NATO's top military commander said restrictions secretly imposed by European nations on the use of its troops to fight Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan could scuttle the alliance's mission there.
Gen. Bantz "John" Craddock said some countries have held troops back from deployments inside Afghanistan that could result in combat, revealing the secret rules against using troops to actually fight insurgents at the very last minute.
"You don't know what you don't know and sometimes when we ask ... for forces there's hesitance or reluctance," Craddock said at a breakfast meeting with defense reporters late last week. "I won't tell you that that has led to problems on the ground, but it occasionally slows down things on the ground and you have to work through it."
In one case, allied soldiers who had worked with an Afghan army unit as embedded trainers were precluded from deploying with their students after being sent to Taliban hotspots in the south. That forced a mad scramble to find Western troops to accompany the fledgling Afghan unit and help them battle anti-government forces.
Craddock said failure in Afghanistan could put NATO's future in doubt.
"NATO has to prevail by enabling the Afghan government to take charge of their own security," Craddock said. "Absent that outcome there will be a significant introspective study among all the NATO countries as to the future of NATO."
The so-called "undeclared caveats" add another layer to the long-simmering dispute between the United States and its NATO allies to lift restrictions on forces engaging in combat or deploying to contested areas. So far only the Dutch, British and Canadian forces have lifted combat caveats, though Craddock said all governments agreed to supply forces for combat if an allied unit was in danger.
Craddock's concerns come as President Bush holds meetings with NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer in Texas, calling for a relaxation of the troop restrictions and a redoubled effort to keep Afghanistan from sliding back into chaos.
The NATO commander said that in addition to caveats, his Afghanistan force is about four battalions short of his troop requirements. The force needs more "enablers" such as tactical air control parties and support troops, helicopters and more ground troops, he said.
But allies still won't pony up.
"If we had those forces we wouldn't be moving them around to cover all the bases all the time like we are now," Craddock said. "Without all those forces there my expectation is there'll be more people banged up before the job is done."
The troop shortfall is forcing commanders to switch abruptly from combat operations to stability operations and back again, making the implementation of a simultaneous security and stability push impossible, he added.
But Craddock stopped short of tying the troop shortfall to recent high-profile friendly-fire incidents and the growing discontent with the NATO force's presence in Afghanistan. Allied forces pay very close attention to rules of engagement and are keenly aware their actions affect the support of the Afghan people, he said.
"When we see six bad guys … go into a village and into a building, do you waive off or do you act?" Craddock said. "It's not like we made a mistake because we hit the wrong building. In the heat of the fight sometimes bad things happen, and the enemy wants those things to happen."
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