Nato to boost Afghan fighting force

Nato defence ministers yesterday approved an extension of the alliance’s Afghan security mission across the entire country, taking in the volatile eastern region and bringing up to 12,000 more US troops under allied command.

The move is expected to take place in the next few weeks hard on the heels of the advance by Nato troops into the southern sector two months ago which has sparked fierce resistance from Taliban fighters and dragged the alliance into the first major ground combat since it was formed six decades ago.

The ministers also agreed to provide substantial amounts of military equipment for the Afghan army, which has been fighting alongside Nato troops battling with Taliban insurgents in the south of the country.

“There were in rough numbers thousands of weapons offered up, and I believe probably millions of rounds of ammunition,” said US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. He also said some allies had offered to increase training for the Afghans.

Rumsfeld told a news conference a number of nations had stepped forward in response to appeals from Nato commanders for up to 2,500 extra troops to join the operation against the Taliban in the south, but said more were still needed. He declined to say which countries had made offers.

The move into the east will also bring to up to 14,000 the total number of US troops under the command of British Lt. Gen. David Richards, the Nato commander in Afghanistan.

That would be the largest number of US troops brought under a foreign battlefield commander since Second World War, US officials said. However, overall control of the mission lies with Nato’s supreme commander, US Marine Corps Gen. James Jones, and a US general is expected to replace Richards in February for a one-year rotation.

Rumsfeld called the decision, “a bold step forward for this alliance.”

European ministers came under pressure at the meeting to send more troops to southern Afghanistan, where soldiers from Canada, Britain, the United States and the Netherlands have borne the brunt of the fighting.

“If you are a member of an alliance based on solidarity, you have to deliver,” said Nato Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. “We need to do more.”

Rumsfeld and de Hoop Scheffer also pushed nations to lift restrictions on their troops in Afghanistan that limit their deployment to peacekeeping in the relatively safe north and west and prevent commanders sending them to the southern battlefields. “There is a good deal of pressure on them,” Rumsfeld said.

He declined to point the finger at particular countries, but called the situation “really not acceptable.” Germany, Italy and Spain all have large contingents in north or western Afghanistan and have ruled out sending them to the south.

In Berlin, Germany’s lower house of parliament voted to extend participation in the Afghan mission for another year, but Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung ruled out a redeployment to the south. Jung told ZDF television that Nato commanders understood, “if we went into the south, we would leave a gap in the north and that would be a mistake.”

Nato’s will not have to muster extra troops for the move into eastern Afghanistan because between 10,000 to 12,000 US troops already there will switch to the alliance command.

Commanders have long argued for the move, saying it will allow them to better co-ordinate operations nationwide and given them more flexibility since the United States is one of the allied nations which does not impose caveats on where its troops can operate.

The United States will continue its separate anti-terrorist mission to hunt down Taliban and al Qaida operatives with about 8,000 troops.

The switch of command will take the Nato force to more than 30,000 troops. About 9,000 are engaged in the Taliban’s former southern heartland, where allied commander admit the resistance from the fundamentalist insurgents has caught them by surprise.

On Tuesday, Nato said a Polish offer to gradually send 900 extra troops to serve as a mobile reserve force had gone a significant way to meet the requirement for reinforcements in the south. Romania and Canada have also offered a total of 400 extra troops, and Denmark has offered to add 30 soldiers to bring its contingent to almost 400. Officials said the Czech had also offered an unspecified number.