Dutch Hesitations Create Hitch in Afghan Mission

When NATO voted in December to shoulder a larger and far riskier assignment in Afghanistan, an alliance born in the Cold War seemed suddenly to be entering a new and ambitious stage. But the resistance of the usually steadfast Dutch has thrown the mission into doubt, as well as the broader, long-term plans of the Bush administration to rely more heavily on its traditional partners in military operations around the world.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which now has 9,000 troops patrolling generally safer parts of Afghanistan, agreed to take on the larger part of the burden from U.S. forces and to send troops into the nation’s south, where Taliban fighters have been stepping up insurgent operations.

But a minority in the Dutch parliament is seeking to bring the plans to a halt, arguing that the task would be too dangerous and that the 1,400 Dutch troops to be sent would be ill-prepared to face the heavy combat situations they might encounter.

“We think it would be very unwise to go with what is basically a peace mission in what is [now] basically a war area,” Bert Bakker, a member of parliament who speaks for the D66 party, told Radio Netherlands on Sunday.

The issue is to be debated today in the Dutch parliament and brought to a vote. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Dutch NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, and European and American officials have all weighed in in hopes of adding pressure on the Dutch to take part.

In the meantime, the Dutch situation has stirred anxiety in Washington about whether European allies are going to remain a dependable part of the Bush administration’s “war on terrorism,” and whether it can continue with its plans to build future military operations around them.

A Dutch rejection of the Afghan effort “would send a powerful signal,” said a senior U.S. official who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of current diplomacy. “It’s not as if anyone can doubt that we’re in a global counter-insurgency fight.”

Analysts said that of greatest concern to the administration was the idea that NATO members and others in formal alliances would be able to pick and choose which joint fights they took part in.

“They’re worried about the dilution of the principle of alliance solidarity,” said Charles A. Kupchan, a top Europe scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations who worked as a National Security Council aide under former President Clinton. “This is a microcosm of a much bigger debate about how joint military operations will work in the new world.”

A negative decision by the Dutch is unlikely to trigger other defections, but there have been signs in recent years that some NATO members are less willing to stick with the group.

After sustained pressure from the United States, NATO agreed in 2004 to send a mission to Iraq to train Iraqi security personnel. Some member countries, however, contributed only a small number of trainers, and Germany only trains troops outside Iraq, “an opt-out of sorts,” Kupchan said.

Though NATO members have endorsed the Afghan mission from the start, many of them have resisted pressure to put up more money and equipment for that undertaking or for other joint missions. NATO member countries have only two aircraft for operations across the entire expanse of Afghanistan.

The unwillingness of many countries to join U.S. forces in counter-terrorism operations may reflect in part a continuing worldwide backlash against Washington’s policies. Kupchan said the trend was “in some strange way a revenge of sorts for America’s desire to go with ‘coalitions of the willing’ ” rather than traditional alliances at the start of the Iraq war.

The signs of independence on the part of U.S. allies come at a time when the administration, facing an overstretched Army and a massive budget deficit, has been laying long-term plans to rely more heavily on others.

The Pentagon is about to send Congress a major policy statement, called the Quadrennial Defense Review, that calls for an increasing reliance on other countries to carry out counter-insurgency and joint training missions and to deploy forces quickly over long distances.

The administration also is in the middle of a push to overhaul NATO to increase the group’s global reach. The U.S. wants it to work more closely with distant allies, such as Japan and Australia, and begin developing joint positions on issues such as Iran’s nuclear program that have traditionally been considered outside the alliance’s scope.

U.S. officials considered the new Afghan deployment a major step in this direction. It would have NATO and other allied forces increase their troop levels to 16,000 in the next few months, as U.S. forces are drawing down from a current 19,000 to less than 16,000.

The Dutch have been asked to send in helicopters and other equipment in addition to troops.

The enhanced deployment would move members of the NATO contingent, who have been engaged in less dangerous peacekeeping around Kabul, the Afghan capital, and in the country’s north and west, into six unstable southern provinces at a time when the Taliban militia is resurgent and casualties are mounting. Suicide bombings have been on the rise.

If the Dutch refuse to take part, it’s not clear who would provide the extra troops and equipment. At the very least, that could delay the American drawdown.

NATO, which was organized to defend Europe from the Soviets, has taken on more and more assignments in recent years, most of which have been far from its European base. Its forces have been sent for peacekeeping duty in the Balkans and the Darfur region of Sudan and for relief work in earthquake-struck Pakistan.

But the new Afghan operation will put the alliance’s troops directly in the line of fire as never before. Although they won’t be kicking down doors like American counter-insurgency units, they will be patrolling dangerous regions with rules of engagement that will almost surely lead to battles.

Dutch leaders began to have second thoughts about the mission after Afghan President Hamid Karzai told Dutch officials in a meeting that they would undeniably take many more casualties in Oruzgan province, the senior U.S. official said.

The Dutch have traditionally been strong supporters of U.S.-European military efforts, and Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende has supported the Afghan deployment. But a small centrist party in his coalition has balked, fearing that the Dutch troops will be caught unprepared.

To take part, Balkenende’s government first wanted the support of its parliament, but was seeking approval at a time when Dutch opinion was turning against the mission, in part because of unhappiness over reports that the CIA was engaging in mistreatment of terrorism suspects.

A particular roadblock in the parliament was the centrist party, D66, which considered the mission too risky for the limited capabilities of the Dutch troops.

Critics in the Netherlands have argued that NATO involvement is simply a way for the United States to start offloading an expensive and difficult war. A poll this week showed half of Dutch respondents opposed, with 38% in favor and 12% undecided.

In this climate, U.S. officials have weighed in, hoping to turn the tide.

Daniel Fried, assistant secretary of State for European affairs, said recently that considering the urgency of the mission, he was “perplexed by the debate in the Netherlands.”

L. Paul Bremer III, the former U.S. administrator in Iraq and also a former ambassador to the Netherlands, told the Dutch magazine De Volksrant last month that a negative Dutch decision could bring economic retaliation by the U.S. government.

U.S. officials disowned the comment, but Balkenende and other Dutch leaders complained that the American pressure was making it harder for them to accede to U.S. wishes.

The Dutch leaders are hoping that the public will react more favorably to the comments of world leaders such as Annan, who visited The Hague on Monday to add his voice.

“No one can afford to see a destabilized Afghanistan,” the U.N. chief warned. If the Netherlands balked at sending troops, “it would mean that the international efforts in Afghanistan, after all the investment we have put in, would not be successful.”