'Afghanistan' - tagged features

NATO defence ministers met this week to discuss the future of the International Security Assistance Force or ISAF in Afghanistan. Violence there has sharply increased over the past two years, and there've been numerous calls to beef up troops. But many NATO allies are reluctant to send additional soldiers. Sweden is part of ISAF and early next month 350 Swedish soldiers are being sent to northern Afghanistan, to replace the Swedish force currently serving there. Radio Sweden visited the unit as they're preparing for their mission. 

In the Netherlands recent news of Dutch soldiers being killed and wounded in Afghanistan has led the Dutch people to question their role in NATO’s operation there. A year ago Dutch troops were thought to be on a reconstruction mission - but as more of them get killed it's becoming clear there’s lot of hard fighting to be done. But it's not that NATO's stated aim in Afghanistan has changed. It hasn’t. It’s the Dutch public who’ve had a rude awakening to the realities of a new war. So why didn't they realise this was always going to be an offensive operation? Were Dutch voters hoodwinked by politicians into supporting a fighting force dressed in the sheep's clothing of peacekeepers? When deliberating on whether to get involved in the mission, the Dutch government put the emphasis on reconstruction. It was the prospect of helping rebuild Afghanistan which won over a majority of MPs. 

The leaders of NATO's 26 member states gathered in the Latvian capital Riga this week for their annual summit. It's the first meeting the alliance held in an ex-Soviet state. Afghanistan was at the top of the agenda, as NATO-led forces there have faced fierce resistance from Taliban fighters in the south of the country in recent months. NATO commanders were now calling for more troops and more flexibility in the deployment of their forces in Afghanistan. 

The Polish authorities have declared they will send a thousand soldiers to Afghanistan, as part of a NATO multinational force. The decision is to some extent a logical consequence of the country's support for American-led operations in the war on terror. But for the first time, the national consensus on Poland's role in such missions, seems to have been broken, with the opposition accusing the government of sending Polish troops into combat, rather than a peacekeeping mission.