Netherlands Votes on Troops for Afghanistan

The Dutch parliament is to vote today on whether to put more than 1,000 soldiers under British command in the hostile territory of southern Afghanistan. The vote, after weeks of debate, is seen as the biggest international decision in the Netherlands since it rejected the European constitution last summer, and is also seen as crucial to Nato’s viability.

A Dutch no would mean another Nato country would have to take up the slack. Britain is due to take up the command in the spring and is sending 4,500 personnel in addition to the 1,000 it already has in Afghanistan.

While public opinion is divided about sending troops to southern Afghanistan, Dutch military intelligence also has misgivings about the Uruzgan deployments.

The government decided in December to provide 1,200-1,400 soldiers for the British-led Nato mission that is replacing the Americans in southern Afghanistan, where Taliban insurgents remain strong. The decision provoked uproar, with almost 70% opposing the deployments in opinion polls. In a survey this week, opposition was down to 47%, although still ahead of those supporting participation.

In reports from last October and November, the MIVD military intelligence agency said the Uruzgan mission was "complex and high risk", with up to 350 insurgents in the region. "The fighters constitute a formidable enemy," the MIVD said in the reports, seen by selected parliamentary leaders at the weekend.

A leading opponent and government figure, Boris Dittrich, said the MIVD had reinforced his opposition. "The population in Uruzgan is wild, angry, and vengeful," he told Amsterdam University students. "The MIVD is very critical about the prospects of reconstruction."

The service reported: "Southern Afghanistan is unstable and insecure, mainly because of the actions of the Taliban and related groupings."

The centre-right coalition government of Jan-Peter Balkenende, defending a four-seat majority in the 150-seat lower house in The Hague, has been rocked by the defection of a junior coalition partner opposed to the Afghanistan mission.

The government is depending on the Labour party to give the go-ahead to the dispatch of up to 1,400 soldiers to the southern Uruzgan province. If the opposition fails to support the Nato mission, the government will fall, the damage to the Netherlands’ credibility will be immense, and the blow to the Nato alliance, headed by a Dutchman, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, will be severe.

The defense minister, Henk Kamp, had resisted calls for the intelligence to be shared ahead of today’s vote, but had to climb down to avoid a government defeat after the Labour party leader, Wouter Bos, insisted on access to the information.

The Netherlands remains haunted by the shame of Srebrenica a decade ago when Dutch peacekeepers stood aside during the Serbian slaughter of up to 8,000 Bosnian Muslim males.

At the end of a two-day conference in London attended by 60 countries, co-chairmen Britain, the UN and Afghanistan yesterday said $10bn (£5.6bn) in aid had been pledged to Afghanistan by the international community.