Sunday 20 May 2012

0 NATO shifts to help an elusive Afghanistan peace

President Barack Obama and NATO allies declared Sunday that the end of the long and unpopular Afghanistan war is in sight even as they struggled to hold their fighting force together in the face of dwindling patience and shaky unity.

From his hometown and the city where his re-election operation hums, Obama spoke of a post-2014 world when "the Afghan war as we understand it is over." Until then, though, remaining U.S. and allied troops face the continued likelihood of fierce combat.

G8 Summit Chicago 2012

Gen. John Allen, the top commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, offered a stern warning Sunday that the plan to give Afghan forces the lead in fighting next summer won't take coalition troops out of harm's way. "It doesn't mean that we won't be fighting," Allen said. "It doesn't mean that there won't be combat."

The fate of the war is both the center of this summit and a topic no one is celebrating as a mission accomplished. The alliance already has one foot out the Afghanistan door, Obama has his ear attuned to the politics of an economy-driven presidential election year and other allies are pinching pennies in a European debt crisis.

As NATO powers and other nations contributing to the war effort gathered, the alliance's top officer, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, asserted that "there will be no rush for the exits" in Afghanistan. "Our goal, our strategy, our timetable remain unchanged," he said.

In fact, the strategy has shifted many times over the course of more than 10 years of war, and the goal narrowed to objectives focused on the long-term security of the mostly Western nations fighting there. The timetable has also moved, despite the overall commitment to keep foreign forces in Afghanistan into 2014.

Tension over newly elected French President Francois Hollande's pledge to end his country's combat mission two years early infused the meeting. German Chancellor Angela Merkel pointedly cited the credo of the allies in the Afghanistan war, "in together, out together," and her foreign minister cautioned against a "withdrawal competition" by coalition countries.

Hollande said he was merely being pragmatic in keeping a campaign pledge to pull combat troops this year but this still would "let the alliance continue to work."

While France's new posture obviously rattled the leaders, Allen betrayed no concern about the coalition's common purpose coming unglued. "The mantra of this particular mission has been in together, out together," he told reporters. "And I'm not seeing, frankly, many voices being raised that would oppose that."

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