The same news source quoted above added: "His announcement follows a meeting of the North Atlantic Council last week, in which the alliance's member states broadly endorsed a strategy proposed by the US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal...." [9]
To stoke the fires of hysteria and pound the drums of war ever more deafeningly, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband on November 20 told The Guardian that "The Afghan government would quickly be overthrown if NATO troops pulled out of the country now," [10] over eight years after the invasion of the nation, thousands of civilian deaths and billions of Western dollars poured into the war. Miliband's country has lost over 230 soldiers in the conflict, more than in any fighting since the Falklands/Malvinas war of 1982.
He specified "If international forces leave, you can choose a time - five minutes, 24 hours or seven days - but the insurgent forces will overrun those forces that are prepared to put up resistance and we would be back to square one." [11]
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has vowed to send at least 500 more troops, bringing his nation's total close to 10,000, the second largest contingent after that of the United States.
The Times of London wrote earlier this month that "President Obama is to ask members of Nato to provide up to 4,000 more troops to help to break the deadlock in Afghanistan" and "is expected to confirm that the campaign in Afghanistan needs another 40,000 troops, meeting the request made by General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Kabul, more than ten weeks ago, but that a proportion of the 40,000 à ‚¬" up to ten per cent à ‚¬" should be for other Nato countries to provide." [12]
Four days ago the Wall Street Journal claimed a larger figure in an article subtitled "Americans Seek Up to 7,000 Extra NATO Troops for Ramp-Up in Afghanistan," and stated that "The Obama administration is in advanced talks with its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies for a coordinated rollout of a new Afghan war strategy, which U.S. officials hope will include a commitment by European allies to send several thousand additional troops." [13]
7,000 more non-U.S. troops would add up to almost 50,000 serving under NATO - from 50 nations - in addition to as many as 108,000 U.S. forces, 34,000 currently assigned to NATO and roughly the same amount with the U.S. Operation Enduring Freedom. Assuming as there is every reason to that the majority of new U.S. troops will be assigned to ISAF, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will field a 100,000-troop, 50-nation army in the heart of Asia.
To further demonstrate the geographical reach of the embryonic global army [14] that the U.S. and NATO are forging in the crucible of the South Asia war, the Financial Times reported that "Georgia, which is not in Nato, has said it will send close to 1,000 extra troops. Other fresh contributions have come from Armenia, New Zealand and Sweden.....Colombia is seeking to send an infantry company....Nato officials are negotiations with Mongolia, which is aiming to send 250." [15]
Also, "South Korea will send hundreds of troops to create a new 'provincial reconstruction team'...." [16] Along with troops from Australia (which is the largest non-NATO contributor with 1,550 soldiers), the United Arab Emirates and two of the nations contributing the largest amount of forces, the U.S. and Canada, NATO will have a combined army of soldiers from five of six inhabited continents, the Persian Gulf, the Caucasus and the South Pacific.
On November 21 NATO took control of training the Afghan army and police:
"The existing U.S. training mission, CSTC-A, until now responsible for most of the training, is to merge with the new NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan (NTM-A), under a single NATO command, commanders said on Saturday at a ceremony in Kabul.
"Deputy Commander of the new NATO mission Major General Michael Ward said he believed the move would encourage more NATO training personnel to be sent to Afghanistan, helping to speed the expansion of local forces." [17]
In his report of three months ago the commander of all U.S. and NATO occupation forces in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, recommended increasing the size of the Afghan National Army from what he claimed is currently 92,000 troops to 240,000, as his counterinsurgency strategy requires nearly 400,000 troops in all. McChrystal, former head of the Joint Special Operations Command, was appointed to his current dual role because of his counterinsurgency background. [18]
However, efforts to build a national Afghan army with numbers in the six figures have been announced since shortly after the invasion of the nation in 2001 and that threshold has never been crossed. Nor is it ever likely to be. Afghans are in no rush to join a colonial adjunct force to assist in the subjugation of their country and its people by North American and European invaders.
Reports and formal announcements of increases in NATO and NATO partner armed forces to the war front are widespread.
Germany, which has the third largest number of troops deployed to Afghanistan (and which is engaged in its first ground combat operations since the defeat of the Third Reich in 1945) - nearly 4,500, the limit imposed by the Bundestag - may expand that figure substantially: "According to current and former U.S. officials, senior officials in the government of German Chancellor Angela Merkel have signaled a willingness to press Germany's parliament to raise its troop ceiling to as much as 7,000 from 4,500." [19]
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