By Ambassador Stewart Eldon

 

 

Readers of these pages will be well aware of the crucial importance of the NATO operation in Afghanistan. With so many British troops committed there, it’s one of my highest priorities. So when SACEUR invited me to join him late last month on one of his regular visits I jumped at the chance. The Head of the US Drugs Enforcement Administration, Ms Karen Tandy, and my US opposite number, Ambassador Toria Nuland, were also members of the group.

 

This was a visit I will long remember. Briefings in Kabul confirmed substantial progress in the military campaign. The Taleban and other insurgents have taken significant setbacks in the South and East.

 

One – perhaps inevitable – consequence of this is that the insurgents have moved towards more asymmetric terrorist activity. There are increasing numbers of IED and suicide bomb attacks in Kabul and other parts of the country. This has, not unnaturally, increased public concern about security.

 

As we were told, an important factor in allaying these fears is to ensure the Afghan government can move in effectively to consolidate the security created by NATO forces. Training the Afghan Army and Police is central to this endeavour. Army training, coordinated by an element of the US-led coalition with support from ISAF troop contributors, is going well – though there are shortages of badly-needed Operational Mentoring and Liaison Teams to work with Afghan battalions. British and US officers we talked to were highly complimentary about the Afghan National Army’s contribution to operations in Helmand and the East of Afghanistan. In many respects they have been fighting front and centre.

 

There is further to go in training the Police, but the US-led training operation and the EU Police Mission – to both of which the UK contributes significantly - are looking at ways to improve both the quality of training and throughput.

 

Underlying many of Afghanistan’s problems is the cancer of narcotics. More Afghan provinces are now poppy-free. But this good news is offset by growth in poppy cultivation in the South, and by increasingly obvious and close links between the narco-traffickers and the insurgency. We were concerned to ensure that ISAF does as much as possible to support the Afghan governments Counter Narcotics strategy within its current operational plan. ISAF itself is up for this.

 

So much for the policy background to our visit. I was particularly pleased that one of the regional trips we made was to Sangin, in Northern Helmand. I had been there before in April, shortly after the Taleban were driven from the town.

 

The change in five months has been enormous. The District Centre, which in April was showing the scars of nine months of Taleban siege, is spick and span. Locals were bathing in the river close to it. The Bazaar, empty in April, is now a hive of activity. A District Governor is in place and working closely with the Afghan Army and Police and with ISAF forces. The hope now is to supplement his efforts with officials from other Afghan Ministries.

 

There are other tangible benefits. Since April, the UK spent around U$115,000 in Sangin and has projects currently ongoing to the value of over U$670,000. USAID has also spent over U$100,000. Projects include refurbishing the Governor's building, the Afghan National Police HQ, a canal crossing and new school construction. More are in the pipeline.

 

Perhaps more importantly, the battle for hearts and minds is gradually being won. Sangin is still subject to numerous IED attacks – there was one on the day we were there that tragically killed two Afghan soldiers. But the numbers of incidents are falling. It is telling that in the week before our arrival tip-offs were received about 5 out of the 6 IED’s planted by the insurgents.

 

All this owes a great deal to the skill and professionalism of the ISAF soldiers deployed to Sangin and of the staff of the PRT in Lashkar Gar. I pay tribute to them.

 

Our second field visit was to US forces on the border with Pakistan in Regional Command (East). Very different and more difficult terrain, and in some ways a different battle. But here again I was impressed by the skill and dedication of the ISAF personnel involved. Underpinned by high-tech equipment, they were determined to go more than the extra mile to avoid civilian casualties and minimise collateral damage.

 

Again, the effort to win hearts and minds was tangible. It was telling that people have moved back into two villages near a Forward Operating Base we visited, despite the presence of foreign fighters in the hills over the border into Pakistan. Encouraging news too of a more sustained effort by the Pakistani Army and Frontier Guard to crack down on insurgent activity on their side of the border.

 

This, my third visit, bought home the complexity of the operation in Afghanistan. In addition to the Afghan government, many international actors have an important role. There’s still a great deal to do and - in development terms at least - the international community will be in for a long haul. NATO’s servicemen and women are responding magnificently to the security challenge. It was an honour to be able to meet them and to see them at work.