Keeping our allies on our side in Afghanistan

By Leo Michel and Robert Hunter Los Angeles Times

‘There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies," observed Winston Churchill in 1945, "and that is fighting without them." It’s a truth worth recalling as the Obama administration nears crucial decisions on Afghanistan.

American commentators often shortchange allied efforts in Afghanistan, ignoring the facts and insulting our friends. The European allies and Canada provide about half of the 73,000 troops in the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, and they account for nearly 40% of Western combat deaths since 2001. Estonia, Denmark, Canada, Britain, the Netherlands and Latvia have lost more soldiers per capita than has the United States.

Bravery is not an American monopoly. Most allies report many soldiers volunteering to return to Afghanistan despite the increased violence. A Canadian officer who lost his leg in a roadside bomb attack in 2007 recently returned to Kandahar, in his words, "to do good." Dutch soldiers engaged in the dangerous Uruzgan province since 2006 have none of the uncertainty about their mission that marked those who were accused of failing to stop the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia.

True, NATO must cope with "caveats" — restrictions imposed by some allies on how and where their forces can be employed in Afghanistan. For example, most of the nearly 4,400 German troops are effectively barred by their parliament from operating outside the relatively safe northern region, and Turkey allows its 720-man contingent to operate only in Kabul. Some allied troops are prohibited from conducting nighttime or "offensive" missions. France’s military chief properly calls caveats a "poison for multinational operations," and his British counterpart insists other allies take a larger role in combat.