As Dutch Quit Afghanistan, Will Other Allies Follow?

LONDON (Feb. 22) -- The Afghan war has claimed its first government. The ruling Dutch coalition collapsed Saturday after its two main parties failed to agree on extending the country's military mission to Afghanistan. The Netherlands is now expected to withdraw its 2,000-strong force from Afghanistan by the end of the year -- a major blow to the U.S.-NATO campaign against the Taliban.

While the Dutch have a relatively small presence in the war-torn nation and are not actively involved in combat operations, the U.S. views them as an important and effective ally. State Department officials have regularly praised their work as peacekeepers and trainers in the central Uruzgan province.

Afghan politicians have also lauded their achievements. "We need the Dutch force in Uruzgan," Asadullah Hamdam, the province's governor, told The Associated Press. "The Dutch are very active in reconstruction, and strengthening the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police."

The pullout couldn't have come at a worse time for America and its allies. Some 15,000 U.S., NATO and Afghan troops are engaged in Operation Moshtarack and are battling to retake and hold large swaths of Taliban-controlled territory in the south. But if the Netherlands withdraws from Uruzgan, "NATO will have to pull troops away from combat operations in more pressing parts of the country" to cover Dutch stabilization and reconstruction efforts, University of London international relations lecturer Michael Williams told AOL News.

Support for the war has never been high in this nation of 16.5 million. But as the mission has dragged on -- when Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende first sent troops to Afghanistan 2006, he said they'd be home two years later -- and casualties have mounted (21 Dutch soldiers have died so far), it's become steadily more unpopular. Reports of NATO air strikes killing ordinary Afghans, such as Sunday's raid on a convoy in Uruzgan, which left at least 27 civilians dead, have also fed public disquiet. According to a poll published last Thursday in the daily NRC Handelsblad, some 48 percent of the population now wants the troops home.

That swelling of anti-war sentiment finally caused the collapse of the Balkenende government this weekend. The prime minister had wanted to extend the Netherlands' military mission from August 2010 to summer 2011. But his deputy, Wouter Bos -- leader of the country's Labor Party -- didn't. In his 2007 election campaign, Bos had promised that Dutch troops would be withdrawn by the end of this year.

Balkenende attempted to win over his deputy during lengthy negotiations last week. But on Saturday Bos announced that his party was leaving the ruling coalition, meaning the government no longer had the parliamentary support required to pass the Afghan extension. "Our task as the lead nation ends in August this year," said Balkenende on Sunday. An election is expected to be held before June.

Some analysts say Bos made a high-profile stand over Afghanistan and quit the Cabinet simply to boost his party's poll ratings, which had recently been trailing Balkenende's Christian Democrats. If that's true, his populist move appears to have paid off: A survey released Sunday said that Labor would win 19 seats in the next parliament, up from 16 a week earlier.

Unfortunately for the Obama administration, other allies are also weighing the cost of this foreign operation against their own domestic political concerns. U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal's recent request for some 10,000 extra troops from NATO members has largely been ignored, and France and Germany offered up only a few hundred soldiers out of fear of spooking voters. Meanwhile, mounting disquiet in Canada -- which has the third biggest force in Afghanistan and has suffered 140 casualties since 2002 -- has led the government there to declare it will withdraw its 2,800 soldiers by the end of 2011.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO's secretary-general, said Monday that the fall of the Dutch government was a unique situation, and that there was still "a sense of strong solidarity within the alliance." But experts warn that the country's refusal to shoulder long-term commitments in conflict zones could be a sign of the limited assistance the U.S. can expect from its traditional allies in future wars. "Deployments abroad are becoming increasingly controversial and political, and Western democracies tire of these missions very quickly," says Williams. "America is going to find it increasingly difficult to find European allies that are willing to join in these sorts of stabilization operations abroad."