NGOs disappointed with NATO deployment plans

NGOs working in Afghanistan have expressed doubts over the effectiveness of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's (NATO) proposed plans for expansion in the north and west of the country, arguing that the expansion of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) - arranged as civil-military partnerships to facilitate the development of a secure environment and reconstruction in the country's regions - would not necessarily improve the security situation. "We are just disappointed that NATO is continuing to work through the PRTs' structure without changing their mandate," Sally Austin, programme official with CARE International, told IRIN from the capital, Kabul. "We believe that the deployment must focus on the underlined causes of insecurity in this country," she said, noting that these included drugs, the continuing role of warlords and militias, the insurgency issue, and the lack of adequate police or a trained Afghan National Army. She noted, for example, that the German PRTs had no competence in antinarcotics work. Her comments came after NATO decided at its summit on Monday in Istanbul on a further expansion of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan in the light of the upcoming elections. Five PRTs will be joining Afghanistan as part of a progressive process in accordance with a previous NATO decision to expand ISAF in a flexible manner to include other PRTs. "This expansion will include in the near future the United Kingdom-led PRTs in Mazar-i-Sharif and Meymana, the German-led PRT in Feyzabad and the Netherlands-led PRT in Baghlan. ISAF already commands a PRT in Kunduz," NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said on Monday at a press conference in Istanbul. And while Lynn Renkes, senior programme manager with Mercy Corps, welcomed the NATO initiative, she also expressed her doubts on the PRTs' capacity to provide security as they had a mixed mandate, including both security and humanitarian work. "We have a long way to go and any step that we achieve in securing Afghanistan is a good thing, but I am not sure how much impact we are going to see from a security perspective from an enhancement of the PRTs in the country, because of their mandate being mixed," Renkes told IRIN from Kabul. Feisel Gillani, country coordinator for Afghanistan with the Italian NGO Cooperazione Internazionale (COOPI), told IRIN that the increase in the number of troops could improve security during the election process in some difficult areas, but in the long term "we don't know how it is going to help the international community to continue its work, so we must wait and see whether there will be any improvement." Furthermore, Renkes noted an increase of insecurity in the southern part of country. "This is the first time in two years that our programmes have been affected in some areas [of southern Afghanistan]," she said. But the next expansion of forces will start in the north of the country and then spread to the west, according to a NATO official. The coming deployment was announced a week after a group of 54 Afghan NGOs reiterated their call on NATO to refocus its attention on the security needs of the Afghan people and international aid workers, noting an alarming increase in insecurity over recent months.