Word: afghanistans
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Battle fatigue - or its equivalent among those safe at home - is inevitable, especially after eight years fighting the same war. Things might be different if people had a sense that Afghanistan was making progress. Instead, this summer saw an escalation in violence and a steady stream of fatalities. The number of European soldiers lost - 35 Germans, 31 French, 15 Italians - may not be big in comparison to the 830 Americans killed. But as a proportion of numbers deployed, casualties have been significant. An incident like that in August last year, when 10 French soldiers were killed in a single Taliban...
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who supports Obama's call for more European troops in Afghanistan, says it's important to tell the "true stories of what's going on. Both the setbacks and the achievements." As Prime Minister of Denmark until last April, Rasmussen went out of his way to explain the reasons Danish troops were in Afghanistan. As a consequence, he says, support for the mission has held up better in Denmark than elsewhere. The British might learn a lesson from that. Gordon Brown has frequently tried to explain the Afghanistan mission. But David Davis, a prominent...
...task less clear to the average voter than in Germany. Successive German leaders have sold the country's troop deployment as nation-building, not combat. But as the oil-tanker episode proved, mission creep is hard to avoid when the enemy starts attacking you. German involvement in Afghanistan was snuck "past people," Jurgen Trittin, the foreign policy spokesman for the Greens, recently argued. Now, with the Taliban moving into the once peaceful north, where most of Germany's troops are stationed, Germans have to face the fact that their military - a force that saw no action between...
...allegations of vote-rigging and electoral fraud following last month's Afghan elections haven't helped. President Hamid Karzai was once the West's great hope for Afghanistan - stylish and urbane, deeply versed in Afghan politics but not completely part of it, he seemed the perfect man to lead his country out of its darkest days. But Western capitals have found him an unreliable and often frustrating partner. The election has "raised a question in people's minds," says Colonel Christopher Langton, senior fellow for Conflict and Defence Diplomacy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. "Why should...
...over the winter, and perhaps a political accommodation between the government and main opposition party - or indeed with the Taliban - will help in Kabul. But as fighting starts to heat up again next spring, and the U.S. leans on its allies in Europe for more troops, opposition to the Afghanistan campaign is likely to grow. The consequences of a withdrawal could be awful. But the clamor for it is getting louder. - Reported by William Boston / Berlin, Leo Cendrowicz / Brussels, Bruce Crumley / Paris and Catherine Mayer / London...