It is a miserable comment on Nato's failure in Afghanistan after years of fighting that its senior military officer, Admiral Giampaolo di Paola, can offer the meagre definition of success as "the start of transition [from Nato to Afghan forces] is testimony that the alliance is succeeding in Afghanistan." It is nonsense that the whole of Nato went to war, that Nato supported the US invasion of Afghanistan, and that so many deaths have been caused among both Afghans and Nato military, and its declared mission has been abandoned.
None of the Nato leaders at their Lisbon summit spoke of the urgency of stopping Al Qaida, nor of capturing Osama Bin Laden and his lieutenants. Yet when Nato went into Afghanistan, its mission was very clear: it aimed to stop Al Qaida and its Taliban allies from being an effective force. Then it got lost in Nato's confused war aims, the difficulties of destroying the Taliban government and then setting up another government with very little widespread support from the Afghans themselves.
The result is Nato's current strategy which is very simple: it wants to start handing over responsibility for security in 2011 and leave Afghanistan by 2014. It has abandoned any real political or military targets, and it has stopped questioning the effectiveness or intentions of President Hamid Karzai's government. The Nato summit in Lisbon has made clear that its leaders have lost all stomach, and domestic support, for their adventure in Afghanistan.
Karzai was in Lisbon and he also eagerly backed the plan for Nato to leave. He is well aware that his control of Afghanistan is tenuous at best, and he has to start talks with the Taliban in order to achieve the inevitable political solution that the country desperately needs. He knows that the presence of Nato forces in Afghanistan does not help this aim at all.
