Goodbye Mr Nato
by
Marcel Van Silfhout |
The Dutch approach was recently criticised as too soft
It was a final goodbye in the midst of summer. On July 31, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer (61) stepped down as secretary-general of Nato in Brussels. The former Dutch foreign minister and ex-president of the Dutch Christian Democratic Party had led the military alliance for more than five years. To be more explicit, five crucial years in which Afghan and Iraq wars gave the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation headaches. The exit of De Hoop Scheffer, known for his diplomatic skills to build bridges, is a goodbye to an era. His tenure was a difficult one, with the Nato-mission in Afghanistan topping the list.
It was only a week after De Hoop Scheffer left Nato, the American commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, admitted to the Wall Street Journal that the Taliban had gained an upper hand in Afghanistan. He warned that US casualties would remain high for months to come. On August 20 Afghan elections will be held. McChrystal has already announced a change in US strategy. The new strategy is aimed at a better protection of Afghan civilians from rising levels of Taliban violence and intimidation. The American general has put a premium on safeguarding the local population rather than hunting down militants. General McChrystal’s thinking echoes the ‘Dutch approach’ or ‘Dutch Model’ which was debated at the ‘big tent meeting’ in The Hague late March this year.
It’s widely known that the Dutch troops with operating bases in Tarin Kowt and Deh Rahwod in the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan have to deal with heavy Taliban attacks. The death toll for the Dutch so far is 19 soldiers. Nevertheless, the Dutch were able to achieve some positive results like building schools and health centres. To win the hearts and minds of Afghan people by supporting them in their ordinary life instead of resorting to aggressive military operations within heavily populated areas, is known as the Dutch approach. So, the ‘new American strategy’ to win hearts and minds of Afghan people is a déjà vu to the Dutch.
The Dutch approach was recently criticised as too soft. One can help Afghan people, but what if the Taliban forces grow in strength and seize power in the southern provinces like Helmand and Uruzgan? When Afghan citizens see the Taliban ruling, they won’t rely on the Nato troops any more.
Probably, the new strategy, which will be revealed after the Afghan elections, is to start talking to the Taliban. But what is there to negotiate about? Since the Taliban want to win what do they gain from talks? When Jaap de Hoop Scheffer took over as Nato secretary-general, about 6,000 allied troops were active in Afghanistan. The current number of Nato soldiers is 64,000. That’s almost the same number of Russian troops (84,000) at the end of 1989 who left Afghanistan after suffering a decade of heavy losses fighting the mujahideen.
At the beginning of Dutch troops’ Afghan mission some criticism was heard in Holland. However, the mission was sold to the Dutch public and parliament as an attempt to rebuild the poor Afghanistan by protecting the people from the Taliban so that aid could be distributed to civilians and development projects undertaken. Some cast doubts, saying this would not be the case. They predicted that the Dutch troops would stay as a fighting mission without end.
The legacy of De Hoop Scheffer is he managed to hold a deeply divided Nato together. In a recent interview to the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad, he said that he learned two things from Iraq war: ‘’Whenever Europe presents itself as a counterweight for the Americans this results in a divided Europe, which saddens me as a European. And, an America that thinks it can do it alone is also doomed to fail.’’
De Hoop Scheffer is gone. It’s known that he was a close friend of the former American president George W. Bush. When he was the Dutch minister of foreign affairs, his cabinet was one of the few that supported Bush and Blair in their war on Iraq. Now, an investigation into the support of that war is going on. It’s rumoured that De Hoop Scheffer had set his eyes on the Nato position by supporting Bush in the early days of the Iraq war. The Netherlands was one of the few countries that backed Bush in his false assumptions that Saddam Hussein had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction.
At this moment the outcome of that investigation is as unclear as the Afghan future of Nato. The only thing we know for sure is that we will find the name of De Hoop Scheffer in the archives of history, although we cannot say if the final picture on him will be a negative or a positive one. Perhaps it will be something in between. Not black or white, but grey, the same colour that probably fits him best and the Nato mission in Afghanistan.
(Marcel van Silfhout is an investigative reporter working for public Dutch Television). |
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