Getting closer

tauringhuang.

Aug 21st 2008
From The Economist print edition

The war claims more lives and comes uncomfortably close to Kabul

EVEN as they brooded over their response to Russian aggression in Georgia, NATO’s leaders endured a bad week on another front: Afghanistan. They had boasted that the Taliban insurgency was on the back foot. Its leadership had been shredded by systematic assassination, and it was reduced to murderous but desperate “asymmetric” tactics. Two big battles undermined this claim. Worse, the insurgents appear to be operating closer to Kabul.

Most serious for the resolve of the alliance was an ambush on French soldiers near the town of Sarobi, only some 50km (30 miles) outside Kabul. Some 100 insurgents were involved in just the sort of set-piece onslaught the insurgents were said to be shunning. Ten French soldiers were killed and 21 injured. President Nicolas Sarkozy flew to Kabul to pay his respects to the French dead, rally the troops and reaffirm France’s commitment to the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan. But the war is unpopular in France. And François Hollande, leader of the opposition Socialist party, said France needed to know exactly what its troops were going to do in Afghanistan “and how long they are going to do it”.

Britain’s prime minister, Gordon Brown, also visited Afghanistan later in the week. He paid tribute to the latest of more than 100 British soldiers to die in the war, killed in a roadside bombing in Helmand province on August 18th. That day also saw a three-stage battle at Camp Salerno, an American base near the Pakistani border. It began with a car suicide-bombing, which killed 12 Afghan workers. Later suicide-bombers and conventional fighters mounted an all-night assault on the base; and another force attacked its airstrip.

Elsewhere the government claimed to have killed 32 insurgents in fighting in Zabul province, and Canadian troops came under suicide attack in the Panjwayi district of Kandahar. Kabul itself, meanwhile, suffered its second rocket attack in less than a week. One hit the airport and others fell close to allied headquarters.

The Senlis Council, an NGO long critical of NATO strategy in Afghanistan, said the latest fighting made it clear that a new troop deployment is needed simply to secure Kabul. Even if that overstates the immediate danger to the capital, the bloodshed raises serious questions for NATO. It is not just in France that the war is unpopular. It will become more so if it kills more NATO soldiers, and especially if the alliance appears to be losing it.