The fall of the coalition government in the Netherlands, following a split over the continued deployment of 1,600 Dutch troops in the NATO operation against the Taleban in Afghanistan, highlights a wider problem.

NATO was created as a defensive alliance against the threat from the Soviet Union. It was never supposed to provide troops for peacekeeping in the Balkans nor for waging war in Afghanistan.
There is no escaping the general unpopularity of the Afghan conflict among most NATO members. Even the British, who along with the Spanish and the Americans have experienced the full horror of terrorism from Taleban’s Al-Qaeda ally, are questioning their involvement, as the regular funeral processions of British soldiers pass through their streets.
There is also a growing unease at the growing number of civilian casualties being caused as a result of the operations of the US and NATO forces in Operation Moshtarak. The bombing Sunday of what appears to have been a civilian convoy does not look at all like the winning of “hearts and minds” which the whole campaign is supposed to be achieving. In addition, many people in Europe have not forgotten the unedifying ballot rigging that resulted in Hamid Karzai’s retention of the presidency. Why, they ask, should their governments be spending money and lives in a war in a faraway place, which does not seem to share Europe’s values?
The stated justification for NATO’s continued involvement in Afghanistan has nothing to do with the freedom of the Afghan people. Put starkly, it is the fear that if the Taleban return to power in Afghanistan, the menace of Al-Qaeda’s international terror will return to the streets of Europe and North America. This, however, does not wash with many Europeans. The Germans and the Dutch, the latter still acutely sensitive to their parlous failure to protect the helpless citizens of Srebrenica from Bosnia-Serb death squads, see NATO’s Afghan involvement as an expensive adventure they can ill-afford in times of recession.
NATO commanders appear acutely aware that it will only take one major military disaster to cause the organization’s already shaky unity to fall apart. So while this is a conflict that may be extremely difficult to win, it has the look of one that will be very easy indeed to lose. And if NATO fails in Afghanistan, the wider impact on the defensive alliance that it was once supposed to be, could be far-reaching.
Time has always been on the side of the Taleban and the foreign fighters of Al-Qaeda. President Barack Obama’s commitment to start pulling out US troops within a year only underlines this. So, as and when Marjah falls and the Afghan government resumes control of a small part of the insurgent-dominated Helmand province, everything will depend on the justice and fairness of their administration. Moreover even these may not be enough to win over the local Pashtun community in the Taleban’s heartland. This is a high-risk strategy. Abject failure here would humiliate and weaken the Karzai government and could seriously damage Karzai’s Western backers