Word: nato
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...Afghanistan is physically larger than Iraq and more than 75 percent of all Afghans live in remote rural communities where the Taliban now has a significant base of support. Controlling a growing Taliban insurgency across this vast countryside will be impossible with just 58,000 American soldiers. Our NATO allies are showing no stomach for this fight, and the Afghans themselves are poorly equipped to help. In contrast to the current situation in Iraq, America has not been able to train up a significant local army and police force to support security operations. Also in contrast to Iraq, the insurgency...
...have to stop giving tacit support and protection to terrorists, especially the Afghan Taliban. The Karzai government will have to end its corruption and close down the drug trade. There are plenty of other reforms necessary - the international humanitarian effort is a shabby, self-righteous mess; some of our NATO allies aren't carrying their share of the military burden - but the war will remain a bloody stalemate at best as long as jihadis come across the border from Pakistan and the drug trade flourishes...
...Things have gotten a bit hairy," admitted British Lieut. Colonel Graeme Armour as we sat in a dusty, bunkered NATO fortress just outside the city of Lashkar Gah in Helmand province, a deadly piece of turf along Afghanistan's southern border with Pakistan. A day earlier, two Danish soldiers had been killed and two Brits seriously wounded by roadside bombs. The casualties were coming almost daily...
...some ways, Helmand province - which I visited with the German general Egon Ramms, commander of NATO's Allied Joint Force Command - is a perfect metaphor for the broader war. The soldiers from NATO's International Security Assistance Force are doing what they can against difficult odds. The language and tactics of counter-insurgency warfare are universal here: secure the population, help them build their communities. There are occasional victories: the Taliban leader of Musa Qala, in northern Helmand, switched sides and has become an effective local governor. But the incremental successes are reversible - schools are burned by the Taliban, police...
...flew by helicopter from Helmand to the enormous NATO base outside Kandahar to learn that three Canadian soldiers had been killed that morning in an ambush. I stood in a small, bare concrete plaza as the Canadian flag was raised, then lowered to half-staff. Next the Danish flag and finally the NATO flag were raised and left to rest at half-staff. A small group of soldiers from assorted countries stood at attention and saluted as the flags rose and fell. There were no American flags this day, but there soon will...