British PM Tony Blair’s surprising claim that NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) troops are “winning” the military mission against the Taliban has to be verified on the ground in Afghanistan. Blair told journalists in Riga, on Wednesday, at the end of a two-day NATO summit dominated by the alliance’s biggest military mission outside Europe: “I think there is a sense that this mission in Afghanistan is not yet won, but it is winnable and, indeed, we are winning.”

Just hours before the press conference, two NATO soldiers were ambushed on the road, south of Kabul. Details have not been released to the press but in recent months attacks on Western convoys that were confined to the southern provinces have spread to areas in and around the Afghan capital. The war in Afghanistan has intensified since Washington announced that it intended to withdraw 4,000 troops from the volatile south last December. NATO troops from Canada, Britain and the Netherlands, part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) that took over combat duties, are engaged in hand-to-hand combat with a resurgent Taliban force in strongholds in southern Helmand and Kandahar provinces.

On Monday, a suicide bomber attacked a NATO convoy exiting the heavily guarded Kandahar airport. Two Canadian soldiers were killed - taking Canada’s death toll in Afghanistan this year to 36. Suicide bombers have emerged for the first time in three decades of war in Afgh-anistan. There have been over 102 suicide attacks this year that have resulted mostly in civilian deaths in addition to 17 foreign soldiers. On Thursday, another NATO soldier was wounded in a clash with Taliban fighters in Helmand province.

The Taliban, which was ousted by US-led coalition forces from Kabul in 2001, have regrouped in five years to challenge the authority of Afghan and foreign security forces. Some 4,000 people are believed to have died in fighting this year - about a quarter of them civilians in the war-torn south. The Hamid Karzai government in Kabul is propped up by 32,000 ISAF troops. The main troop contributors are US (11,800) Britain (6,000), Germany (2,700) Canada, (2,500) Netherlands (2,000), Italy, (1,800) and France (975). But NATO’s first mission outside Europe has divided the alliance.

Alliance commanders won a small concession at the Riga summit from French, Spanish, Italian and German leaders who pledged to provide “emergency” assistance outside their areas in exceptional cases. But the definition of an emergency remains unclear, Spanish troops based in relatively peaceful western Afghanistan have rarely left their compound.

Now, PM Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has offered the use of Spanish helicopters in exceptional circumstances to help evacuate wounded NATO solders, but not for combat in the volatile south. French President Jacques Chirac agreed to send more aircraft and helicopters. While Italian PM Romano Prodi said a decision to move his soldiers would be taken on a case-by-case basis. Chief Jaap de Hoof Scheffer said 20,000 of the 32,000 troops in Afghanistan were more usable in combat and non-combat operations, but admitted that it still fell short of troop requirements. Blair’s optimistic predictions of victory clash with the Afghan reality. — IPS