Reporting for Duty

Here's the latest TOL column, this time about Afghanistan.

Reporting for Duty

12 June 2008

In Afghanistan, the contributions of NATO’s easternmost members are not to be dismissed.

KABUL | It’s probably the most painful duty of a diplomat posted to a war zone, having to handle the case of a fallen soldier. The official was shaken, I could hear it on the phone, when he called to cancel our meeting. “I can’t tell you much, but something really bad has just happened,” he said. NATO’s Kabul command confirmed later that afternoon that a Lithuanian soldier had been killed in northern Afghanistan at a protest that had turned ugly.

It is easy to smile, and many here do, when discussing the contributions of Eastern European nations, countries like Lithuania or Hungary, to NATO’s war and nation-building effort in Afghanistan. Apart from Poland, their troop numbers are mostly in the low hundreds and few dare actually fight. Many of them have huge difficulties getting their people and equipment on the ground.

It is also easy to be cynical, as many here are, about their objectives. What are the small nations of Estonia or Slovakia, or indeed Poland, doing in that faraway country? What does it matter to them that some mountain tribes are killing each other as they have been for decades, perhaps centuries? It’s not only the lunatic fringe that suggests not so subtly that this is about nothing more than serving the “imperial interests” of their new friend, the United States.

The reality is that these contributions matter. The 10 Eastern European members of NATO deploy some 3,300 troops among them. Few are on the front lines, but even those numbers are increasing (the Poles are already in the fighting business, as are the Romanians, and the Hungarians will soon join them). Significantly, they are deeply involved in the reconstruction of some important and volatile provinces such as Paktia and Ghazni in the east.

This is important. Few argue that the war can be won by shooting alone. We are facing an insurgency that, to a large extent, feeds off dissatisfaction, destitution, insecurity, and state failure. Everybody now realizes the importance of building the infrastructure of an inclusive state. Building roads and wells, and providing people with electricity and work is about building trust. It’s about giving them a stake in the new Afghan order. The primary reason the Americans have been registering success in their area in eastern Afghanistan is that they have become much better at showing people that peace pays more than war.

‘EVERY SOLDIER COUNTS’

But why are we there? As Kinga Goncz, the Hungarian foreign minister (a Socialist) told me, “We can count on our allies only if they can count on us. Hungary’s security is guaranteed by NATO, so we, too, have to take part in NATO’s Afghanistan mission.”

Politically, this matters, even if the contributions are small. “Every soldier counts. Especially if they go to the south [of the country] where the situation is the worst. For nations like Canada and the Netherlands it’s very important to show their public that they are not standing alone,” said a NATO spokeswoman. Mike Williams, of the Royal United Services Institute for Defense Studies in London, said, “It can earn you a lot of respect because it is about solidarity, not just the strength of your contribution.”

The cynics will still argue that this is about helping America in “its” war, a war that has nothing to do with the peaceful nations of Eastern Europe. But that is not how those countries’ strategic planners see it. They admit that the first imperative is being a useful and respected member of NATO, the organization that is the linchpin of our security, reason enough for most people. But they also see their own national security reasons for getting involved in a war 4,000 kilometers away.

“Quite apart from loyalty to our allies, this mission represents a new kind of thinking about security,” said Peter Talas, foreign affairs adviser to the prime minister in Hungary and definitely no neoconservative. “We have moved beyond conservative ideas about protecting territory. If it matters to us where the Afghan opium goes – and incidentally, that is here – then we need to be involved there.”

“In a globalized world, threats do not arise at our borders. Terrorism, refugee flows, and drugs originate from afar,” Goncz said. “Hungary is a border state. We have responsibilities concerning the entire European Union.”

Sure, the Eastern Europeans are not fighting Central Asian extremism for their very survival. Frankly, neither is anybody else. But clearly, there are legitimate concerns besides survival at stake.

I’d add one more. Visiting Afghanistan last month, I was struck by how pessimistic most people, Westerners and Afghans, seemed. Things are not going well. Afghanistan can fairly be characterized as a failed state. The government doesn’t control vast swathes of its own territory where unsavory warlords vie for control of the drug trade, extremists lie in wait to attack government and international forces, and simple highwaymen make many roads too dangerous to travel. Hunger has appeared in the north as food prices have risen.

Some argue that much of this is the West’s fault for mismanaging Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban. To an extent, they are right. The question is whether things could ever get better without the West’s help, without its troops protecting what is arguably the first serious attempt at building a modern and inclusive Afghan state, without its billions of dollars of aid. I’d say no but, admittedly, that is an open question.

Will any of this, though, be decided by Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania? Probably not. The future of Afghanistan and its people may hang in the balance but, bluntly, it will hardly come down to us. We can, though, and should, do all we can to help.