The Adventures of Chester: "Welcome to the party, pal!"

A quick cycle through the headlines of the past two days provides an update on our NATO allies:

The British, having fought the battle of Sangin for two months over the summer, paying for that ground with the lives of some of their men, are now thinking of ceding it to tribal militias -- who might be the Taliban, no one is sure (via Belmont Club).

British troops moved out of the town of Musa Qala in north Helmand last week after a truce negotiated by tribal elders acting as intermediaries with the militia. After months of heavy fighting in which eight British soldiers and hundreds of Taliban fighters died, they handed over to an Afghan militia raised from local men.

Both the original decision to send troops to outposts – "platoon houses" – and the deal proved highly controversial. It is understood another such arrangement is being negotiated in another hotspot, Sangeen.

The Germans are in the middle of a PR nightmare. A number of their troops in Afghanistan photographed themselves with -- horrors! -- some human skulls. Der Spiegel explains:

For Germany, the images come as a wake- up call. Ever since the German military began getting involved in foreign deployments in the 1990s, the government has emphasized the humanitarian aspect of the missions. From the Balkans to Congo, German soldiers were sold to an uneasy populace as "social workers in uniform" as a number of commentators describe it on Thursday.

The images of soldiers casually playing with a skull seem to prove otherwise. Jung told the German parliament Thursday that the training for German soldiers in Afghanistan will be reviewed. "Our wish is that the soldiers of the Bundeswehr also while they are stationed abroad practice and live out the values of our constitution."

An earlier Spiegel column has more detail:

The photos are unmistakably crass, ranging from a shot of a skull mounted over the headlight of a jeep to a close-up of a soldier holding his penis in his left hand and the skull next to it in his right. These are just two of five photos published Wednesday by the German daily Bild, showing members of German security forces in Afghanistan desecrating human remains evidently found while on patrol near Kabul. Two other photos show the skull affixed to a metal pole -- a "cable cutter" -- that extends vertically like a flag mast from the jeep's front bumper. Another shows a German soldier holding the skull and grinning.

The origin of the skull is not clear. Bild speculates it could come from a Muslim mass grave in the area, or that it could belong to one of many Russian soldiers who died fighting in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Regardless of where it comes from, the damage is done.

All of this doesn't come at a good time.

Also on Wednesday, the government announced that it is to extend its commitment to the anti-terror Operation Enduring Freedom, but that the number of German troops in Afghanistan will be reduced from 2,800 to 1,800.

On the other hand, the Poles are speeding up the deployment of 1000 extra troops to Afghanistan.

The paratroopers will be joined by special forces troops as well as officers for Isaf's headquarters in Kabul. They will be offered without any of the "caveats" that hobble troops from nations like Germany, Belgium, or Sweden. Some European troops covered by caveats are not allowed to leave their bases, or are banned from taking part in combat missions, or are confined to relatively safe areas.

Poland, the largest nation of what has been called "New Europe", hopes to set a "good example" to the richer Nato members from "Old Europe" by offering its forces without restrictions. The rescue battalion will be based around the elite 18th Bielski Air Assault Battalion, hundreds of whose soldiers are training with American forces at a mountain training camp in the south of Poland.

[ . . .]

"Afghanistan is a very foreign place for us, we have no national interests there," said Mr Sikorski. "So, it's a challenge to explain to our public why we need to be there. But it works both ways. Poland is probably a fairly remote place for our Nato allies, but we expect to be assisted if needed."

The Canadians have created a special advisory force for the Afghan government, called the Strategic Advisory Team.

Embedded deep inside key ministries of the Afghan government, a handful of senior Canadian officers -- all volunteers -- are stretching the definition of military assistance.

"We are unique from a military perspective," says Colonel Don Dixon, the team's leader, sitting in a bare-bones office in a nondescript house in Kabul where the group's 16 members live. "I'm not here in a war-fighting role."

But measured by long-term impact, the no-strings-attached expertise, strategic advice and basic organization the group is bringing to Afghanistan's sometimes chaotic ministries may have an effect as far reaching as the combat campaign being waged far to the south in Kandahar by a Canadian battle group of more than 2,300 soldiers.

US Marine General Jim Jones, who is the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, is asking NATO to loosen its restrictions on its forces..

“It’s not enough to simply provide forces if those forces have restrictions on them that limit them from being effective,” he said Tuesday in a Washington news briefing.

“They limit the on-scene commanders from having the capability and maneuverability that they need.”

He said territorial restrictions — for example, Turkish troops are only allowed to operate around Kabul — are just as problematic as rules governing combat participation by troops. In total, the multinational troops in Afghanistan combined have 102 restrictions leveled by their home nations, 50 of which Jones called “operationally significant.”

At least NATO is in the fight. In our ally Pakistan, the Taliban are now setting up courts in Waziristan and have even begun tax collection:

Taliban militias in Pakistan have set up offices, introduced taxes and taken control of justice in the tribal agency of North Waziristan, where last month the government signed a peace agreement with militants.

In violation of the agreement, a Taliban shura, or council, distributed pamphlets of its policies at the weekend, while militants have begun to patrol the area's streets and have already killed numerous "American spies".

A "tax schedule" detailed how businesses are liable to pay charges to the Taliban. Trucks entering the agency will pay for a six-month pass and petrol-pump owners will have to make contributions to the council. The taxes were described as a "donation" in the pamphlet.
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The deal signed by the government on Sept 5 stipulated that al-Qa'eda fighters were to be expelled from North Waziristan and pro-Taliban militants were not to run a "parallel administration" or take part in fighting against coalition forces across the border. In return, Pakistani forces, who had been fighting local militants over the summer, withdrew from combat. The army retained the right to launch strikes in the area if militants do not adhere to the deal.

Not to be deterred, Pakistan is preparing to cede some more territory to the Taliban, this time in Bajaur [via Bill Roggio]:

Maulana Faqir Mohamed, once most wanted cleric in Pakistan's Bajaur tribal region, and his fellow militants are likely to ink peace accord with the government after Eid al-Fitr, as the government has released all his relatives as a goodwill gesture.

Commentary

The lamentation that the US should not invade Iraq without multinational support usually carried one major assumption: that those nations allied with us would provide moral support. In that sense, those states that chose not to join us did so out of a moral decision, believing that the war was a bad idea.

Yet now, when many of those same countries -- Germany in particular in this case -- find themselves in charge of some of the battlespace in Afghanistan, rather than just in supporting roles, perhaps they are coming to view their previous reluctance from a different standpoint. Their troops, politicians, diplomats, and publics have missed out on years of fighting. That's a strange way to put it. But they're just coming into the game and are behind the power curve, to say the least. They've done some fighting -- the British even in Iraq for years -- but they haven't had to make major warfighting decisions. In Canada, The Globe and Mail editorializes:

NATO has only two options in Afghanistan: make a major commitment of additional resources to Afghan reconstruction, or plan a phased withdrawal. As a major contributor of troops to this mission, Canada should press its NATO allies to face up to this difficult decision.

As far as Pakistan, what to make of it? Who knows? Another of Bruce Willis' lines from Die Hard seems to apply.

“Add all that up, I don't know what the f*** it means, but you got some bad-a** perpetrators and they're here to stay.”

Posted by Chester on October 26, 2006 10:47 AM to The Adventures of Chester