NATO is holding a “force generation confe rence” this week

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

NATO is holding a “force generation conference” this week at which time
official pledges will be made.

Heeft Buitenlandse Zaken dit ook ingebracht in de vergaderingen?
Er had dus deze week hom-of-kuit op tafel moeten komen ;)

Groet / Cees

February 22, 2010
Dutch Pull-Out From War Expected After Government Collapse
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/world/europe/22dutch.html
By NICHOLAS KULISH

BERLIN — A day after his government collapsed, Prime Minister Jan Peter
Balkenende said Sunday that he expected Dutch troops to come home from
Afghanistan before the end of the year.

A last-ditch effort by Mr. Balkenende to keep Dutch soldiers in the
dangerous southern Afghan province of Oruzgan instead saw the Labor
Party quit the government in the Netherlands early Saturday, immediately
raising fears that the Western military coalition fighting the war was
increasingly at risk.

Even as the allied offensive in the Taliban stronghold of Marja
continued, it appeared almost certain that most of the 2,000 Dutch
troops would be gone from Afghanistan by the end of the year. The
question plaguing military planners was whether a Dutch departure would
embolden the war’s critics in other allied countries, where debate over
deployment is continuing, and hasten the withdrawal of their troops as well.

“The moment the Netherlands says as sole and first country we will no
longer have activities at the end of 2010, it will raise questions in
other countries and this really pains me,” Mr. Balkenende told the Dutch
television program “Buitenhof” in an interview on Sunday, according to
Reuters.

The collapse of the Dutch government comes as the Obama administration
continues to struggle to get European allies to commit more troops to
Afghanistan to bolster its attempts to win back the country from a
resurgent Taliban. President Obama has made the Afghan war a cornerstone
of his foreign policy and, after months of debate, committed tens of
thousands more American troops to the effort.

“If the Dutch go, which is the implication of all this, that could open
the floodgates for other Europeans to say, ‘The Dutch are going, we can
go, too,’ ” said Julian Lindley-French, professor of defense strategy at
the Netherlands Defense Academy in Breda. “The implications are that the
U.S. and the British are going to take on more of the load.”

Dutch leaders had promised voters to bring most of the country’s troops
home this year. But after entreaties from the United States, Mr.
Balkenende tried to find a compromise to extend the Dutch presence, at
least on a scaled-back basis. Instead, the Labor Party pulled out of the
government after an acrimonious 16-hour cabinet meeting that ran into
the early hours of Saturday.

Mr. Balkenende told Dutch television on Sunday that he now expected
Dutch troops to leave Afghanistan as planned. "If nothing else will take
its place, then it ends," he said, according to Reuters.

The Dutch troops have been important to the war effort, despite their
small numbers, because about 1,500 of them were posted in Oruzgan.

Analysts said that new elections in the Netherlands, as well as the
departure of the Dutch troops, now appeared inevitable.

The war in Afghanistan has been increasingly unpopular among voters in
the Netherlands, as in many other parts of Europe, creating strains
between governments trying to please the United States and their own people.

But the tension in the Netherlands also reveals how deep the fissures
over the war have grown within the NATO alliance.

As the number of Dutch military casualties has increased — 21 soldiers
have died — the public back home has grown increasingly resentful at the
refusal of some other allies, in particular the Germans, to join the
intense fighting in the south.

The probable loss of the Dutch contingent and the continuing resistance
to significant increases in manpower by other allies demonstrate the
extent to which the dividend expected from the departure of President
George W. Bush, who was so unpopular in capitals across the Atlantic,
has not materialized, despite Mr. Obama’s popularity in Europe.

“The support for Obama was always double-faced,” said Stefan Kornelius,
foreign editor of the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. “It was
never really heartfelt. People loved what they heard, but they never
felt obliged to support Obama beyond what they were already doing.”

Since taking office, Mr. Obama has been pressing the non-American
members of the coalition to increase their contribution, seeking up to
10,000 additional troops. While NATO has pledged around 7,000 troops,
critics of the alliance’s efforts accuse it of fuzzy math: counting up
to 2,000 soldiers who were already in Afghanistan but had been scheduled
to leave after the recent election.

And even the 7,000 figure was notional; NATO is holding a “force
generation conference” this week at which time official pledges will be
made, and there are questions about whether it will reach that number.

The Dutch contingent is part of the roughly 40,000 troops from 43
countries who are aiding the United States in Afghanistan, most of those
from NATO. The United States is fielding about 75,000 troops, but that
number is expected to rise to about 98,000 by the end of the summer.

The Dutch troops were deployed to Oruzgan in 2006 and were originally
supposed to stay for two years; that mandate already had been extended
another two years to August 2010.

Analysts in the Netherlands said they expected the Dutch troops to leave
on time because any deal to keep them there appeared all but impossible
in the tumult following the government’s collapse.

“I don’t think there’s room, with a government falling and waiting for
elections, for there to be a decision,” said Edwin Bakker, who runs the
security and conflict program at the Netherlands Institute of
International Relations.

Although American officials are concerned that an exodus by the Dutch
could prompt other allies to follow suit, a sudden rush to exit seemed
unlikely.

“There is a groundswell of distress in Europe, of feeling this isn’t
working, but does that translate into electorates saying we’re going to
vote you down? I don’t see that,” said Constanze Stelzenmüller, a senior
fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin.

But the collapse of the Dutch government reinforced the difficulty of
holding together an alliance made up of a multitude of countries, each
with its own fractious domestic politics.

On Saturday, Mr. Balkenende informed Queen Beatrix, the country’s head
of state, of the government’s resignation. According to the Dutch media,
she was vacationing in Austria, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs
said a decision about whether to hold new elections would probably be
made in the next several days. By law the election would have to be held
within 83 days of the queen’s decision.

The question of retaining troops in Afghanistan was far from the only
issue pulling apart the parties in the governing coalition in the
Netherlands; the parties were also divided over a controversial decision
to increase the retirement age and the impending need for deep budget
cuts. But the dispute over the troops brought relations to the breaking
point.

“The majority of the Dutch people say, ‘Go, we’ve done enough. Let other
countries do it now.’ That’s a big majority and also the majority in the
Parliament,” said Nicoline van den Broek-Laman Trip, a former senator
from the Liberal Party, who said she supported the Dutch mission but
also believed that it was time to pull back most of the troops, leaving
F-16s and perhaps trainers for local Afghan troops.

“They’ve got a small military,” said Mr. Lindley-French of the
Netherlands Defense Academy. “The force has suffered a great deal of
wear and tear. The Dutch have hung in there.

“The real failing is the ability of NATO partners and allies to rotate
through the south and the east of the country, where the real center of
the struggle exists.”

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