France’s call for a speedier NATO exit from Afghanistan reflects the depth of war fatigue in the West and raises fears that other countries in the US-led coalition will succumb to rising political pressure and pull their troops home early.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to fast-track its withdrawal — just days after an Afghan soldier gunned down four French troops — is the latest crack in a coalition already strained by economic troubles in Europe and the US, the Afghan government’s sluggish battle against corruption, on-again off-again cooperation from Pakistan and a dogged Taliban that remains bloodied, but not beaten.
The international coalition is already rushing against the clock to meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s goal of having the Afghan police and army in charge of the nation’s security by the end of 2014. France’s break with that timetable, which was agreed to by NATO members, now raises the question: Can the coalition stay together until then? Resetting the date to end the coalition’s combat -mission could strengthen arguments for US President Barack Obama to accelerate US troop withdrawals beyond the 33,000 he is sending home by the end of this year, and reopen debate over whether setting a withdrawal deadline allows the Taliban to seize more territory once foreign forces are gone.
It is unclear whether Sarkozy’s call for all foreign forces to hand security over to the Afghan forces in 2013 will have any traction when it is presented this week at a NATO defense ministers’ meeting in Brussels. If other nations see France’s move as a green light to speed up their withdrawals, it will complicate the current strategy for a coordinated pullout.
In a gentle rebuke to France, British Prime Minister David Cameron said in London on Saturday that withdrawals should be dependent on security conditions on the ground. Britain has said it is keeping to plans to withdraw its 9,500 troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
“The rate at which we can reduce our troops will depend on the transition to Afghan control in the different parts of Afghanistan, and that should be the same for all of the members of NATO,” Cameron said after meeting with Karzai.
Other nations facing extreme economic problems, such as Italy and Spain, are not planning early withdrawals.
“We are a responsible country. We are a big country that honors its commitments that it agrees to make,” said Italian Minister of Defense Giampaolo Di Paola, whose country last week signed a pact aimed at supporting Afghanistan after foreign forces withdraw in 2014.
Germany also said it agrees with the goal to hand over security responsibility by the end of 2014 and withdraw combat troops.
Sarkozy said France would speed up its withdrawal and pull 1,000 — up from 600 — out this year and bring all combat forces home at the end of 2013. Sarkozy also said France would hand over authority in the province of Kapisa, where the French troops were killed this month, by the end of March.
France, which now has about 3,600 soldiers in the coalition force, joins the US, Britain, Germany and Italy in the top five largest troop-contributing nations.
Talk of an accelerated exit alarmed many Afghans, especially those who have cast their lot with the US-backed government, but have little confidence in their country’s own security forces.
NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu underscored the coalition’s solidarity, saying that all nations agreed at a Lisbon summit in 2010 to complete the transition to Afghan-led security by the end of 2014.
“Transition is well on track to be completed by the end of 2014, as we all agreed,” she said, adding that NATO nations would “take stock, shape the next stage of transition” at its summit in Chicago in May.
In Chicago, NATO members will discuss another contentious issue: Who will pay the salaries of the more than 300,000 Afghan policemen and soldiers after 2014. Estimates range from US$5 billion to US$6 billion a year.
Thomas Risse, a political scientist at Berlin’s Free University, said the problem of securing commitments to finance the Afghan security forces comes as a general fatigue with foreign interventions grips Europe and the US.
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