Most of you will have read the news by now, but I need to mention this to complete my earlier post The battle of Wobbly Knee: Dutch troops in Afghanistan. Dutch Parliament voted yesterday, with a substantial majority, to send some 1,200 more troops to Afghanistan. More precisely to the dangerous province of Uruzgan. Only D66, the SP (Socialist Party) and GroenLinks (Green leftist party) voted against, but D66 has already declared it will back the troops regardless. Good on them.
Some 7,500 soldiers will be prepared for reconstruction and stabilisation activities under the umbrella of ISAF (International Security Assistance Force). The first extra troops will be sent in August and the whole operation is slated to be in effect for two years. In the foreign press, on the BBC News site for instance, the extra number of Dutch soldiers to be stationed in Afghanistan is often estimated at 1,400 troops. So far the Dutch press have only mentioned 1,200. To recapitulate: the Dutch ISAF contingent in Afghanistan will be enlarged by 1,200 soldiers coming from a rotating pool of 7,500 (source: the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf). To be continued, for sure.
UPDATE: Salient detail: fraction leader for Democrats 66, Boris Dittrich, just resigned over the Afghanistan debate. Lousewies van der Laan will replace him. Dittrich took responsibility for, and I quote, “political-tactical mistakes”. One of those mistakes was a, later recanted, threat by D66 to let the Dutch Cabinet “fall” if troops were sent to Afghanistan. The reason behind all this manoeuvring? To persuade coalition partner PvdA (Dutch labour party) to vote against. As we know now, that tactic did not work.
And they will achieve?
“And they will achieve?”
That was the point of the whole debate on whether to send more troops or not. For the time being I’ll consider this to be an act of goodwill.
It is a nice gesture, but I’m sure their will be British or American units protecting the Dutch.
Test.
Note that you’re supposed to type ‘F’ from now on.
Does anyone still see “Please type the first letter in the name of this blog (for anti-spam purposes)”, rather than “the second”? Hit ‘reload’, and if that doesn’t work, please tell me.
I typed the “F” but still see the “A”.
Mozilla Firefox on windows XP home edition
It appears the old text still shows up in popups but not entries?
This is absurd. I’ve changed all files.
I could just change it back, but I want to get to the bottom of this.
Well, here is a comment, I could not post since Friday night, because of the comment problem:
As a member of the Dutch labour Party (PvdA), I received today (by email) an update on this subject, written by the party leader, Wouter Bos. (Click on my url, if you read Dutch). From a tactical point of view, the PvdA has certainly scored well. It forced the opportunist D66 people to back down, and, at the same time, it made clear, how weak the position of the centre-right Government under MP Balkenende is.
Like Guy, I do not like the unclear relation with the American-led “Enduring Freedom” operation. As there are obviously no more Al-Qaeda people around in Uruzgan, and as there are few people who still follow the Taliban, “EF” should concentrate on the North-East and South-East, where, presumably, Bin Laden and other core people can be found.
Another big problem is the actual governor of Uruzgan Province, a ma named Jan Mohammed. In reliable Dutch press publications, he is described as a Maffia leader, who did a good job in fighting the Russians and then the Taliban, who imprisoned him during 2 years in Kandahar, to return in 2002 to “his” province, where he joined the opium trade and exercises a terror regime. With a personal touch: He likes young boys very much, and is known to pick them up during raids in villages that belong to his enemies. Hamed Karzai has promised to remove this man from his post, but nothing has been done, so far. Mr. Jan Mohammed is a member of the same clan as Karzai. Karzai’s elder brother, in Kabul, warned the Dutch journalist against the irritable nature of his kinsman. There will be much money involved with making Jan accept a “Security Advisor’s” post in Kabul.
In my opinion, the reconstruction work in Afghanistan would need a strong EU-involvement. At this moment, an American lead on this subject, is nowhere to be seen. One of the weaknesses of the Dutch approach is, that they think that they can go it alone, like they tried in Srebrenica (1994/1995) with disastrous consequences, and in 2003/2004 in the southern Iraqi province of Muthanna, where they succeeded, because of British protection. Like for the Bosnian mission, there is an UN mandate for Afghanistan. But that is of no actual value. To be able to deliver on the mission objectives as stated in the UN-mandate, a relatively small country like the Netherlands needs a concrete engagement of a body with some power to impose it. That is what, in my opinion, the Dutch should have discussed first.
But, fyi, it only worked with an “A”…
PVDA is the largest opposition party.
That’s because I’ve changed it back. Still no idea why the popup text wouldn’t change.