Afghans Eyeing NATO Military Performance: Diplomats
Paul Eckert
Reuters, Defense News
07/07/2006
The next few months in which NATO troops take
over in Afghanistan from U.S.-led forces will be a crucial test
of the alliance in the eyes of the Afghan people, Kabul’s
envoy in Washington said on July 6.
Ambassador Said Jawad and Afghan Foreign Minister
Rangin Spanta also said that the Afghan military and police
forces that will work with NATO needed more recruits, better
equipment and higher salaries.
"The serious threat to humanity, to the Western
world, to the United States right now is terrorism, so Afghanistan
is a mission that NATO cannot fail," Jawad said.
Amid the bloodiest violence since U.S.-led forces toppled the
hard-line Islamist Taliban government in 2001, the NATO-led
International Security Assistance Force is preparing to move
into the southern heartland of the Taliban.
The deployment will allow the United States to
pull out about 3,000 of its 23,000 troops in Afghanistan.
Jawad said NATO’s political commitment was
strong but that the Western military alliance will have to prove
itself to Afghans, whose weak loyalty to Kabul needs to be bolstered
by better security and improved government services.
"Ordinary Afghans still have some doubt about
NATO capabilities and that doubt will be removed once they see
NATO in action and they see that NATO is as capable as the United
States to carry out this mission," he told reporters.
Jawad said his government was grateful for the
July 3 announcement that the United States would give $2 billion
worth of military weapons and vehicles to modernize Afghanistan’s
fledgling national army.
But he said Kabul still needed "immediate
resources to enhance the capability of the Afghan police force
and also the capacity of the Afghan government to deliver services,"
saying the funds could be drawn from money already pledged that
has not been disbursed.
Foreign Minister Spanta, on his first visit to
Washington since taking office in April, said the Afghanistan
army needed three to four times the number of troops, modern
equipment and increased mobility to exercise "security
power to realize the rule of law in all corners of Afghanistan."
He said Afghan security forces in the south were
outnumbered and outgunned by the Taliban and foreign Islamic
fighters, including Pakistanis, Arabs and Chechens.
"We have enough soldiers in Afghanistan from
the international community, in the form of NATO soldiers and
also coalition soldiers. The weakness is in Afghan security
and defense power," Spanta said.
