This is what I wrote about two months ago:

The irony - and my tentative prediction for 2007 - will be that things may change for the better in Iraq, but that NATO will stumble and ultimately fail in Afghanistan.

Well, someone has stumbled and failed over Afghanistan today:

Prime Minister Romano Prodi resigned on Wednesday, just nine months after winning the closest election in Italy’s modern history, when his centre-left coalition suffered a Senate defeat on foreign policy.

Prodi's last spell in power almost a decade ago was also cut short by far-left coalition allies. This time they rebelled over keeping Italian troops in Afghanistan and allowing the expansion of a U.S. military base in Italy.

This comes at a time when Canada and France are having a spat over the latter's contribution to NATO's efforts in Afghanistan. The Dutch in the meantime have sent some extra troops over, but do expect that when a new government takes over tomorrow the parliamentary scrutiny of the Afghan mission may actually get some support at ministerial levels.

NATO's demise? The absence of unity to fully resource this mission and contribute to its success is not very encouraging.

It is probably a little too difficult to assess al-Qaeda's current operational strengths from listening to Ayman al-Zawahiri's video missives, the latest one of which emerged yesterday. So, it is better to let Peter Bergen put everything into perspective and his latest piece reveals that the group has recovered from the many setbacks it endured right after 9/11 and is now well positioned for more terror attacks in the West. All of that has been facilitated by favorable conditions on the ground in Pakistan and Afghanistan:

The tribal areas of Pakistan have proved to be a comfortable home for Al Qaeda--and that isn't going to change. The Pakistani government has already concluded peace agreements with local militants (but not, obviously, Al Qaeda) in two of the seven federally administered tribal areas along the Afghan border, and it is likely to reach additional peace deals this year. That means the Pakistani army will gradually pull out of these areas, which can only help Al Qaeda.

Meanwhile, on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, the Taliban has staged a comeback while virtually merging with Al Qaeda. The Taliban were a provincial bunch when they held power in Afghanistan, but, in the past couple of years, they have increasingly identified as part of the global jihadist movement, their rhetoric full of references to Iraq and Palestine in a manner that mirrors bin Laden's public statements.

This adds to the general sense of doom that is enveloping the poorly resourced NATO mission in Afghanistan. Any assessment of that effort by the British, Canadian and Dutch governments needs to take account of what Bergen is saying here, but I doubt it will.

NOTE: The Economist has a similar piece this week, Al-Qaeda, on the march.

AND: Carlotta Gall of the NYT has more on the duplicitous role of Pakistan's intelligence community (via Oxblog).

This week, in The Netherlands:

Defence Minister Henk Kamp angrily rounded on Tuesday on Socialist SP MP Harry Bommel who accused the Liberal VVD minister of involving the Netherlands in the "dirty war" in Afghanistan.

"This is impolite to the armed forces and the Cabinet. You should be ashamed. Who is dirty here if roadside bombs are laid that hit the population?" Kamp said.

Kamp was questioned by the SP and green-left GroenLinks over the military operation against the Taliban in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar, in which Dutch troops are involved.

Van Bommel said the Dutch mission in Afghanistan was sold as reconstruction, but claimed that war was now being waged.

Van Bommel is right in pointing out that the Dutch cabinet has never been clear about the mission, any such clarity and sense of mission would have voided the effort before it even had properly started. But Van Bommel is also shameless in revealing his willingness to play politics with a decent mission that seeks to bring peace and stability to a nation ravaged by war, and in the case of the Taliban a real 'dirty war'. The Dutch after the election have become an uncertain NATO partner and we will be lucky to see the mission continue with current toop levels. Forget about any increase or expansion.

And in Canada too political expediency and uncertainty are undercutting the work of the NATO partner that has been doing most of the recent heavy lifting:

Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe has threatened to call an election if the Conservative government refuses to redefine Canada's military mission in Afghanistan.

“I don't think the aim of Mr. Duceppe is so much Afghanistan but rather to rush into an election and not give the Liberal party the capacity to organize ourselves. We will work hard and be ready for an election whenever it will come,” Mr. Dion said.

And the French have this week decided to scale back their involvement:

As violence mounts in Afghanistan, France is pulling 200 of its best soldiers out. But military officials here insist France remains fully committed, with 1,100 troops still based in Kabul.

Nevertheless, France's decision to withdraw its Special Forces comes amid concerns in Paris that NATO's mission in Afghanistan has grown confused and that the alliance may be overreaching in its efforts to stabilize and rebuild the nation

The irony - and my tentative prediction for 2007 - will be that things may change for the better in Iraq, but that NATO will stumble and ultimately fail in Afghanistan. It would be a sad day for NATO, for its partners, and for the Afghans. But it would be an even deeper tragedy to witness how a predominantly European effort to bring safety and security would once again fail due to a lack of political will and moral resolve.

NOTE: Canada's Stephen Harper provided some of that moral mettle this week in an end of year interview:

"I will never, as Prime Minister of this country, abandon the short-run needs of our men and women who are in a war theatre, nor will I abandon the long-term needs, this country's long-term security interests, for any political reason, for any political poll, or anything," he said in a year-end interview with Sun Media.

"If we're defeated in the House, if we lose an election, so be it. I could not live with myself if I played political games with the lives of Canadians."

So, watch what happens to Canada's PM. If he manages to stay in power - either by adroitly managing his minority government or winning an election - it will be an indication that there still is a market for staying the course and trying to win in Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan. No comment necessary, I believe.

It may get lost among all the media excitement over the Baker-Hamilton report, but it seems to me that another fruitful area for writing reports has emerged in Afghanistan. And I use the plural deliberately as one such report can look at the future of the nation and the West’s strategy towards fixing it, the other one can deal with the failure of NATO countries to share the burden of an increasing workload. Or better, the burden of combat:

Britain's Foreign Office minister says reluctant NATO allies need to “get real” about the threat posed by a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan.

Kim Howells told a diplomatic audience at Canada's Foreign Affairs building in Ottawa that Britons are just as frustrated as Canadians about bearing the brunt of heavy fighting in the country's south.

German, Italian, French and Spanish forces patrol relatively quiet
sectors and have refused to allow their troops to engage in combat.
At the NATO summit two weeks ago, those countries agreed to loosen restrictions and promised to help Canadian, British, Dutch and American forces battling the Taliban, but only in emergencies.

This issue has been on the frontburner especially in the UK and Canada where frustration over selective opt-outs by ‘NATO partners’ is understandably growing.

Invoking the NATO’s Article V, its collective defense clause, after 9/11 essentially created the first real combat situation for the organization. By deploying to Afghanistan most NATO governments must have known that it hardly would be a mission focused exclusively on rebuilding and maintaining peace. It was a unique venture in that the peace still had to be established before it could be maintained, but no political leader was willing to wager some political capital on that unpopular notion. This approach solidified the evidence that leaders from Canada and key European nations failed in not only recognizing and articulating the dangers of the post 9/11 world, they willfully neglected to inform their citizens of the nature of the Afghan mission.

We’re now a good five years further and while Canada is under new management and thus less ambivalent, beyond Blair’s Britain and a half-baked Dutch effort there is very limited appetite for beefing up NATO’s efforts. Berlin, Brussels, Rome, Paris and Madrid are not the best places in Europe to invoke the spirit of common defense and joint operations.

I’ve often been asked when my Euro-disparagement first emerged and in response I pinpoint the embarrassing failure of almost all European nations to end the well organized civil war and mass-murder in the former Yugoslavia. Symbolic efforts, peacekeepers and observers paved the way for an ethnic bloodbath that only the United States seemed capable of handling in the end. Kosovo was kept whole by a version of NATO that at the time had a determined nation in the driver’s seat. And by all accounts, the risk profile for the Balkans was a much easier one to digest compared to a mountainscape littered with faith based suicide bombers.

So as Washington’s hands are tied, European leaders in places like Paris and Madrid are deeply mistaken to believe that somehow Kandahar and Kabul can emerge from the rubble, in much the way that Sarajevo and Priština did. Few will understand the urgency, and even fewer will want to put precious political capital on the line to turn the Afghan mission, and NATO’s long-term future, into a success. Needless to say, the outcome of such inaction is worrisome to say the least.

Final word: while admirable we also have to see if British and Canadian efforts can endure mounting domestic criticism and political turbulence.

UPDATE: Some useful comments from Fareed Zakaria on the need to succeed in Afghanistan:

As Iraq has descended into chaos over the last three years, Washington policymakers have often pointed to Afghanistan as the success story in the war on terror. Even those who worry about the situation on the ground agree that the United States and its NATO allies have the right strategy in place; they just think we've devoted too few resources to the problem. In fact, Afghanistan is in danger of becoming a version of Iraq, where the central government has collapsed, disorder is rife and a Qaeda-backed insurgency controls large swathes of the country. In addition, the policies that the United States has in place are at best inadequate. We have tried to handle Afghanistan with an Afghan strategy. But it is now clear that the only way to stabilize the country is to have a Pakistan strategy.

As always, these solutions are multilayered.

As frustration over progress in Afghanistan grows, so do the calls to sit down with the Taliban and find a way to negotiate a settlement as a way out. Lauryn Oates explains cogently why we shouldn't:

Negotiating with the Taliban as a fall-back measure is a poor excuse for a failure so far to provide real security and development for Afghans. The Taliban were birthed from a previous failure of the international community, in the aftermath of Afghanistan's use as a pawn between the former Soviet Union and the U.S. Allowing the Taliban to have any role in the governance of Afghanistan is a victory to the forces that brought Afghanistan to its knees in the first place. It also signals that women's rights were merely convenient for the public relations of the intervention, but can be negotiated away when the going gets tough.

Precisely. It is evident that the NATO/ISAF operations are not sufficiently resourced to bring the necessary development and security that Oates refers to. And that was made even clearer today by NATO itself, calling for a significant overhaul of military, civilian and development operations in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is a test case about how far the western world - once it is engaged - is willing to go to accomplish real success without creating early 'opt-outs' like a negotiated settlement with groups such as the Taliban. When it comes to Iraq the ball is in America's court, but when it comes to Afghanistan it is up to Europe and Canada to show their mettle. It requires brave political leadership to stay that course and to sell it to an increasingly skeptic and hard to please electorate. But if we believe in the very basic rights we are defending in Afghanistan and if at the same time we consider the blood-stained record of prior multilateral efforts (Bosnia, Rwanda), then there can be only one way forward: increased effort leading to success. But do not count on this road being taken.

David Frum proposes a three-point common sense strategy in dealing with North Korea, with four specific action points for the US.

He interestingly suggests an involvement for NATO by arguing that its membership should be enlarged to include Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. That is not only a good way to help neutralize Pyongyang, it will also reinvigorate an organization whose members aren’t able to jointly contribute to its main project at the moment, Afghanistan. Failure there would no doubt create a key client state for NoKo’s nuclear exports and that prospect by itself should help NATO in redefining and expanding its mission.

There is however one very clear downside to Frum’s plans: the omnipresent and deep rooted fear to antagonize China. That will thwart some of the more adventurous proposals to take on North Korea and give NATO a mandate in the Pacific. Still, the time has come to put some unconventional approaches on the table.

NOTE: It was Tony Blair today who called on all NATO-members to help out in Afghanistan.

While the Bush administration is now continuously blasted for its flawed strategy in Iraq, it should be noted that its outsourcing of the war in Afghanistan to NATO has equal potential for trouble. And that is not necessarily an American mistake, but the inability of some of NATO’s members to step up and share the dangerous workload equally with some of its allies on the frontlines:

Canada's Defence Minister is confronting those NATO countries with troops deployed in relatively stable parts of Afghanistan — including Germany, France, Spain and Italy — saying they must lift the restrictions that prevent their soldiers from taking on the more dangerous tasks being shouldered by Canadians.

It's a problem that one former Canadian military leader says threatens the future of the 57-year-old North Atlantic Treaty Organization — an alliance founded on the principle that an attack against one of its members is an attack against all.

Canadian troops are paying the ultimate price with a frequency that has caused many at home to question Canada's involvement in Afghanistan. Trooper Mark Andrew Wilson, killed in a roadside bomb explosion this weekend, was the 40th Canadian soldier to die in the conflict.

You may recall the difficulty some nations had in getting a fiat for troop deployment in Afghanistan. The debate very often centered on the fine distinction between “peacemaking & reconstruction” versus “combat”, the latter one being not all that palatable in Europe’s mainland capitals. If we take that lack of resolve into account combined with the latest and troubling missive from NATO’s top commander in Afghanistan, then it is not overly hard to conclude that this mission is in peril.

Britain is prepping itself for the Blair-Brown handover, the Dutch are in election mode, Angela Merkel is relying on a grand coalition and appetite to support American ventures is running very low in Madrid and Rome these days, not to mention the upcoming French presidential battle. In other words: no one is foolish enough to, at this point in time, waste political capital on a highly contentious move to increase troop levels for Afghanistan. And that is something which Canada’s conservative minority government has discovered as well, no doubt prompting its Defense minister’s desperate call for help.

If the Afghan mission fails we will not only lose a country to years of darkness, the twinkling NATO star will probably lose its luster for good.

RELATED: Leaders-in-waiting grope for new position on US.

Conrad Black is putting the time he’s out on bail to good use with regular columns in the National Post, last Saturday’s (behind a subscriber wall) highlighted a theme that has made a compelling comeback over the past few weeks:

“ This is war-making, but it is executed crisply, that is often the only method of peacekeeping ”

Of course, his reflection refers to the Israel-Hezbollah war and Victor Davis Hanson was kind enough to – not for the first time – explore why old fashioned peacekeeping hasn’t helped in resolving that particular conflict:

Syria and Iran have never been more isolated; neither was isolated when Bill Clinton praised the “democracy” in Tehran or when an American secretary of State sat on the tarmac in Damascus for hours to pay homage to Syria ’s gangsters. Israel is at last being given an opportunity to unload on jihadists; that was impossible during the Arafat fraud that grew out of the Oslo debacle.

Only a decisive war can create the conditions for the establishment of a lasting peace and only the destruction of the radical zealots who initiated this war in the first place can bring this about. That is, if a viable democratic and open society can be nurtured on the rubble that decades of jihadist deceit and western acquiescence have created.

What is interesting to me is how for instance in Europe deep misconceptions continue to exist by separating warmaking and peacekeeping and how these two are considered to be very different approaches to a problem. Of course, this separation has in no small part contributed to the rather absurd overreaction to Israel’s actions by some European leaders and notably by a number of UN officials. Past missions by both - the former Yugoslavia being a case in point - indicate that reliance on peace and reconstruction doesn’t necessarily end a conflict or war.

Thankfully there is always a live example to illustrate the point and some of you may remember the deep rift in Dutch politics over the deployment of Dutch troops in Afghanistan earlier this year. The mission got a parliamentary go ahead only on the government accepting the condition that it was to be a peacekeeping and reconstruction exercise only, fighting terrorists it was felt was best delegated to American troops in the region. Well, in order to start that reconstruction effort the Dutch had to wage a bit of war last week on locally active Taliban groups:

Dutch commandos killed 18 enemy fighters who set up positions in rugged hills overlooking a Dutch camp in southern Afghanistan, the country's military chief said Friday. There were no Dutch casualties during a 10-day mission.

Hopefully this experience will help redefine the traditional interpretation of peacekeeping and merge it with warmaking, giving the peace effort that what it has always lacked: teeth.

UPDATE: Some good comments from Michael Barone.

Michael Yon is back reporting, this time from Afghanistan. Another feature on his much improved site is Frontline Forum which will have direct dispatches from soldiers on the frontlines.

Over the weekend the anti-war crowd was out on the streets again, but the term ‘in full force’ it seems no longer really applies. It has become some sort of fringe movement which acts as a consolidator for a variety of increasingly irrelevant causes such as unreconstructed Marxism and the pro-Castro lobby. Here is an interesting and highly entertaining photo essay of events in San Francisco last weekend.

Canada’s efforts in Afghanistan have given new momentum to the anti-war rallies there although the numbers that braved the northern cold were not that impressive either, the largest event in Toronto attracted some 1000 protestors. It did however lead to one interesting flare up when the desperation of the demonstrators there prompted some of them to argue that life in Afghanistan had been better under the Taliban. This resulted in a swift response from the Afghan ambassador in Canada, Omar Samad:

Obviously these groups have their own views and they're entitled to it," he said. "I have contacted some of these groups. They're sort of reluctant to discuss the issues."

Samad suggested it was hypocritical of opponents to Canada's involvement in Afghanistan to protest now when they remained silent in the 1990s while the Taliban oppressed women and denied children a modern education.

"Where were you when the women of Afghanistan were imprisoned?" he asked. "Where were you when the children of Afghanistan were denied schooling? Where were these demonstrations for human rights and dignity and honour?"

Not in his wildest dreams would someone like Samad have imagined something as utterly perplexing as seeing wealthy and free westerners call for a return to Taliban rule in his ravaged country. Yet, for a brief moment this week that call – and other equally reprehensible statements – made it clear to him how the fragile freedom project in his nation could be endangered. For if the western contributions to it start to incur some unforeseen (and human) costs, then the irrelevant fringe may have some ammunition to restart its journey to relevancy. I doubt it will, but you never know.

Dutch parliament yesterday finally found a way to support the nation’s participation with some 1400 troops in NATO’S ISAF mission (together with Britain and Canada) in Afghanistan for a further two years, thereby averting a political crisis. As explained before, the centre-right coalition relies on the support of a small centrist party with left-of-center sympathies and this group was starting to have second thoughts about supporting the mission.

The Dutch have their reservations when it comes to entering war zones, the mission in Srebrenica in 1995 was an outright disaster and restoring order in Southern Iraq had its problems too. These experiences have made the Dutch more than a little wary of overseas military engagements. At the same time it has sparked a much deeper probe about the expectations of armed ventures: is the Dutch military a force to fight and defend, or is it better to let it resemble that idealist model dreamed up in the 1990s, a peacekeeping force?

Peacekeeping missions by their very nature include a ‘war-component’ as you will have to pacify some elements that have fail to recognize the terms of the truce that a peacekeeping force is supposed to maintain. In some nations, Canada being a great example, most people don’t even know that their sons and daughters in Afghanistan are actually engaged in fighting the Taliban. “We’re a peaceful nation and we’re making peace” is an often heard belief and it is hard to argue with it as no one has ever made it clear to the average Canadian what their mission was all about. So, Canadians and Dutch alike are often left with the artificial peacekeeping construct, used to buy political support, to ignore realities on the ground, and to wishfully think that there are no real life threatening hazards in today’s world.

And that also was the nature of the recent Dutch debate. The opposition kept on pressing the issue of reconstruction - for which they were able to negotiate more funds - and demanded that there be no fusion with US operations, knowing full well that any association with American military power would directly undermine the widely held belief that it is a peace mission. And since Americans are “waging war” and we are “rebuilding and bringing peace” there would have to be a way to live up to international obligations without really getting your hands dirty. And some actually believe that there is a way to align these divergent views of how to get to work in Afghanistan, like this Labour parliamentarian who eventually got the assurances that underpins this odd compromise:

He wanted to know if there would be a clear separation between the ISAF mission and the American-led Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), which is focused on tracking down terrorists.

To that minister Kamp responded that the ISAF-mission would not be a ‘fighting-mission’ but that situation could arise where military personnel need the help of OEF to take on terrorist units in their territory. But: “in that case we are talking about an exception about which clear agreements have been made. If we don’t want it to happen, it won’t happen”

It’s hard to fathom what that would mean in practice. Say some enthusiastic Taliban decide to blow up a Dutch field hospital, would the servicemen there wait for American forces to arrive and prevent the attack or chase down the terrorists once they’ve done their work? Is it me or has NATO become an entirely dysfunctional organization where joint defense and military co-operation are myths that no one even cares to support in any meaningful way? Look, isn’t the fact that the Dutch even had to debate this venture ad nauseam following British and Canadian commitments not proof in itself that there is no real political will to support any democratization and stabilization efforts in the Middle East? It all probably depends on what you believe democracy and stability should ultimately look like, and it is sad to note that this particular interpretation has been gaining a great deal of momentum in the lowlands:

A small group of demonstrators stood outside parliament, one wearing a mask representing U.S. President George W. Bush and holding a puppet representing [Dutch PM] Balkenende. At his feet lay a dozen dolls made to look bloody and bullet-riddled. "This will only make more Guantanamo Bays and won't help peace," he said, referring to the U.S prison camp.

You either take up arms to help Afghanis achieve their peace or you don’t. Poorly defined missions and political compromises do not make great military successes.

UPDATE: Canadians are prepared to kill according to this report which reveals a somewhat better understanding of the situation on the ground:

Canadian soldiers are ready to kill and die in Afghanistan if need be to keep that country from ever again becoming a nest for terrorists, says the general who will command the troops in Kandahar.

"This is a dangerous mission. This is a dangerous environment," Brigadier-General David Fraser said yesterday. "And I cannot reduce the risk to zero."

This coming Thursday there will be a debate in Dutch parliament about sending a contingent of some 1,200 troops to Afghanistan. There have been some doubts about the project, you see. In the meantime pressure has been building on the Dutch to join the US-led efforts with NATO headquarters and even Kofi Annan weighing in on the importance of a sustained multilateral effort.

As I have discussed before, the current Dutch government can not rely on a very strong majority in parliament. That makes selling a dangerous mission difficult, especially when it becomes clear that casualties and war rather than peacemaking start to feature the agenda. The question the Dutch have to ask themselves though is, why it is that other NATO members should be willing to accept the consequences of a risky mission while they can bail out arguing that the mission is "too dangerous"? More on Thursday.

The season of giving is upon us and the Dorsman family usually makes a few charitable donations to support some good causes. Over the past two years that has meant turning away some disappointed environmentalists in order to help build schools and hospitals in Iraq and Afghanistan. Your first port of call for such contributions should be the Spirit of America whose mission it is to extend the goodwill of those advancing freedom, democracy and peace abroad. But above all I think their efforts create hope for a better tomorrow. On that note, take a look at the latest photo dispatch from Michael Yon in Iraq. Give a little bit to the Spirit of America’s efforts so that a new generation can have a little more hope that things will be better tomorrow.

Publius Pundit, Gateway Pundit, and California Yankee all have updates and link-filled posts, covering Afghanistan's first free parliamentary elections.

... for the good news from Iraq and Afghanistant now that the Chrenk has formally said his farewell. Not only was he a great blogger able to come up with some pretty unique content and ideas, he actively promoted other blogs by regularly linking to them. There are quite a few regulars of Peaktalk who came here by way of that Polish guy in Australia who also proved that blog-design doesn't really matter all that much if you produce great stuff. Best of luck Arthur, and stay in touch.

And yes, the good news series will continue at their new home, Good News Central.

In what will probably one of the last instalments, Arthur Chrenkoff has another Good News from Afghanistan up. I will miss the invaluable contributions from Arthur as well as his generous linkage to this site now that he moves on to another career. Best of luck and stay in touch.

Chrenkoff has another, extra-long, edition of Good News from Afghanistan up.