Berlin: The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) is working on a new strategy at the initiative of the German government, to pull out the alliance's forces from Afghanistan possibly by the year 2015, State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Defence Thomas Kossendey has said.
Under the new concept, NATO plans to intensify building up of the Afghan security forces in the coming years so that they could take over the security responsibility for the whole nation by the year 2015, Kossendey said while delivering a key-note address in Berlin yesterday.
If this strategy works, it would be possible to hand over complete security responsibilities for Afghanistan to the Afghan security force by 2015 which is quite a realistic time
frame for a possible pull out of the NATO forces from Afghanistan, Kossendey said.
However, NATO forces will make every effort to ensure that Afghan security forces are in a position to prevent the country from reverting to a breeding ground for international
terrorists once the NATO forces leave.
Alongside building up the security forces, NATO also wants to promote good governance, which is very much lacking at present.
In spite of a possible victory for President Hamid Karzai in the recent parliamentary elections, the Afghan government "has no broad support among the public and the government itself is responsible for that".
Bureau Report
First Published: Wednesday, September 16, 2009, 16:23