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BRUSSELS Nearly three years after the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ended combat operations in Afghanistan, the 29-nation alliance willsend troops once more into the country withhopes that the renewed surge will help the Afghan military beat back a resurgent Taliban.

Speaking ahead of a defense ministerial meeting here Thursday, NATO Secretary GeneralJens Stoltenberg saidthousands of troops have been requested, but he did not say how many would deploy.

With the Taliban in control of broad swaths of the country and the Afghan military locked in a primarily defensive war, it is unclear how a new infusion of NATO or U.S. forces could radically turn the tide of the conflict.

Fifteen nations have already pledged additional contributions to Resolute Support Mission. And I look forward to further announcements from other nations, Stoltenberg said, using the name of the NATO mission to Afghanistan.

[Trump gives Pentagon authority to set troop levels in Afghanistan]

Stoltenberg stressed that NATOs renewed presence did not mean the beginning of another combat mission; instead, he said, the alliancewill focus on building the Afghan special operation forces, air force and othermilitary training institutions.

We dont think this operation in Afghanistan is going to be easy and we dont think its going to be peaceful this year or next year or in the near future, he said during a newsconference Thursday afternoon. As long as the Taliban believe they can win the war they will not negotiate. We need to break the stalemate and to enable the Afghans to made advances.

Stoltenbergs remarks come as the United States weighs its own commitment in what has become its longest-running war. In recent weeks, President Trump delegated authorities to the Pentagon to set troop levels in the Afghanistan, and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has pledged to present a strategy to Congress by mid-July. Earlier this month, the retired four-star Marine general told lawmakers that the United States was not winning, and battlefield commanders, including the head of U.S. forcesin Afghanistan, Gen. John Nicholson, have requested a few thousand more troops.

Mattis said Thursday during a news conference that he had received 70 percent of the commitments from NATO countries for his upcoming strategy and was confident that he would be able to secure the rest in the coming weeks. Mattis gave no timeline for Americas renewed commitment to Afghanistan and suggestedthat NATO had drawn down too early in 2014.

Its not like you can declare a war over, Mattis said. What is the price of not fighting this war? And in thatcase were not willing to pay that price.

[Mattis: We are not winning in Afghanistan]

With a Taliban insurgency that has proven resilient despite heavy battlefield losses, lawmakers in Washington and some NATO allies remain waryof any new military solution in Afghanistan.

In an interview, Canadian Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan said his country has received the request for more troops but has not yetdecided to pledge any additional forces.

Canadian soldierswithdrew from Afghanistan completely in 2014, after participating in several bloody campaigns around Kandahar in 2006 and a limited training mission after 2011. Between 2001 and 2014, more than 150 Canadian troops died in Afghanistan.

With no physical presence in the country, Canada has instead continuedto provide financial support to the Afghan security forces.

Afghanistan is obviously very important to us, and were going to monitor the situation, Sajjan said. The military is not going to give you that complete victory. It takes an entire whole of government approach for it; the real solution will come from the political side.

[Whats your end game? Trump delegating Afghan war decisions to the Pentagon faces scrutiny]

BritishDefense Secretary Michael Fallon told a group of reporters during the ministerial meeting Thursday that Britain was in Afghanistan for the long haul and would sendjust under 100 additional troops to help prop up Afghan forcesaround Kabul, bringing the total number of British soldiers in the country to around 600. In the last year, the Afghan capital has been rocked by a spate of terrorist attacks that have killed hundreds.

Mattis said he would take what he learned from his NATO counterparts atthe defense ministerial back to Washington and deliverhis formal strategy to Trump in the coming weeks.

Currently there are roughly 13,500 NATO and U.S. troops in Afghanistan. The Americans number around 8,500 and are split between counterterrorism operations and supporting the NATO-led training mission. At the wars height in 2010 and 2011 there were more than 100,000 U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

More than 2,000 U.S. troops have died in Afghanistan since 2001, and Afghan security forces continue to take an almost unsustainableamount of casualties despite U.S. air support. Civilians, however, have borne the brunt of the violence, with 2016 marking the deadliest year for the Afghan population since the United Nations mission to the country began monitoringthe statistics in 2009.

Michael Birnbaum contributed to this report. This story was originally published at 9:17 a.m. and updated to include remarks from Defense Secretary Mattis and other officials in Brussels.

Read more:

Band-Aid on a bullet wound: What Americas new war looks like in Afghanistans most violent province

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'What is the price of not fighting this war?': Mattis makes his pitch to get more NATO troops in Afghanistan - Washington Post

Amid reports that the Trump administration is likely to adopt a tougher stance on Pakistan for its alleged role in the growing instability in Afghanistan, New Delhi and Kabul have started air cargo operations between the two countries. The move may be seen as an attempt to outflank Pakistan, which is Afghanistans largest trading partner and together with Iran is the principal conduit for its overseas trade.

On the occasion of the inaugural cargo flight, which carried Afghan exports worth $5 million to India, President Ashraf Ghani vowed to change Afghanistan to an exporter country. Here is an objective no one would disagree with. There is a close and reciprocal link between economic revival and political instability in Afghanistan. Years of infighting ravaged the Afghan economy. On the other hand, a feeble economy has thwarted efforts for peace and reconciliation and encouraged corruption as mighty warlords competed for meagre resources. It also reduced Afghanistan to a vassal state, serving the foreign policy objectives which are often mutually incompatible of the key regional and international players.

At present, the $18 billion Afghan economy one of the smallest and the poorest in the world runs almost entirely on assistance from international donors. The country also faces a persistently huge balance of payment problem, as exports (worth $521 million) lag far behind imports (worth $3.3 billion). The Afghans need to narrow the trade deficit and start looking inwards to keep the wheels of the economy moving. As a result, an overwhelming dependence on foreign capital inflows will continue to rob the country of whatever sovereignty it is left with. But this is a case of easier said than done. An economy in tatters that rests on only a handful of agro-based industries and works in the shadow of terrorism, is extremely difficult to shape up.

It is customary for the Afghan leadership to blame Pakistan for all their economic and political problems. Being a landlocked country, Afghanistan has remained dependent on Pakistan for its foreign trade. The access was first provided to it through the Afghan Transit Trade Agreement of 1965 and currently it is granted through the Afghanistan-Pakistan Transit Trade Agreement (APTTA). However, instead of cementing bilateral relations, transit trade has remained a source of friction between both countries.

There are at least three problems with Afghan transit trade. First, it is a conduit for smuggling. This is primarily because import tariffs in Afghanistan are much lower as there is no domestic industry worth mentioning to protect. The tariff gap between Pakistan and Afghanistan countries provides one of the strongest incentives for smuggling. Several products that are sent to Afghanistan eventually find their way back into Pakistan. This affects the local industry. Pakistan has responded by putting a few items on the negative list of transit trade and subjecting the merchandise and the carriers to greater checks than the Afghans would like.

Second, as in the case of India, political issues have cast a pall over Pakistans trade relations with Afghanistan as well. Both countries have incessantly accused each other of patronising anti-state elements. Whenever terrorists strike in Afghanistan, the people at the helm in Kabul invariably point fingers at Pakistan. By the same token, several incidents of terrorism taking place in Pakistan such as the December 2014 Army Public School tragedy in Peshawar have been attributed to militants residing in Afghanistan.

In recent months, the tense bilateral relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan have led to the closure of the Pak-Afghan borders at Torkham and Chaman on quite a few occasions including for two weeks between February and March. Even when the borders are open, heightened security measures tend to slow down the movement of traffic. The closure of the borders is seen by the Afghans as an attempt by Pakistan to squeeze them economically.

The third problem stems from the inability to allow Indian exports access to Afghanistan via the land route. The APTTA allows Afghan exports to India through the Wagah border. But it doesnt extend the same facility to the Indian exports destined to Afghanistan. Pakistan has itself restricted trade with India and even fewer Indian exports are allowed through Wagah.

New Delhi has tricked Kabul into believing that by not allowing Indian exports overland access to Afghanistan, Pakistan is hurting the Afghan economy. At present, the total Indo-Afghan trade amounts to $551 million which include exports worth $130 million from Afghanistan and $421 million from India. This is much lower than Pak-Afghan trade worth $1.57 billion (exports worth $1.34 billion from Pakistan and exports amounting to $227 million from Afghanistan).

Any attempt to open up trade with India will, by no means, tilt the balance of trade in Afghanistans favours as the Indians have much more to sell to the Afghans than the other way round. Rather it will drive up Indian exports to Afghanistan and may even exacerbate Afghanistans overall balance of payment situation. This will, in turn, shore up the countrys dependence on foreign assistance including that from New Delhi. As a result, the greater the volume of Indo-Afghan trade, the higher is likely to be the Afghanistans indebtedness to India.

By Indian standards, Afghanistan is a small market. If a purely economic logic is anything to go by, it should not hold much of an attraction for the Indians. But the economy has never been the mainspring of New Delhis overtures towards Kabul. What it has set upon itself and has already achieved a lot through is the strong commercial and political presence in the war-torn but strategically important country. Given the zero-sum game that New Delhi and Islamabad are engaged in, any gains made by India anywhere are seen by both countries as a loss for Pakistan and vice versa. As a result, the growing warmth in New Delhi-Kabul relations are perceived to be an affront to Pakistan.

Speaking in economic terms, Pakistan possibly losing out from stronger Indo-Afghan ties is not a question of mere perceptions. Afghanistan is among the largest export markets for us. It is also one of the few countries with which we run more than a billion-dollar trade surplus. In case Indian exports get overland transit to Afghanistan, they could displace a large chunk of exports from Pakistan and thereby result in the loss of an important market. In addition, Afghan trade is a source of substantial commercial activity in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where economic opportunities are otherwise meagre.

In part, India has sought to get over the problem by helping build the Chabahar Port in south-east Iran and connecting infrastructure in Afghanistan and using it to export merchandise to Afghanistan and beyond that to Central Asia. Though it has been carried out on a much lower scale reflecting the relative economic strengths of the two countries the Indian investment in Chabahar has also been compared with that of China in Gwadar.

Iran is another country in the region which is on excellent terms with the people at the helm in Kabul for being on the same page on security-related matters. Its also one of the largest trading partners of Afghanistan. The coldness that in recent years has characterised Islamabad-Tehran relations for one reason or another has also served to bring Iran closer to India and Afghanistan. But can the Kabul-Tehran-New Delhi nexus help Afghanistan get out of the catch-22? The Afghans must try to answer this question.

The writer is a freelance countributor.

Email: [emailprotected]

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Beyond Afghanistan's catch-22 - The News International

WASHINGTON: A key US Senate panel has asked the Pentagon to identify ways for India to play a larger role in providing increased and coordinated defence-related support to Afghanistan.

US Senator Dan Sullivan presented a resolution in this regard on Thursday and it was passed by the Senate Armed Services Committee as part of the the National Defence Authorisation Act (NDAA-2018). The committee authorised $640 billion in critical defence spending for Fiscal Year 2018.

"This provision encourages the Department of Defence to identify ways that India can play a larger role in providing increased and coordinated defence-related support to Afghanistan, a critical part of overcoming the current 'stalemate' in the fight against the Taliban," said a statement by the office of Sullivan.

"Encourage Increased Role for India in Afghanistan" was one of the 24 amendments unanimously passed by the Senate committee.

Meanwhile, US Defence Secretary James Mattis called on NATO allies to "finish the job in Afghanistan" or risk "terrorist revenge" as the alliance confirmed a troop increase to counter a resurgent Taliban.

"The bottom line is that NATO has made a commitment to Afghanistan for freedom from fear and terror, and freedom from terror demands that you can't let this be undone," he added.

The US, which once had more than 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, is preparing a new strategy for a war which has dragged on for 16 years and which even US generals concede is a "stalemate" at best.

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Pentagon asked to identify increased role for India in Afghanistan - Economic Times

WASHINGTON, June 29, 2017 NATO will continue to support Afghanistan through thick and thin, the alliances secretary general said in Brussels today.

Jens Stoltenberg told reporters at the conclusion of the Defense Ministerial that the alliance will continue its support to Afghanistan through 2017 and beyond, and that more troops will be sent to the nation for the Resolute Support Mission.

The effort in Afghanistan is international with 39 nations working together to make the nation more secure, Stoltenberg said. Over the years, we have achieved hard-won gains in Afghanistan and many of our women and men have paid the ultimate price, he said. We will always honor their service and sacrifice.

It is important to not lose sight of what has been accomplished in the nation, he said.

Afghan Forces Demonstrate Bravery, Resilience

Today, Afghan security forces are fully responsible for security across the country, the secretary general said. Every day they demonstrate bravery and resilience, leading the fight to defeat terrorists and protect their people.

He reminded reporters that NATO once had a large-scale combat force in the country and now has around 13,000. That number, however, is too low, he added, and the alliance will send a few thousand more troops for the Resolute Support Mission.

At a force generation conference earlier this month, 15 nations pledged additional contributions to Resolute Support, he said. We also got some more announcements and pledges during the meeting today.

This builds on the commitment to continue to fund the Afghan security forces through 2020. But NATO alone cannot bring lasting security to Afghanistan, Stoltenberg said. We count on our Afghan partners to make good on their commitments, including: key reforms on good governance and the rule of law, fighting corruption and protecting the rights of women and girls.

Earlier today, the secretary general discussed burden-sharing. At both the Wales and Warsaw NATO summits, the allies agreed to spend 2 percent of gross domestic product on security. While it takes some time to reverse a budget trend, the alliance is seeing some results.

Im glad to say that we expect this will be the third consecutive year of accelerating defense spending increases across European allies and Canada, with a 4.3 percent real increase in defense spending, he said.

This means European allies and Canada spent almost $46 billion more on defense.

This is a significant increase which means that we are moving in the right direction when it comes to burden-sharing and defense spending, Stoltenberg said.

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NATO Pledges Continued Support for Afghanistan Mission - Department of Defense

Where is the United States war in Afghanistan going? Recently, the Trump administration gave Secretary of Defense James Mattis the authority to set troop levels there; so far, rumors suggest that 4,000 more American troops may soon be on their way to Afghanistan. However, this may not be enough; occupying and administering Afghanistan is a herculean task that few empires have ever had success with. The Taliban continue to gain in strength, while ISIS is expanding throughout the country. The Taliban, ISIS, various warlords, and the Afghan government all continue to fight each other.

Writing in the Atlantic, Peter Beinart described the current U.S.-led war there as hopeless: the Taliban are unlikely to cut a deal because time is on their side, and they merely have to wait it out until the United States decides to leave. The United States has been involved in Afghanistan for almost 16 years, making it the longest conflict in its history (with the possible exception of Vietnam, depending on how one interprets the chronology of that conflict). Despite spending more on Afghanistan than on rebuilding Europe after World War II, little progress has been made. It would not be surprising if the Taliban controlled all of Afghanistan within a decade.

Afghanistan is a notoriously difficult country to govern. Empire after empire, nation after nation have failed to pacify what is today the modern territory of Afghanistan, giving the region the nickname Graveyard of Empires, even if sometimes those empires won some initial battles and made inroads into the region. If the United States and its allies decide to leave Afghanistan, they would only the latest in a long series of nations to do so. As the British learned in their 1839-1842 war in Afghanistan, it is often easier to do business with a local ruler with popular support than to support a leader backed by foreign powers; the costs of propping up such a leader eventually add up. The closest most historical empires have come to controlling Afghanistan was by adopting a light-handed approach, as the Mughals did. They managed to loosely control the area by paying off various tribes, or granting them autonomy. Attempts at anything resembling centralized control, even by native Afghan governments, have largely failed.

Afghanistan is particularly hard to conquer primarily due to the intersection of three factors. First, because Afghanistan is located on the main land route between Iran, Central Asia, and India, it has been invaded many times and settled by a plethora of tribes, many mutually hostile to each other and outsiders. Second, because of the frequency of invasion and the prevalence of tribalism in the area, its lawlessness lead to a situation where almost every village or house was built like a fortress, or qalat. Third, the physical terrain of Afghanistan makes conquest and rule extremely difficult, exacerbating its tribal tendencies. Afghanistan is dominated by some of the highest and more jagged mountains in the world. These include the Hindu Kush, which dominates the country and run through the center and south of the country, as well as the Pamir mountains in the east. The Pamir Knot where the Hindu Kush, Pamir, Tian Shan, Kunlun, and Himalayas all meet is situated in Badakhshan in northeast Afghanistan.

A survey of Afghanistans history demonstrates how difficult it is to occupy and govern the country. We first get a clear glimpse into Afghanistans history around 500 BCE, when it formed the eastern part of the Achaemenid Persian empire. Parts of Afghanistan were previously part of the ancient Indian kingdom of Gandhara, a region in what is now northwest Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan. Presumably, much of southern and eastern Afghanistan was already inhabited by the ancestors of todays Pashtun (also known as Afghans historically); their Pashto language is an ancient eastern Iranian language closely related to the even more ancient Avestan, the original language of the Zoroastrian scriptures. Afghanistan was relatively lightly populated at this time, as Alexander the Great is reported to have swept through the area with little resistance. Following this, the Maurya Empire from India controlled most of Afghanistan, although a Greek successor kingdom arose in Balkh (Bactria) in northern Afghanistan. Buddhism and Hinduism spread throughout the region during this period. It was only after the collapse of the Maurya Empire and several invasions from Central Asia that the mountains of Afghanistan began to fill up, and acquire its reputation of being the home of many warlike peoples defending their individual turfs. Many of the invaders assimilated into the tribal structure of the Pashtuns, adapting their language.

Various tribes founded empires within the Afghanistan region before breaking up into mini-statelets. These included the Greco-Bactrians, the Indo-Parthians, the Saka (Scythians), the great Buddha-building Kushans, the Kidarites, and the Hephthalites (White Huns). By this time, the region already acquired a difficult reputation. When the Arabs arrived in the region at the dawn of the 8th century, it was a patchwork of small but tough principalities. Attempts to conquer the Zunbils of Kandahar failed spectacularly, the first major setback faced by the Arabs after their great conquests began. An expedition of 20,000 men sent against the Zunbils returned with 5,000 people. It took almost 200 years for Afghanistan to be Islamicized from west to east, a process that only neared completion when Yaqub ibn al-Layth al-Saffar, a Persian blacksmith born in Zaranj, in Afghanistan on the border with Iran conquered Kabul. Even then, the Hindu Shahi dynasty held out for another hundred years in the easternmost parts of todays Afghanistan until conquered by Mahmud of Ghazni (also in Afghanistan) around the turn of the millennium.

When the Mongols arrived in Afghanistan, they faced so much resistance in the Bamiyan valley, which they besieged in 1221, that the grandson of Genghis Khan was killed. In fury, the Mongols killed most of the valleys original inhabitants: most of the modern Hazara who live there are descended from a Mongol garrison, some of whose men took Tajik wives. Fragmentation ensued again after the weakening of the Mongol Empire.

ahr-ud-Dn Muammad Babur, the first Mughal emperor, managed to get himself a kingdom in Kabul for two decades before conquering India. Most of the Hindu Kush region would remain under loosely Mughal control until 1738 when it was conquered by Nader Shah and inherited a decade later by Ahmad Shah Durrani, who founded modern Afghanistan after Nader Shahs death. Mughal rule over Afghanistan was a combination of control over a few urban centers, and benign neglect coupled with paying off tribes in the region, a formula later replicated by the British. However, Mughal rule was always precarious, as they were faced with constant tribal revolts. An especially serious one from 1672-1677 led by the poet Khushal Khan Khattak was eventually defeated by the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, but Mughal authority never extended beyond main roads again.

The Mughal Empire extended as far west as Ghazni and Bamiyan in central Afghanistan; after fighting with the Persian Safavids for Kandahar for decades, they lost it permanently during the reign of Shah Jahan. The Safavids also had to deal with unruly Afghan tribes. Eventually a revolt against the Safavids broke out in Kandahar in 1709 due to Persian attempts to control Pashtun tribes and convert them to Shia Islam. The Afghan revolt brought down the Safavid Empire; although partially checked by the rise of the warlord Nader Shah and his empire, eventually modern Afghanistan was founded in 1747 by Ahmad Shah Durrani, who picked off territory from Nader Shahs descendants in Persia, the Mughals, and the Uzbeks to his north.

Since then, as both the British and Russians have learned, that while it is possible to conquer territory in Afghanistan temporarily, and defeat Afghans militarily in open battle, it is virtually impossible to hold the region down for long, when it is filled with guerrillas, tribes, and castles that can constantly weigh down a foreign power. The people of Afghanistan have nowhere to go, and can fight their whole lives (foreigners, beware in particular of the Kandahar region), a luxury that outsiders do not have. The United States should learn from the history of Afghanistan and understand that escalating the war will have no particular impact on the outcome. Minus a permanent occupationwhich would be ineffective at best, and bloody and cost-prohibitive at worstthe only way to deal with Afghanistan is to deal with its plethora of local powers. And if this means accepting the Taliban, in exchange for a modicum of stability and a promise not to host global terrorist organizations, then so be it. The alternative is an unwinnable, never-ending war.

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Why Is Afghanistan the 'Graveyard of Empires'? - The Diplomat