NATO's Afghan mission hit by 'mission creep,' official says

BRUSSELS — NATO’s information cognition successful Afghanistan became a unfortunate of “mission creep” arsenic the subject enactment allowed itself to beryllium dragged into helping rebuild the impoverished, conflict-torn country, the authoritative starring a process of drafting lessons from the ngo said connected Wednesday.

Assistant Secretary-General for Operations John Manza and NATO’s 30 lawman nationalist envoys are compiling a study connected astir 2 decades of enactment successful Afghanistan. They were tasked with the occupation aft the Afghan president fled and the NATO-trained Afghan service collapsed erstwhile President Joe Biden announced that helium was pulling U.S. troops out, paving the mode for the Taliban to prehend power.

Manza told European Union lawmakers that of the large lessons being discussed by his squad – which besides includes input from subject and governmental experts, including from Afghanistan – “the astir evident 1 is ngo creep.”

NATO took implicit the International Security Assistance Force successful Afghanistan successful 2003, astir 2 years aft a U.S.-led conjugation invaded the state to oust the Taliban for harboring Osama bin Laden, the deceased al-Qaeda leader.

Manza explained that it initially had astir 5,000 troops based mostly successful and astir the superior Kabul, but that wrong 3 years its absorption shifted to “tackling the basal causes of terrorism” by helping to rebuild a landlocked state riven by taste and tribal divisions and with a poorly educated population.

NATO unit numbers accrued to astir 60,000 by 2006, with military-civilian teams dispersed astir the mostly lawless state trying to foster economical maturation and amended governance successful astir each province.

“This truly important summation did not person the desired effects,” Manza said. “The insurgency was inactive gaining strength. The federation was inactive suffering greatly from corruption and governmental show was not improving.”

Manza said: “you person to ask, and we’ve been asking this a batch successful the committee I chair, were these goals realistic that we had astatine the time?” He said that adjacent though the planetary assemblage did not look to beryllium achieving its goals, “our effect to the mediocre advancement … was to bash more.”

Under a “surge” ordered successful 2009 by past U.S. President Barack Obama, NATO troops numbers climbed adjacent more, to implicit 100,000 portion planetary assistance to Afghanistan was substantially increased. The excess assistance wealth began fueling already rampant corruption.

“Now looking back, it was wide that this monolithic effort could not beryllium sustained implicit a agelong play of time, truthful these were transient efforts successful the assorted provinces,” Manza said.

Manza shared archetypal findings of his committee’s enactment with NATO defence ministers past week. He is owed to taxable his last study to the alliance’s overseas ministers erstwhile they conscionable connected Nov. 30-Dec. 1.