U.S. to send Marines to Afghanistan due to NATO reluctance

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- All 26 NATO nations have soldiers in Afghanistan and all agree the mission is their top priority. But the refusal of European allies to send more combat troops is forcing an already stretched U.S. military to fill the gap, and straining the Western alliance.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Tuesday authorized the deployment of about 3,200 U.S. Marines in April to meet an expected surge in Taliban violence, raising the number of American personnel there to around 30,000, the highest since the U.S.-led 2001 invasion.

U.S. officials say Washington had to act because its European allies weren't filling the shortfall in combat units.

Several European governments have voters who harbor misgivings about President Bush's war on terrorist groups and don't want their troops on the front lines. Some also have troop commitments in Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East and are under pressure to do more for peacekeeping in Darfur.

The refusal to deploy to Afghanistan's dangerous south and east has opened a rift with Britain, Canada, the Netherlands and others which, along with the United States, have borne the brunt of Taliban violence.

The U.S. contributes one-third of the 42,000-strong NATO mission, making it the largest participant, on top of the 16,000 American troops operating independently. Of the new troops, 2,200 will join the NATO force. The other 1,000 are instructors who will be in a separate U.S. force that trains Afghan forces and hunts al-Qaida fighters.

Washington is adamant that sending the Marines won't let the allies off the hook. It stresses the new deployment will be for only seven months to reinforce NATO's International Security Assistance Force over the spring and summer "fighting season."

Turkey has NATO's second-largest military but keeps just 1,200 soldiers in Afghanistan based around Kabul. The Turks argue they are under no obligation to do more, since they get no international support for their war against Kurdish insurgents.

"There would be strong public reaction if a single soldier were killed in what is essentially seen as a U.S. war against Taliban or al-Qaida," said Gokcen Ogan at the Eurasia Strategic Research Center, a Turkish think tank.

Some allies actually make a bigger proportional contribution than the United States. The U.S. has 1.1 percent of its troops serving with NATO in Afghanistan, while Britain has 4 percent, Denmark 3.5 percent, the Netherlands 2.9 percent and Canada 2.6 percent. All of those are active in the south.

France, traditionally wary of NATO, is taking a changing stance under President Nicholas Sarkozy, who hinted last month that France's contingent of 1,300 could be strengthened.

Sarkozy has agreed to deploy Mirage warplanes from Tajikistan to a NATO base in southern Afghanistan and to send 150 military experts into the south for the first time to train Afghan army units.

NATO diplomats hope Britain will increase its contribution in Afghanistan as it scales down operations in Iraq.

Poland recently announced it would add 400 soldiers and eight much-needed helicopters to its contingent of 1,140, despite an opinion poll in December that said just more than 80 percent of Poles opposed their country's participation.

Germany's more than 3,000 soldiers and Italy's 2,550 put them among the biggest contributors to the NATO force, but they bar their troops from fighting in the front-line provinces. Both face domestic political pressure to withdraw their forces from Afghanistan.

They and other nations tend to define the Afghan mission as reconstruction rather than fighting. Spain stresses the role of its 770 soldiers is helping build hospitals and schools in the western region where they operate, and has put strict limits on their combat role.

Even under Sarkozy, a significant injection of new French combat troops is not expected. A French Defense Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk publicly on the matter, said France believes greater focus should be placed on reconstruction and training the Afghan army.