Roundup: 'I Don't Like a NATO Dominance in Afghanistan'

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, August 11, 2003

Roundup: 'I Don't Like a NATO Dominance in Afghanistan'

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German peacekeeping soldiers cordoned off a high school in central Kabul on Sunday, one day before the North Atlantic Treaty Organization takes over command of the intentional security force in the Afghan capital.

Heavily armed troops and armored vehicles of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) blocked the streets leading to Amani School, where a ceremony is to be held on Monday for the handover of ISAF command to NATO, witnesses said.

NATO decided four months ago to assume the leadership of the peacekeeping mission in Kabul, after no countries were willing to take the burden almost 20 months after first ISAF troops arrived here on a UN mandate.

ISAF troops, so far led by individual nations including Turkey, Britain and a joint German-Dutch corps on a rotatory basis for about six months each, have been maintaining security and order in Kabul and its environs since December 2001.

A NATO command of the over 4,600-strong peacekeeping troops would help overcome the increasing difficulty to search every six months for new nations to lead the mission, NATO spokesman Mark Laity told a press briefing earlier in the day.

"There are not many countries which have resources, infrastructure and experience to run an operation like this, to transfer themselves thousands of miles away to a land-locked country where the infrastructure had been destroyed by decades of conflicts," he said.

"We have now solved the problem, because NATO has taken on the burden, the challenge, and also the privilege to help the people of Afghanistan on an open-ended basis."

The spokesman said that NATO would not change the mission and mandate of the multi-nation peacekeeping force, which under a UN Security Council resolution confines its operation to the Afghan capital city.

"On August 11, there will be a handover of command, and on August 12, it will be business as usual," he said.

NATO's takeover of ISAF mission marks the first operation outside Europe by the defence alliance since it was established at the beginning of the Cold War.

"This is our first mission beyond Europe, and this is part of NATO adapting to the new security environment," said Laity, who is also the special advisor to NATO Secretary General George Robertson.

"We understand that to defend yourself, to ensure your safety, it is no good to wait the threat to cross your border, you have to be abroad, to deal with the changing security environment in a different way," he added, referring to the growing terrorism threat in the world.

The spokesman said that NATO's formal involvement here demonstrates its members' continuing long-term commitment to stability and security in Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network had trained thousands of its operatives under shelter by former ruling Taliban.

Many Afghans said they hope a NATO presence would be more effective in bringing durable peace and stability to the country than the previous ISAF, which is only patrolling on Kabul streets.

"NATO can disarm warlords and establish security across the country if it desires so," said Daud Mohammad, an Afghan military officer at the Defence Ministry.

"People have been fed up with warlordism and continued instability in provinces, particularly rural areas," Sabrullah Khan, a secondary school principal, told Xinhua.

However, NATO spokesman Laity said there would be no debate in NATO on possible expansion of ISAF mission beyond Kabul in the near future.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan have been calling for an expansion of ISAF mandate to the provinces, but such appeals have so far received no positive responses, as few nations were willing to send more troops to Afghanistan.

Remnants of the ousted Taliban and al-Qaeda in recent months have stepped up their activities against the US-backed government and US forces, especially in southern and eastern border areas.

Over 12,500 US-led coalition troops, separate from the peacekeeping ISAF troops, are in different parts of Afghanistan to hunt down holdout fighters of the Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies.

Some Afghans expressed their concern that NATO, a basically military group, would remind people of the decade-long occupation by the former Soviet Union in the country.

"I don't like a NATO dominance in Afghanistan, we have nightmare experience with the former Warsaw Pact," said woman engineer Noria Haqnigar, referring to the Soviet-led bloc which rivaled NATO during the Cold War.

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