TERRORIST attacks killed at least 25 people in southern Afghanistan yesterday, the latest in an escalation of strikes that is endangering Nato plans to send thousands of troops into the region in the spring.
The accelerating violence could provoke the Netherlands to withdraw from the Nato operation before it has started. The Dutch are supposed to be providing 1,200 of the 6,000 Nato reinforcements to be sent out to relieve the pressure on the American military but there is a real chance that the Dutch parliament will block that deployment in a vote early next month.
The Dutch would be the second-biggest contingent in the expanded force. The British, who are expected to send up to 3,000 extra troops, insist that they would not make up a shortfall. Nato officials are urgently looking for ways to maintain the viability of the force if the Dutch back out.
At least 20 people died yesterday when a bomb fixed to a motorbike exploded in a playground in Spin Boldak, which borders Pakistan, where hundreds of local residents had gathered for a festival. Twenty others were injured.
Earlier a suicide bomber had thrown himself in front of an Afghan army vehicle in Kandahar, 70 miles to the north, killing three soldiers and two civilians. Four more soldiers and ten civilians were also wounded.
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The two attacks followed the death of a senior Canadian diplomat in a suicide bombing in Kandahar on Sunday, bringing the death toll from terrorist attacks in the new year to more than fifty.
The escalating attacks have fuelled alarm within Nato, which believes that the Taleban and their supporters are targeting southern Afghanistan because of the alliance’s plan to move into the region this spring, increasing the number of troops in the country from 10,000 to 16,000.
But that expansion programme is in abeyance because of growing concern in the Netherlands over the deployment of Dutch troops. The coalition Government is officially committed to the deployment but is deeply split on the issue, with members of D66 saying that the party would leave the Cabinet if the mission goes ahead.
The Dutch parliament will debate the deployment next Tuesday and is expected to vote early next month. A spokesman for the Dutch Ministry of Defence conceded that the violence was having an impact, and that the outcome was not certain. The Government said that it would go ahead only if it secures a two-thirds majority in parliament, making it essential that it get the support of the main opposition Labour party.
However, Bert Koenders MP, the Labour foreign affairs leader, told The Times that the attacks were having an effect. He said: “That worries us, obviously. It’s not so much the risk itself, but the risk in relation to the purpose of the mission.”
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He said that he would support the mission only if it could carry out reconstruction work. He said: “We want to make sure there will be a substantial amount of reconstruction. You can have risks, but if you are sitting in your compound, there is not much you can do.”
One Nato source believed that the Taleban were targeting military in the north of Afghanistan, where Dutch soldiers are based, knowing that the parliament in The Hague was “wobbly” about deploying troops in the more dangerous south.
He said: “There is no easy alternative to the Dutch. They would be difficult to replace and it would harm Nato’s credibility if they pulled out.”
A senior British defence source said: “Nato will have to find the extra troops, but we have made it clear they are not coming from us.”
Nato officials believe that it may be necessary to ask the Americans to delay their withdrawal of about 2,000 troops from southern Afghanistan, or to rejig the alliance troop presence in Kabul to release soldiers for deployment to the south.
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“The US draw-down would most likely have to be scaled down,” the source said.