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For all the pageantry and symbolism of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s 60th anniversary summit, its greatest achievement has been to redefine, in the saddest way, the expression “bitter irony.”
The alliance that was born in the afterglow of the civilized world’s victory over fascism, and went on to define itself by standing up to the cruelty of the Soviet empire, stands humbled by a fractious guerrilla army led by the killers of school girls, which relies upon the support of one of NATO’s putative allies, Pakistan – the same state that contributed to the Soviets’ undoing by the Afghan mujahideen.
The summit in Strasbourg/Kehl ended without discussing, much less adopting, any new stratagems to counter the Pakistan military’s backing for Mullah Omar and his core network of Afghan Taliban commanders and fighters.
As well, the alliance’s leaders offered no explanation as to how the lives of Afghan civilians will be protected during this year’s expected upsurge of fighting.
Worst of all, NATO’s political leaders congratulated themselves for committing only 3,000 more troops and 2,000 trainers to the war zone. That's about the same number of soldiers the Soviet Army deployed in the mid-1980’s to defend just one of its bases on the southwest outskirts of Kabul.
Even the participation of an articulate, well-intentioned new American president could not reverse the effective emasculation of NATO through the misguided policies of his predecessor, George W. Bush.
And so the politicians produced PR instead of results: from Obama to Brown, the conference was hailed as a great success. It was left to the diminutive French president, as co-host, to utter the most embarrassing lie.
“The time of international summits where we talk and do nothing is over,” pronounced Nicholas Sarkozy – who refuses to send more French forces to Afghanistan, and who, like the other NATO leaders, said not a word about Mullah Omar’s sanctuary in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province.
It was pure propaganda, prettied up with high-flown rhetoric about “comprehensive approaches” and “renewing the alliance to meet the challenges of our time.”
Witnesses to the past three decades of warfare in Afghanistan have heard this kind of guff before. The Soviets and their Afghan Communist client regime read from much the same script, laced with clichés like “internationalist duty.”
By the mid-1980’s, the Soviets showed themselves to be incapable of coming up with new ideas to deploy against the Western-backed mujahideen. It became clear to all the parties to the conflict that the Red Army was in for a drubbing, and eventually would have to give up and limp homeward.
NATO’s political glitterati appear destined for the same fate. The politicians’ words and actions reveal a marked detachment from the realities faced by their troops on the battlefield. Each day, the soldiers are putting their lives on the line for the mission, while their “excellent suits” look only for the back door.
The people of Afghanistan feel betrayed: the foreigners’ current buzz phrase - “lowering expectations” – shouts cut-and-run in anyone’s language.
Quite likely, that’s just what Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi was mumbling into his cell phone as he delayed the NATO proceedings. With the marital rape bill, President “Pazzo” Karzai has given Italy and all the allies a good excuse to shoulder their assault rifles and go home (never mind that Karzai, his regime and its dysfunctional policies are all, in large part, creations of the U.S.-led coalition).
Clearly, Pakistan isn’t the only faithless foreign interloper on the Afghan scene.
