NATO summit discusses Afghan exit strategy

LISBON, PORTUGAL—It ended war in the Balkans and has staunched much of the bleeding in Iraq, but will it work in Afghanistan?

NATO’s intricate and expensive exit strategy from the decade-long war won’t begin until early next year and the results are still years away. If it works it will eventually erase the foreign footprints from Afghanistan’s dusty soil, replacing it with the boots of local police and soldiers.

It is called the transition plan and it should ensure the orderly withdrawal of coalition forces while ensuring their long-term support, political and financial, to the war-ravaged country.

“This is going to be quite a measured process because we need to be sure it’s irreversible,” a senior NATO official told reporters here at the opening of the annual leaders’ summit.

“We need to be sure Afghan capability is there as we gradually hand more and more responsibilities to them. This is exactly the way it was done in the Balkans and indeed exactly the way it was done in Iraq.”

Officials here have already identified the first batch of the country’s 34 provinces that will be launched down the path to self-sufficiency in early 2011. They are the most stable, both politically and from a security standpoint. Any areas with long-standing tribal disputes or too powerful warlords will have to resolve those risk factors before the handover begins.

Officials expect the transition process will take an average of 18 months and the goal is to have an Afghanistan run by Afghans by 2014. They say the timeline is realistic, though no outcomes are guaranteed in a country where security has been steadily deteriorating year after year.

“We are not. . . indulging in a whole load of happy talk about the security situation in Afghanistan,” the senior official said in a briefing. “The progress is still not yet irreversible and there are many challenges, and indeed, many setbacks ahead.”

Key to success is those countries who pony up the 2,000 military and police trainers that will be needed. Canada is putting forward 950, three quarters of which will be running the indigenous instruction from early next year to March 2014.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper received a face-to-face thank you from NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen when the two met here Friday morning.

“(Harper) made it clear that this was a commitment to see the campaign through to a successful conclusion,” the NATO official said of the meeting. “He did make clear that this was a significant move by Canada to try and support NATO over the next few years.”

On top of Canada’s contribution, NATO expects more contributions before the summit concludes on Saturday.

The combined Afghan army and police forces now sit at 260,000, a figure that has risen dramatically in the last year or so. The goal now is to grow those forces to 306,000 by the fall of 2011.

“We’re going to focus more and more on building the capabilities so you’ll see more effort going into what in the army they call branch schools, actually building up the skills and capabilities of the army rather than essentially just growing in numbers a very large light infantry, which is essentially what we have at the moment,” the NATO official said.

Even still, Afghanistan won’t be able to support those troops financially until 2023, the International Monetary Fund estimates.

The hope is that a successful transition process will also give a boost to peace talks with the Taliban and force a negotiated solution to the conflict.

Right now, the Taliban play up the overwhelming number of foreign troops to propagate their claims that NATO is an occupying force that props up the government of President Hamid Karzai.

“The transition should. . . enable Afghans to demonstrate to their own people that the Taliban narrative is not true,” the official said.

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