Word: nato
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...death last weekend of the 44th British soldier killed in Afghanistan has amplified questions over the role of NATO in that country, five years after the fall of the Taliban. While U.S. and Alliance forces have no intention of leaving Afghanistan anytime soon, voters in the NATO countries are demanding a concrete exit plan. And, as in Iraq, the Afghanistan exit plan centers on the development of a national army capable of holding off the Taliban without outside help...
...survival of their country. A reporter in Kinshasa, capital of the Congo, commented on rumors that King Albert II had fled to the former Belgian colony. A crowd waved Flemish flags behind the live reporter at the Flemish Parliament. The ring road around the capital, Brussels, was blocked, NATO headquarters on red alert, and police controls thrown up along the border between Flemish-speaking and French-speaking regions. A parade of prominent politicians and public figures opined on the grave development, and there was even a report of julbilation among Catalans keen to separate their region from Spain...
...skepticism over the efficacy of the alliance, however, didn't start with President Bush. Clinton Administration officials had bitterly complained of the political meddling and command confusion that hampered NATO's 1999 air war to push Serb troops out of Kosovo...
...rebuff is coming from the other side, for equally understandable reasons. Mutual defense of NATO territory is one thing; the call to stand shoulder to shoulder in a bedeviled country thousands of miles away from Europe is a more troublesome proposition. It isn't simply a question of resources: Canada is on the front line despite an anemic defense budget. For all the lip service paid to Afghanistan as a war that cannot be lost, there seems to be a lack of political will to do what is necessary...
...French are right that military action in the south of Afghanistan isn't making many friends for the West, and they at least have been consistent in counseling against NATO taking on a war-fighting role. But the Taliban isn't going to yield peacefully to the economic aid and civic encouragement aimed at bolstering the embattled government of Hamid Karzai. Security comes first. At Riga the alliance underwrote a still vague plan for a "Contact Group' that would involve neighboring countries and international organizations in the search for a solution for Afghanistan. But Washington's velvet-gloved relationship with...