BERLIN, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- British Prime Minister Tony Blair says the world's security depends on success in Afghanistan, but Washington and others feel not all countries part of ISAF are doing as much as they could.
The battle for Afghanistan has entered its bloodiest year yet. Some 180 coalition soldiers have died in 2006, most of them U.S., Canadian and British troops, many of them killed in the months since June when fighting with the Taliban escalated.
Neither the International Security Assistance Force nor the U.S.-led anti-terror operation Enduring Freedom has managed to contain the violence. On the contrary.
Apart from the volatile south, "several other regions are in danger of tipping as well," Citha Maass, a fellow at the German Institute of International and Security Affairs and one of Germany's leading Afghanistan experts, told United Press International.
The death toll of British troops stationed in the combat-heavy southern regions of the country since June stands at 36, a casualty rate higher than the one in Iraq. Despite domestic public pressure to bring home the troops, Blair said it was vital to defeat the resurging Taliban to secure global peace.
"Here in this extraordinary piece of desert is where the future of the world's security in the early 21st century is going to be played out," he told British troops in Afghanistan Monday. "We know that the only way to secure peace sometimes is to be prepared to fight for it."
Blair knows about the challenges. Together with the Canadians, the Dutch, the Australians and the Americans, British troops are taking some of the heaviest fire in southern Afghanistan.
"We will be with you in this endeavor," he continued. "Our commitment remains that whatever challenges, whether of security or reconstruction or development, we are up to meeting those challenges with you."
NATO-led ISAF has over 31,000 soldiers in the country; another 10,000 are fighting terrorism under Enduring Freedom.
But coordinating an ISAF mission from a pool of 37 different armed forces isn't easy; the caveats some of the domestic governments have imposed on their soldiers are a thorn in the eye of NATO officials.
"We need to better equip our forces in Afghanistan," NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said earlier this month. "That also means removing the restrictions some countries have put on their troops." Such a move would "send an important and necessary signal among the allies," he said.
The most prominent case is Germany. The country has nearly 3,000 soldiers stationed in the relatively peaceful northern provinces of Afghanistan, in Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz and Faizabad. Critics say the Germans are mere social workers in camouflage suits.
Pressure on Berlin to move some of its troops down south has increased in recent weeks, but the German government under Chancellor Angela Merkel has repeatedly stated the mandate, which keeps the Germans confined to the north, won't be changed.
The German unwillingness to give in to international pleas is a source of aggravation for officials from the casualty-ridden countries.
"You focus on rebuilding and peacekeeping, but the less pleasant activities you leave to us," a U.S. official recently told Karsten Voigt, the man in Berlin responsible for U.S.-German ties, the German news magazine Der Spiegel writes in its latest issue. He was later told that Germany needed "to learn how to kill."
Reports that 12 Canadian soldiers died because the Germans refused a request to help them in the south were quickly rebuffed by the Defense Ministry in Berlin, but both incidents point to the rising pressure on Germany.
While some say Berlin may not for much longer be able to refuse the international calls for help, other experts say the Germans are desperately needed in the north.
Many ethnic minorities populate these areas, and local conflicts could escalate any time, Maass told UPI.
The nitty-gritty work done by German soldiers in the north -- establishing contacts with the civic population and policing neighborhoods -- "doesn't look so spectacular in the press, but is equally necessary;" and thus, Berlin should keep its troops there, she said.
Maass faulted the U.S.-led mission Enduring Freedom, which was active in the southern provinces until ISAF took over this summer, with sparking much of the support for the Taliban there by arming tribal leaders and by bullying around civilians.
U.S.-led troops between 2002 and 2005 there repeatedly stormed the private compounds of Afghans, "kicking in doors of women's compounds," said Maass, who spent three years in Afghanistan to monitor elections.
"They behaved like bullish members of an occupying force," she said. "Over the years, that led to frustration and ultimately hate against the international forces in the southern provinces."
The international community is employing the wrong strategies, she said.
The province Helmand in the southwest, with many opium fields and warring tribal groups, will "surely" fall into the hands of the neo-Taliban if a plan to spray the poppy fields with chemicals to kill the plants is enacted, she cautioned.
"The international community needs to adapt a different strategy in the south, one that takes into account the many local tribal conflicts," Maass said. "ISAF needs to find discussion partners within the local communities" and combine military efforts with civic ones, such as educating teachers and local officials.
The window of opportunity for such an alternative strategy would last until the next Ramadan, Islam's fasting holy month, she said.
"If ISAF doesn't change anything, then the situation will continue to get worse and worse," Maass warned.
