NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh RasmussenThierry Monasse/europolitiquephoto.eu
Afghan and NATO officials made the embarrassing admission Tuesday that the Taliban commander they were courting, with cash and free transportation on a NATO plane, was probably an imposter rather than a possible partner in peace talks.
The revelation undermined the attempt by NATO commanders in Afghanistan to portray their stepped-up offensive as having some success in driving the Taliban to consider a negotiated settlement to the nine-year war.
It came on the heels of last week's summit in Lisbon where the coalition sought to present a united front with a blueprint for the eventual stabilization of Afghanistan and the withdrawal of foreign troops from the war-scarred country.
In an interview at NATO headquarters here, Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen did not comment on the news of the imposter, but instead stressed there were signs of progress, highlighting that international forces have managed to build up an Afghan security force faster than anticipated.
He said that NATO is beating its targets for recruiting Afghans to join the country's national police and army, increasing the need to find more military trainers to teach them basic foot-soldier skills and eventually develop a reliable officer corps.
The Canadian pledge to send 950 instructors and support staff to Afghanistan next year is "of utmost importance," Mr. Rasmussen said.
But even if the American-led international force succeeds in defeating or tamping down the Taliban over the next few years, the need for additional trainers will grow.
"I think we can say that, in the short term, we have filled the gaps," Mr. Rasmussen added, "but of course there will, in the coming years, be an increasing demand for trainers, so I cannot exclude the possibility that we will request additional trainers in the coming years."
Last month, there were some reports out of Kabul that associates of Afghan President Hamid Karzai were in comprehensive and face-to-face discussions with a senior Taliban leader in efforts to find a negotiated settlement to the nine-year war.
American commanders in Afghanistan also encouraged the idea that their war effort was causing some of the Taliban hierarchy to rethink their dedication to the insurgency, despite frequent communiqués from the Taliban denying that any of their factions would talk to what they call Mr. Karzai's "puppet regime."
NATO officials, including General David Petraeus, the commander of multinational forces, had also told reporters that senior Taliban officials were being given safe passage to attend meetings with Afghan negotiators.
Now, reports from Kabul are that both Afghan and Western officials believe they were bamboozled by a man who lives in Quetta, the Pakistani city that is believed to be a Taliban base, who presented himself as a top Taliban named Akhtar Mohammad Mansour.
A number of NATO officials, Afghan diplomats and Western diplomats had played down reports of progress in peace talks even before the doubts about the putative Mr. Mansour burst open yesterday. At the NATO summit in Lisbon last weekend, a senior Kabul-based official of the alliance said that talks were episodic and that all anyone could say "is that channels of communication are open."
Gen. Petraeus said Tuesday there had been skepticism about the identity of one man claiming to be a Taliban leader.
"It may well be that that skepticism was well-founded," he said.
The more concrete focus of the multinational forces is on building a reliable Afghan security force that can take on the job of fighting and keeping the peace in Afghanistan.
NATO military commanders want to have a 171,600-strong Afghan army and a police force of 134,000 in place by the end of next year. In terms of recruitment, they have reached the level that they had originally expected for the force next year.
The number of Afghans in the security force or in training is now about 260,000, about half of them in the army. About 70,000 of those joined this year and some 20,000 to 30,000 new army and police recruits are expected to be put through basic training over the next few months.
At the NATO summit, Mr. Rasmussen tried to cajole and press more countries to take on the in-field and on-base training of the burgeoning Afghan security forces.
No public commitments have been announced. But, according to another official at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Italy has promised to send 200 trainers and several other countries tentatively agreed to provide smaller numbers.
The target date for handing over security to Afghan forces is the end of 2014, but the phased transition is projected to start only next spring in selected districts and provinces. It will be a slow process, with one senior NATO official saying that in some areas international troops will stay on as backup for 18 months or more after the transfer begins.
Over the longer term, NATO has signed an agreement with Afghanistan to continue training its security forces and building the administrative capacity of its Defence and Interior ministries after the combat mission has ended.
In Lisbon, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Canada will stay engaged to provide assistance. But he was unequivocal that the engagement will not involve the military. The combat mission in Afghanistan will end next summer, he said, and the trainers will come home no later than March of 2014 regardless of what other countries may decide on their deployments.
The multinational force, now close to 150,000, includes troops from 28 NATO countries and 20 other nations. If the transition to Afghan control goes as planned, some will be repositioned to different parts of Afghanistan where fighting continues and others shifted to support and training roles.
Some 2,000 of the NATO troops are now directly involved in training Afghan forces.
The arrival of new trainers, including those from Canada who are expected to be working out of a giant military school in Kabul, will most likely result in some reconfiguration. NATO military representatives of the SHARP, or Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, are expected to meet next month to determine who goes where, who does what and how many more instructors will be needed.
"I don't think anybody can give an exact figure right now because it's a work in progress and it's an evolving situation and very much will depend on the pace of transition," Mr. Rasmussen said. "But what I foresee is that gradually as the transition progresses, resources are freed up from combat and could be used for further improvements in the Afghan security forces."
The increasing number of Afghans signing up for the army and police is a sign of "a change of attitudes in the Afghan population," he added.
It also reflects the NATO command's decision a year ago to pay recruits more money to compete with, or at least match, the monthly payments offered by the Taliban as it recruits fighters.
Other NATO officials said they have also worked to improve the credibility of the Afghan forces.
The police, in particular, were seen by many Afghans as little more than tribal militia preying on the population. The Taliban were able to exploit that, as one Kabul-based official told reporters during the summit.
"Not surprisingly, undertrained and underpaid police were part of the problem out there," he said, adding that "the biggest change in the last year is that we have trained them before deploying them."
Mr. Rasmussen, a former Danish prime minister who has been secretary general since August of 2009, said he plans to get personally involved in trying to reduce regional tensions between India and Pakistan that could further destabilize Afghanistan. That would not include involving NATO in their long-simmering dispute over Kashmir, where both countries have deployed tens of thousands of troops.
But a "positive dialogue with India," he said, could help to refocus Pakistan on co-operating with NATO forces in clearing out suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban hideouts inside its border with Afghanistan.
"We have an ongoing dialogue with Pakistan in that respect," he said. "But I also think this requires a positive dialogue with India to make sure that tensions between India and Pakistan are eased [and]Pakistan can concentrate on the security challenges in the northwest instead of focusing toward the east."