By Hanns W. Maull

Since NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer challenged Germany to participate in the fight against the Taliban in Helmand and Kandahar, pressure on the country has been building to send troops from the (so far, and only relatively) quiet northern provinces of Afghanistan into the battles Germany's NATO allies America, Canada, the Netherlands and Britain are fighting against the Taliban in the south. Germany thus is being "singularized" - something which to some will strike a note full of ironic resonances harking back to an old nightmare of Germany's security policy trauma from the days of the Cold War when any "singularization" of the Federal Republic was strictly anathema.

Yet this time singling out Germany is both unfair and unwise. It is unfair because Germany is far from being unique in shirking away from combat missions in the Afghan south: out of a total of 32,800 ISAF forces in Afghanistan, the Bundeswehr contingents, the bulk of which are deployed in the north, number some 2,700. In the south and east, NATO has deployed less than 10,000 forces to combat the Taliban. Those figures already show that Germany is only part of a much broader problem, and certainly could not make the military difference to NATO's struggle in the troubled provinces alone. The broader problem within NATO is a widespread lack of commitment and reluctance to send their own troops into harms way among NATO member countries. The German parliament indeed has imposed specific restrictions on the Bundeswehr deployment in Afghanistan which have just been reconfirmed by Chancellor Angela Merkel, and it is true that those restrictions reflect Germany's continuing "culture of restraint" (a key political phrase first coined by Defence Minister Volker Ruehe in the early 1990s to describe Germany's attitude towards military engagements). But such restrictions have also been imposed by several other NATO governments on their own contingents, and both the NATO secretary-general and his SACEUR have been fighting hard, even desperately, for NATO member countries to live up to their commitments and supply the boots and the hardware needed for the ISAF mission. In fact, NATO reluctance to focus seriously on the challenges in Afghanistan started as early as 2002 in Washington, which after the rapid military rout of the Taliban government in November 2001 quickly lost interest in securing the victory in Afghanistan. The Bush administration instead focused its military efforts on the war against Iraq, and even "forgot" to make any provisions for the reconstruction of Afghanistan in its draft budget allocations for 2003. The broader problem of NATO in Afghanistan, in short, has been a lack of serious political commitment to the task all around, pious rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding.

The "singularization" of Germany thus has been unfair. But it also has been unwise, for several reasons. First, the north of Afghanistan has indeed so far been relatively quiet, though German claims that stability in the north has resulted from the Bundeswehr presence there are ridiculous: the area traditionally has been controlled by the ethnic warlords of the Northern Alliance, America's local allies in the war against the Taliban. But this calm could well give way to turmoil spreading to the north in the future: the Northern Alliance warlords, firmly in cahoots with the drug mafias, are getting increasingly restive and frustrated with the government in Kabul which has been trying to sideline them politically. They therefore are re-arming, and tensions among them, but also between them and the Kabul government are mounting. Moreover, in June, Kunduz, where German troops have their regional headquarter, saw its first suicide attack, organised by a close ally of the Taliban, Gulmuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e-Islami, and in recent months more civilian aid workers have been killed in the north than in the south (two). Thus, the Islamist threat is spreading north, and the Bundeswehr's combat readiness and its ability to hold its own in asymmetric warfare may well be tested soon much more severely than it has been so far.

Moreover, while the call for solidarity is understandable and justified, solidarity cannot substitute for a good strategy and wise policies. Berlin thus has a point when it now pushes for a strategy debate within NATO about its commitment in Afghanistan. The present strategy, which combines far-reaching ambition with meagre resources and a lack of clarity and determination, seems to be failing, and needs to be reviewed thoroughly. What is the purpose of NATO in Afghanistan? Is it to build a functioning modern state in the country, where none ever existed? This seems to be the goal at present, but it would probably require vastly more resources, both military and financial, than have so far been put into the effort. Is it to defeat the Taliban? This will probably not be possible, as long as the Pakistani government and military remain unwilling or unable to control the border regions. Is it to secure a victory in the "global war against international terrorism"? This would be futile. Terrorist organizations like al-Qaida are like water: they will quickly flow into the crevices of precarious statehood wherever they are opening. Even a complete pacification of Afghanistan in itself would not make a difference, as long as there are problem areas elsewhere, and there are bound to remain many. It is worth remembering in this context that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida returned to Afghanistan and helped set up the Taliban government there after they had been pushed out of Sudan in the late 1990s.

NATO thus does not just need more (German) solidarity. It needs to review its overall strategy in Afghanistan, define its aims much more clearly and carefully, and then mobilize the resources needed to do the job properly. This means, incidentally, to assess those needs prudently, rather than flamboyantly: a prudent strategy will be guided by caution and tend to err on the side of overestimating, rather than underestimating, what will be needed to do the job. Wishful thinking is a dreadful substitute for responsible planning. NATO (and that means: its member governments) collectively has been guilty of the former, for many reasons. Germany has to share its part of the blame. But the main culprit has been this administration in Washington, which recklessly ignored the counsels of prudence. America and the West are now paying the price for this in Iraq. They should thus review their policies in Afghanistan as long as there is still the time to do so, rather than single out Germany as the scapegoat.

Prof. Dr. Hanns W. Maull holds the Chair for Foreign Policy and International Relations at the University of Trier.