Europe

Home page

Europe

NATO chief predicts improvements in Afghanistan

05 February 2010 19:13 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. The situation in Afghanistan is improving after a difficult year, but allies must deploy more army and police instructors to help Afghan government forces assume responsibility for security, military leaders said Friday, APA reports quoting Associated Press.
"I encouraged the 44 (NATO and partner) countries to dig deep and look at what they can do to staff the training mission," NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said at the end of a two-day conference of defense ministers.
Comments from Fogh Rasmussen and U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates echo the generally optimistic assessment by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, who told reporters in Istanbul on Thursday that the security conditions in Afghanistan are no longer deteriorating.
"After a difficult year in 2009, we now see a new momentum in 2010 and it has already started," Fogh Rasmussen said Friday.
NATO unofficially estimates that the number of Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan has grown from fewer than 400 in 2004 to about 25,000 last year and nearly 30,000 now. That has led analysts to conclude the Taliban are now engaged in a war of attrition against the international forces and Afghan government troops.
When the 30,000 new U.S. troops and 10,000 allied reinforcements requested by McChrystal are deployed this year, the international force will exceed 140,000 troops.
Gates urged NATO ministers to send several thousand new army and police instructors to Afghanistan to help government forces.
"As more Afghans join their nation’s security forces, we have to be able to train and equip them to fight as quickly as possible," Gates told reporters after the meeting.
Gates said he offered NATO allies access to some of the equipment and expertise used by American troops to deter roadside bombs.
This included loans or transfers of equipment such as jammers, detection kits, robotic equipment and mine resistant vehicles. Gates said these had been used in Iraq but were now surplus to requirements and could be transferred to Afghanistan.
Much of the technology is highly classified and not normally shared. The vehicle involved is the mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle, or MRAP, Gates said.
Major world powers decided last week to boost Afghanistan’s military to 171,600 by October 2011, up from the current 98,000 troops. They also decided to increase police numbers to 134,000 by that date, from about 90,000 today.
"To achieve this ... we still need 1,300 institutional trainers, that is in training schools," Fogh Rasmussen said, adding that 21 more army and 119 police training teams would also be needed.
This would involve an additional 2,400 foreign instructors, bringing the total up to nearly 4,000, officials said.
French Defense Minister Herve Morin told the defense ministers’ meeting that Paris is planning to send another 80 military trainers to Afghanistan, spokesman Laurent Teisseire said. The trainers will join about 3,500 French combat troops currently serving in Afghanistan.
In the past, Afghan forces â€” characterized by high desertion rates and low morale â€” have performed poorly in the war, prompting critics to question the feasibility of allied plans to significantly expand them.
In a related development that may free up additional forces for Afghanistan, Fogh Rasmussen said the alliance is considering further reducing its 10,000-strong peacekeeping force in Kosovo.
NATO diplomats in Brussels have said the plan is to cut the contingent to less than 4,000 in 2011, with the ultimate goal of reducing the alliance’s troop commitments in foreign missions not directly related to the Afghan war.