Nato is again being asked to send more troops to Afghanistan to help the US and Afghan forces there. Washington made the request to Nato during a meeting of its Military Committee in Tirana recently. The organization has said it will take a month to respond to the request, but chances are that the US demand is likely to be accepted.
Afghanistan is sliding deeper into chaos and the Taliban is expanding its presence perilously by capturing more territories and launching more suicide and bomb attacks as Afghan forces struggle to cope. There is a danger that all that the US and Nato have achieved in Afghanistan will be wiped out if Taliban’s rampage goes unchecked.
Afghanistan remains an unfinished job for the US and Nato, and the more they try to keep away from another involvement, the more they are forced to come back. Nato had transferred security responsibilities to Afghan forces in 2014 but now has around 13,000 soldiers stationed in the country on the alliance’s longstanding mission.
The situation in Afghanistan is so dire that the world needs to do more to help the government of President Ashraf Ghani to defeat the Taliban. It’s realization of the seriousness of the situation that has forced US President Donald Trump to change his Afghan strategy. Last month, Trump cleared the way for the deployment of thousands more US troops to Afghanistan, backtracking from his promise to swiftly end America’s longest war, begun after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.
At the same time, there are differences of opinion about tackling Taliban. Pakistan believes that talks with the Taliban alone can bring peace to the war-torn country and Trump administration’s ‘militaristic approach’ in Afghanistan represented a failed policy.
Heading to New York to participate in the United Nations General Assembly, Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif said he could not understand how the American military could succeed in Afghanistan now when it had not during the ‘surge’ under the Obama administration with a far bigger force. He requested Washington to work with countries in the region that have influence over the Taliban. His argument makes sense.
Pakistan is the most important neighbour of Afghanistan, a neighbour which has huge influence over Taliban which the US is trying to defeat, and for the same reason any attempts to bring peace to the country will be difficult, if not impossible, without the cooperation and involvement of Pakistan. Trump needs to work more closely with Islamabad before drafting an Afghan strategy and explore areas of cooperation.
Also, it’s a measure of the failure of the government in Kabul that the US and Nato are being asked to send more troops.
