Taliban ’could rise again’

[American Patriot]

Taliban ’could rise again’
Pakistan Tribune ^ | Tuesday August 01, 2006



LONDON: NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer warned overnight that Afghanistan could again become a breeding ground for terrorists without greater international help.


His remarks were published as the 26-nation alliance prepared to take command of security operations in southern Afghanistan, embarking on what many commentators were describing as its most ambitious mission.
"NATO should never become the exit strategy for the rest of the international community," Secretary-General De Hoop Scheffer said in an interview with London’s Financial Times.


The NATO chief called for greater aid from the European Union, the United Nations, the Group of Eight nations, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States, and bilateral donors.
"I tell people ... NATO will do its job but you have to do yours as well in assisting the Afghan people and government, but also in preventing the country from becoming a stronghold for terrorists who want to run and destroy our society," he told the FT.


The Secretary-General said not enough progress had been made since a meeting of international donors to Afghanistan in London on January 31 and February 1.


"What is the follow-up to the compact agreed in February?" he asked. "Has enough happened in the meantime? I don’t think enough has happened."
While acknowledging that NATO needed to do more to train Afghan soldiers, he also said he felt "the EU should be much more active in training the Afghan national police".


NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is scheduled to take over from a US-led coalition later Monday at a small ceremony in Kandahar, the biggest city in southern Afghanistan.


There has been a spike in violence in the south of Afghanistan in the lead-up to the event, which will see around 8000 British, Canadian, Dutch and US troops come under ISAF command.


Kandahar is one of most insurgency-hit provinces in southern Afghanistan which has seen most of the dozens of Iraq-style suicide bombings this year.


Tens of thousands of foreign troops remain in Afghanistan following the 2001 ouster of the Taliban regime in a US-led invasion.


Sixty foreign troops have been killed in action in Afghanistan this year, most of them Americans on counter-insurgency missions with the coalition.
The move sees ISAF expand from the relatively calm north and west of Afghanistan, and the capital Kabul, into an area where Taliban are most active and have teamed up with drugs runners.

[Malsua]

Good, let them rise up. They'll be easier to knock down that way instead of this whack-a-mole crap we're dealing with on the Pakistan border.