Show Slipping in The following editorial appeared in Saturdays Saturday's Washington Post The United States and its NATO allies are engaged in a regular ritual blaming each other forthe forthe for forthe the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan This week Defense Secretary Robert Gates forcefully criticized European governments for failing to meet commitments to supply troops and equipment for Afghan operations he even threatened that the United States might withdraw its troops from a European preoccupation if Afghanistan were not better supplied At Ata a meeting of defense ministers the Netherlands again complained that it along with the United States Britain and Canada bears the brunt of the fighting against the while Germany Italy Spain and most other NATO members restrict their soldiers to the safer parts of Afghanistan or ban them from In reply the German Gennan defense minister suggested that NATO's aggressive military strategy in the south does more harm hann than good Loud oud disputes such as this have always been part of NATO and tend to disguise its successes such as the facts that all 26 of the alliance members have troops in Afghanistan that all ha have haye e increased their commitment in the past year and that NATO forces continue to rout the wherever it is encountered Yet there are real problems both in the fighting and in inthe inthe inthe the supply and distribution of forces and they are worsening According to the United Nations and independent monitoring groups violence has increased significantly in Afghanistan for the second straight year spreading from the southeast to areas close to Kabul Coalition deaths including 94 US U.S. soldiers killed already exceed the year full-year total for 2006 The disparity of effort among NATO members continues to be significant The United States contributes 15 I 00 troops to member the 41 member NATO-led NATO international force known as ISAF and deploys another in terrorism counter operations Britain has troops in the country meaning that Britain and the United States together account for more than half of ISAF's strength Meanwhile France and Germany together deploy soldiers or 10 percent of ISAF and none serve in the areas where most of the fighting takes place Among other nations only Canada and the Netherlands with 1700 and 1500 troops are contributing substantially to anti anti- anti operations |