ISAF Is Weak

By Michael Goldfarb
Published December 14, 2007 3:32pm ET
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Over at FP Passport, David Bosco notes an interview with Major Gen. Bruno Kasdorf, the highest-ranking German officer in Afghanistan, at Spiegel online. The European media has long been critical of what it perceives as an unnecessarily violent American campaign against the Taliban there, but Kasdorf doesn’t see it like that:

Pulling out of OEF would not be helpful. It bothers the Americans when Europeans accuse them of waging the war in a brutal fashion. If there were no OEF, the insurgency would gain strength in the country and they would consider themselves unopposed here, which could also threaten ISAF’s success. Here at ISAF we don’t have the forces to go after the extremists alone. At the same time, fighting terror is not our mandate.

Kasdorf adds:

The limitations that the Germans have placed upon themselves are not regarded as optimal here. If a country takes over reconstruction responsibilities, its teams can, in an emergency, be replaced by reserve units if the Afghans go into battle. That’s what we’re really talking about here. When all the countries on a mission go into conflict areas and then a few of them say that they’re only going to do something very specific, it becomes difficult. We must realize that the rest of Afghanistan, including the north, will only be safe when we have succeeded in the east and south.

I’m skeptical that an increase in German troops numbers, or a lifting of the “limitations” placed on them by their mandate from the German parliament, would fundamentally alter the equation in Afghanistan. But it certainly wouldn’t hurt, and it may be an important piece of a larger reorganization of the Coalition forces there. And when that reorganization takes place, Kasdorf sounds like a good guy to keep around.

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