Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, NATO invoked Article 5 of the Washington Treaty for the first time in its history. The West then undertook military action, sanctioned by international law, leading to regime change in a profoundly conservative Muslim country. In due course, a geographic and tactical division of labor was established between the U.S.-led Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), which focused on counterterrorism operations in the south and southwest of the country, and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), a NATO-led stabilization force that first established itself in Kabul and later extended its influence throughout the rest of the country through Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs). Meanwhile, donor conferences in Berlin and London helped Afghanistan organize its first interim government and then a constitutional process, and assigned specific development and reconstruction tasks to individual countries. Germany, for example, was responsible for police training. As a result, Afghanistan experienced a phase of peace and stability unknown in a quarter-century of war.
Today, the Afghan intervention is in its sixth year. There has been a resurgence by the Taliban, and NATO and American forces are struggling with a multitude of handicaps. These include a shortage of troops and tactical lift, different national caveats that hamper cooperation and flexibility, and an almost unrestricted inflow of insurgents and weapons through the Pakistani-Afghan border. Consequently, reconstruction remains partial and slow, military and civilian casualties are on the rise, resentment is rife among the Afghan people and between the Western allies, and support for the operation in Western public opinion is waning. There seems to be little agreement within the alliance or between the allies and President Hamid Karzai's Afghan government on what defines a victory. Meanwhile, the possibility of failure looms large.
Is NATO's stated goal for engagement in Afghanistan—a representative government and self-sustaining peace and security—attainable, or will the winning scenario need to be redefined?
How will NATO allies overcome the effects of national caveats for ISAF and the alliance itself?
What would be the consequences of failure in Afghanistan for NATO and the Western alliance?