After the debacle in Afghanistan, NATO at a time of doubts – archyworldys

Some re-readings are cruel, like that of the long joint statement NATO foreign ministers meeting on April 14, devoted to Afghanistan, a country where the transatlantic organization had been present since the anti-American attacks of 2001. This time, it was a question of confirming the withdrawal of international forces following the Doha agreement, signed in February 2020 by the United States and the Taliban.

In a long statement in seven points, the ministers referred to the Afghan government “Which takes measures to maintain stability and security, and promote peace”. They were counting on “A decisive step towards Afghan reconciliation” and “The protection of the fundamental rights of all Afghan citizens”. The text concluded with the statement that “No one should doubt NATO’s position: it will continue (…) to help Afghanistan fully ensure its own security ”.

Twenty years of continuous presence in the country would therefore not have made it possible to gauge the exact state of the forces involved, to measure the patent failure of the “Nation building”, the reconstruction of a failed state. Nor even to estimate the weakness of an army and a security apparatus trained, with billions of dollars, since 2015, within the framework of the Resolute Support mission of the Atlantic Alliance.

In June, a week before a summit of heads of state and government in Brussels to confirm the decision to withdraw troops, Jens Stoltenberg, the organization’s secretary general, was in Washington to meet with President Joe Biden. . On this occasion, he apparently made no objection to the planned withdrawal, which had never really been discussed between allies.

General lack of preparation

At a meeting of defense ministers in February, the American delegation had indeed argued that it was not “Not ready” for this discussion, which, in the end, will never take place, leaving the Europeans to their questions, while 1,100 German, 800 British and 750 Italian soldiers, in particular, were still present in Afghanistan. The NATO mantra “In together, out together” – all together at the beginning, all together at the end – had, apparently, lived.

Within the Alliance, a few voices were raised to stress the risks associated with the end of the Afghan mission. And, in any case, to advocate a real consultation of the allies and coordination between them, in case the evacuation turns out to be more complicated than expected. These questions were not taken into account and neither was the state of mind of the 300,000 Afghan soldiers who were supposed to protect and stabilize the fragile situation established after two decades. “No one here wanted to see that this army was ineffective, corrupt, non-existent in reality”, comments an internal NATO source.

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