Nato summit: the truth behind the troops heading to Afghanistan

Nato summit: the truth behind the troops heading to Afghanistan

www.timesonline.co.uk

The great jumble sale of troop offers made by Nato countries at the summit in Strasbourg to provide security during the election period in Afghanistan was beginning to unravel over the weekend as military chiefs tried to add up the numbers pledged.

President Barack Obama said he was satisfied that a total of 5,000 troops and trainers had been offered, although he made a point of saying he saw the offers as only a “down payment”, indicating he still wanted pledges of long-term troop deployments, not just temporary units for the election force. But there were no offers of extra permanent troops.

Washington claimed the total of 5,000 extra military personnel that emerged from the final day of the two-day Nato summit consisted of 3,000 combat troops for the election, 1,400-2,000 from 11 countries to be formed into 70 operational mentoring liason teams to train the Afghan National Army and 300 paramilitary mentors and trainers, led by the French, to assist the Afghan National Police. The offers came at the last moment in the summit as a result of what David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, called “the Obama effect”.

The real figure, however, according to initial military assessments, was somewhat lower, because some of the offers were “recycled” from previous announcements. Sources said the contributions from Germany and Italy had been announced weeks ago. Each had agreed to send another battalion of 500-600 to their bases in the north and west of Afghanistan respectively for the election period.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Seems the US isn't getting the kind of support hoped for here. I'm sure they were hoping for a greater alliance and more troops, but instead basically got nothing more than a "go ahead" from some nations.

Seventeen out of the 28 Nato members made offers of some sort, either military, civilian or financial. Most involved relatively small numbers of troops or trainers to instruct the Afghan National Army, and Nato’s military planners now have the task of working out whether the promises will live up to expectations, whether they will genuinely fill the capability gaps which have been identified, and when the extra soldiers will be ready to deploy to Afghanistan.

France and Germany notably left the meeting when troop number discussions came up. I can't resist saying I'm not surprised France isn't offering any troops.

As a Canadian, I have to say we seem to be forgotten in the press when any mention troops in Afghanistan is mentioned. Find it a little frustrating really considering the efforts we have made there so far.

www.timesonline.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 5-4-2009 by FreeSpeaker]

reply to post by FreeSpeaker


Well on the Canada comment, I think it's mainly because of people being more America/European centric. And I do believe Canada is taken for granted no doubt when it comes to it's support.

I bet you 90% of the American population does not even know that Canadian troops are in Afghanistan. Hell, they don't even know where Afghanistan is.

HaHa That's right France would leave! I don't have much to say about this except I'm only 1 digit in the troop surge that is being deployed. We are leaving in oct. for moap training(pre-deployment training) and afgan. in dec. we'll be gone for the entire year of 2010.

They are all a bunch of weakling little countries.

They have had America to depend on and lead the charge to police the world for the last 50 years. (And we've subsidized rogue govt's to "play nice".)

Yeah, they are all behind us because they think that our leaders know of what they speak ... but even if the motives of an operation are truly justified they bawk... unless the operation is giving hard earned taxpayer money to their country for some contrived benefit.

That's what socialism does to a country. And there are many socialist countries. Ours is quickly becoming one as well.

Prudent wisdom would suggest that the U.S. is pretty adept at handing out bailouts but fails at receiving bailouts. In retrospect, the NATO of today is most definately not the NATO of old.