bush administration points to the degree to which the escalation of troops in Iraq last year has reduced violence there. According to official government figures, attacks dropped from about 180 a day in June 2007 to about 60 a day in January 2008. But there has been no further decrease in attacks since November, according to the New York Times.  
 
 
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