Leader of the Iraq Commission Wilibrord Davids will be speaking to the Dutch parliamanetary committee on foreign affaits later today. The discussion was already planned before the upheavals of last Tuesday-Wednesday, and the intention was to allow the parliamentarians to enquire about the investigative process and factual details in the report. Obviously, the expectations are that it will get deeply political. Davids himself was interviewed in the NRC on Saturday saying that he was himself unhappy with the reaction of premier Balkenende to his report (literally, it was ‘not correct’). Whether he will pursue this standpoint today remains to be seen.

Committee of Enquiry: Iraq ( http://www.onderzoekscommissie-irak.nl/#pagina=1081 )

‘Structural Determinism’ is not a phrase that gets used in the Davids report, as one might expect. But it does apply to one aspect of Dutch-American relations that played a major role in the logistics of the Iraq invasion: Host Nation Support.

In De Groene Amsterdammer last week, Martin Broek took an in-depth look at what this refers to. To facilitate the movement of war materials and related equipment, agreements have been made between the US and its allies to establish how this will be taken care of. In Europe these agreements are of special meaning, because of the need to transport large-scale material from the US bases in Germany to major sea ports. Such agreements between the Netherlands and the US have existed at least since 1971 (their forerunner was the 1950 Mutual Defence Assistance Agreement), and are regularly renewed to take into account changing circumstances and new regulations. For instance, the agreements of 1980 and 1985 set out that aircraft and personnel of the Dutch airline KLM could be brought into service if necessary for either the Dutch or the US government in a crisis situation.

The significance of these agreements was not ignored by the Davids report, which covers the issue from pages 380-386. Davids states that the application of Host Nation Support agreements only applies to situations involving NATO, and this was not the case with Iraq. However, in a telling follow-up statement, it says that “it fits more in the spirit of the military alliance to react positively to the request from an ally, who has material and personnel stationed in Europe partly to defend the Netherlands.” Belgium and Germany were obviously in the same position here. The US Embassy in each country needs to submit a Letter of Intent to each host country outlining what kind of cooperation and facilities are required. Once agreed, the 21st Theatre Support Command in Kaiserslautern arranges the necessary details with the appropriate host nation authorities.

Not surprisingly, US interests focused on the ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp, and preliminary visits were made in late 2002 to check facilities. A meeting in Kaiserslautern on 9 January 2003 between US, Dutch, Belgian, and German military authorities clarified the requirements. The Letter of intent was finally delivered to the Dutch premier, as protocol demanded, on 27 January. Since it did not include any new requests, it was accepted by the cabinet without further ado. The transport of US material by rail, protected by Dutch military and police united (as well as armed US united for the most sensitive material) began on 17 February.

Why is this part of the Iraq story of interest? Two main reasons.

Firstly, the Dutch parliament was only informed of the transporation on 17 February – the day it began. This, in the words of Davids, was “remarkably late”: “Was this silence because of the concern that an earlier announcement of the start of the transports would cause opposition from the public?” The report doesn’t explore this angle further. What it does say is that there was not a tremendous amount of opposition to the revelation in parliament itself.

Secondly, the importance of Rotterdam increased dramatically due to circumstances elsewhere. The Austrians declared that they would not accept transports of US non-sensitive material over their territory, closing off access to Italian ports and causing this to be shipped westwards instead. Then the Belgians, on 15 February, declared that the rail route to Antwerp harbour would be unavailable during weekends from 15 February due to maintenance. As a result of both these decisions, far more US material had to be shipped out of Rotterdam. From 17 February to 26 April this involved 44 river transports and 77 trains, plus 33 aircraft passing through Schiphol with more than 10,000 personnel on board.

What to make of this? The Austrians rightly affirmed their neutrality, but what about the Belgians? In his article Broek claims that the real reason was political uncertainties in Brussels following elections. In other words, the Belgians claimed maintenance but in fact were making use of Antwerp more awkward to avoid political mayhem. Belgium after all joined France and Germany in rejecting the legitimacy of the war. Did they play a trick? Even if they did, Davids seems to say that material did reach Antwerp harbour via a round-about route along Dutch railways, so it wasn’t a complete blockage.

What this episode does illustrate, once again, is the limited amount of space available when it comes to taking a stand as a close ally of the US. Germany certainly cooperated in this instance, a legacy of the continuing close relations between the two countries on security affairs since the Cold War began (and German intelligence, as we have learned since, were active providing information from out of Baghdad prior to the invasion). The Netherlands chose political not military support for a questionable war, but this necessarily included facilitating at all levels the transportation of the war machine out of Europe towards the Persian Gulf. No wonder the Americans were not entirely sure where the dividing line between political and military actually lay, in the Dutch case. The picture that emerges is that the Netherlands was more than anything important for the Americans because of its location and logistical services. Not for nothing does Broek mention that the 598th Transportation Group, responsible for organising the movement of US military equipment and personnel throughout Europe, the Middle East (including Afghanistan), and Africa, is located just outside of Rotterdam.

On 15 January UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband was interviewed by several international journalists about Afghanistan. Miliband made a clear reference to the Canadian and Dutch contribution to ISAF – Afghanistan is in a crucial phase, and in the circumstances, if the West wants to achieve a successful outcome, its not a good time to pull out.

Miliband’s comments are probably fair enough, but still somewhat unfortunate coming in a week when the British attempts to obtain Dutch involvement in the Iraq invasion has been laid bare. Blair wrote a letter to Balkenende in 2002 outlining his Iraq plans, which Balkenende literally had to return to Blair and not show to anyone else. This is to say the least highly unusual – needless to say, the Davids Committee couldn’t see it either. It has also emerged that the UK ambassador used the legal advice of British Attorney General Lord Goldsmith to sway the Dutch government. Goldsmith had reported on 7 March 2003 that military action against Iraq would only be justified under existing UN resolutions (in particular 1441) if “hard evidence of non-compliance and non-cooperation” could be demonstrated. On 17 March Goldsmith conceded in a second letter that military action was legal. He stated later that in the intervening ten days he had been provided with sufficient evidence on Iraqi wrongdoing to make him clarify his position. Many drew the opposite conclusion, that Goldsmith had been put under considerable political pressure to support the government line and give a green light for the invasion. [The resignation of deputy legal advisor Elizabeth Wilmshurst from the Foreign Office on 20 March, in reply to Goldsmith's about turn, seemed to confirm these suspicions.] On 18 March Balkenende, in the middle of clarifying the Dutch stance on the impending invasion, received an A4 from the UK ambassador with Goldsmith’s adapted, pro-war stance succinctly outlined. The speed and intent of this action is alone enough to raise an eyebrow or two.

The picture that emerges from the Davids report goes further. Blair was more keen that the Americans for Dutch military involvement. For the US the Dutch military were useful but ultimately would complicate command-and-control coordination. For the British on the other hand, bringing The Hague in would strengthen London’s hand in a deeply divided Europe. especially considering the close diplomatic relations between the UK, Netherlands and Germany. So while the US wanted infrastructural support, the UK was asking for a marine battalion.

Interesting to reflect on the long-term consequences of these manoueverings. Britain saw a major public outcry against the impending war, with around 1 million taking to the streets of London on 16 February 2003. In contrast the Netherlands, in the middle of political turmoil following the assassination of Pim Fortuyn on 6 May 2002 and the collapse of the first Balkenende coalition on 16 October, experienced little in the way of social opposition. But the outcome has been quite different. Despite Iraq, British foreign policy has hardly moved an inch in its solidly pro-Washington stance, and there are no expectations that the ongoing British investigation into the legality of the war – not set to report before early 2011 – will provide anything more than a very late, long overdue comment. The Davids report, however, has not only set a standard beyond most other Iraq reports in terms of the severity of its conclusions, but could have a political impact beyond all others put together. Not least, its far-reaching conclusions have been noted in the UK itself over the past week.

“Investigative committees have no use. They are always brought in too late for these kinds of moral issues.”

So wrote defence and security expert Chris Klep in February 2009, based on his research into the impact of  previous research committees investigating military missions in Canada, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The Davids committee was called into being around the same time. Now almost one year later, with the Davids report a public document, it is worth reflecting on whether Klep’s somber assessment – that these kinds of committee are always introduced too late, and are never able to attach responsibility to those who are most guilty of wrong-doing – holds true in this case as well. The signs are that it doesn’t.

On Thursday 14 January there was a symposium at the parliamentary press centre in The Hague on ‘Iraq, the Davids Committee and Journalism.’ The speakers included two of the few journalists who had worked hard over the previous seven years to unearth the truth of Dutch involvement in Iraq: Joost Oranje of the NRC (who’s seminal article ‘Hollands Oorlogica’ in 2004 really set the standard) and Huub Jaspers of Argos. They were joined by journalist/academic Ko Colijn and Allard de Rooi of the private citizens group ‘Truth on Iraq’. The ensuing discussion was revealing.

The journalists on the panel – who one would expect to be the most critical observers around – were pretty much in agreement that Davids had delivered a factually detailed, impressive independent report. The conclusions are indeed hard-hitting, particularly on the issue of international law, always a crucial issue in the Netherlands. Oranje noted quite correctly that the cabinet compromise given to parliament late on Wednesday night – that with today’s knowledge a different decision on supporting the invasion may have been taken – didn’t hold water at all. Nothing has changed in the past seven years to make the invasion legal. 

Colijn took this issue up and ran further with the implications – the Netherlands is one of the few countries that possesses a constitution wherein is stated that its military is to be used for self-defence of tha nation and the promotion of international order. Davids’ conclusions that there was no international legal basis for the invasion therefore hits right at the heart of Dutch involvement in peace and security missions. It is highly likely that this will have an impact on future policy decisions in this area.

The two main pillars of the Dutch outlook on global affairs – Atlanticism and international law – clashed head-on over Iraq, but it remains to be seen what the wreckage points to as possible alternatives. The report’s remarkable conclusions on the damaging impact of  ‘reflex Atlanticism’ – which, after a 45 minute discussion at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in August 2002 effectively defined Dutch policy from then on, come what may – will not disappear easily. The ‘political not military support’ for the invasion was an attempt to square the circle by declaring support for the main ally while remaining technically on the sidelines, staying within the boundaries of international law. Davids has exposed this once and for all. Colijn was also right in saying that the report was quite simplistic by contrasting ’reflex Atlanticism’ with an apparent European alterantive – but then, consistently denigrating the European option will never bring it into any effective form either.  

The Bush years were consistently difficult for the Dutch in trying to match their belief in legal propriety with US power, with clashes over rendition flights using Dutch airspace, the non-legal status of Guantanamo/Abu Ghraib/Bagram internees, and the US refusal to fully recognise the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction. Attempts were made to adapt to the realities of US unilateralism, such as the international legal commission to examine the status of non-combatants, but Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Bot’s comment about a ‘mini-ice age’ in Dutch-American relations during 2005 speaks volumes for the depths that these controversies plumbed.

The arrival of Obama has smoothed out the tensions a great deal, but the principle remains even if the President [Bush]  doesn’t. The Davids report clearly chronicles how elements of the Dutch military saw involvement in the Iraq mission as a way to justify their budget and maintain their force levels in a time of budget reductions (to the chagrin of some, in January 2003 the Americans responded that they didn’t actually want any Dutch front-line forces, only logistics and ‘back-fill’ – replacing US and UK tasks elsewhere so that they could be shifted to the Persian Gulf). This urge on the part of the military to justify itself will continue to be present, not least in 2010 with sizeable government cuts looming on all sides. The policy ramifications of this tension will be tested time and again in the future – with Uruzgan top of the list.

Colijn was right to point out that the political traumas of March 2003 reached their apogee last Tuesday-Wednesday in the cabinet stand-0ff between Bos and Balkenende. The failure of Bos and the Labour party to gain sufficient leverage over the Christian Democrats to form a cabinet with them at that time caused a lot of bad blood, not least between the two leaders themselves. It remains to be seen if that particularly large cloud has now been blown away, enabling the cabinet to continue until its term ends in Spring 2011. It could be so. Certainly Labour’s apparent unwillingness to push the issue once the letter from the cabinet included a semi-climb-down from Balkenende does seem significant.   

The members of Truth on Iraq present at the symposium on Thursday evening did their best to dominate the event by pouring their criticism not on the cabinet but on to Dutch journalism as a whole, in its failure to follow through on the gaping holes in the official story on Iraq. It is true that media interest here only picked up once revelations started to come out from the US and the UK on the serious political shenanigans around Iraq, and even then it took an ever so gradual movement in the First Chamber of parliament during 2007-2008 to really get it back onto the top of the Dutch political agenda and lead the way to Davids. Oranje admitted that the NRC‘s decision to run his article in 2004 that attempted to piece together the Dutch Iraq story was a statement in the wilderness, and the article’s rapid disappearance from both media and political interest was equally revealing.

But Oranje had the final word, rebutting the criticism directed at his profession coming from the audience by noting sardonically that most of the members of Truth on Iraq are Labour party, and the Labour party, because of its involvement in the current cabinet, had done nothing to bring the disruptive Davids committee into existence. There was no reply to that.

Reflections on Davids: II will follow soon.

Foto Roel Rozenburg/NRC

The letter arrived, the cabinet leaders appeared, parliament was temporarily mollified. The tensions that had been rising throughout 13 January were eventually defused during a late-night session of the Tweede Kamer, during which the coalition demonstrated its intent to continue.

The crucial factor in the letter, signed by Balkenende, was that the cabinet as a whole accepts that “for a similar action [as the 2003 invasion] a more adequate mandate in international law would have been required” [aanvaardt het kabinet dat voor een dergelijk optreden een adequater volkenrechtelijk mandaat nodig zou zijn geweest]. The delicacy of the language gives an indication of the stubbornness of the negotiations through the day. Balkenende denied that his initial reaction on Tuesday had referred to the Davids report’s views on international law as no more than ‘an opinion.’ He also insisted that his reaction had been tested on the other cabinet leaders beforehand. Everything came down to a misunderstanding over who Balkenende was speaking for on Tuesday – himself as premier in 2002-2003, or as representative of the current cabinet in 2010?

All in all, for the premier it seemed to be storms in teacups. The opposition spat fire at the podium, gathered their indignation, but came out with no more than a demand for a motion that would declare Balkenende’s initial reaction to the report null and void, but Labour, having got the climb-down from the Christian Democrats they wanted, refused to back it. It was enough for Balkenende to say that had we known what we now know, the decisions would have been different in 2002-2003. The whiff of a pyrrhic victory (somehow, for both sides) was floating around the Binnenhof last night.

The cabinet has agreed to produce a full response to the Davids report in early February. Ultimately the three coalition leaders agreed to disagree and carry on. Balkenende’s passing comment on entering the parliament for the late-night debate, that this was no time for a cabinet crisis, seems to have carried the day.

More reflections on this tumultuous couple of days will follow soon.

I don’t think anyone really expected that the Davids report would bring the ruling coalition to the brink of collapse, but it has. Having demanded a debate this evening, the parliament has been waiting for a letter from the coalition outlining its standpoint on the report. The letter should have been there at 20.30, then at 21.30, but it hasn’t come, despite negotiations through the whole day between the leaders of the Christian Democrats, Labour, and the Christian Union. The message is that the parliament should wait until tomorrow morning, but the parliament, although getting weary, smells blood somewhere close.

Who is to blame for this remarkable impasse? Although the Davids report had much to say about the crucial role of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs under Jaap de Hoop Scheffer in determining Dutch policy towards Iraq, all political wrath has fallen on Balkenende for denying the report any real merit.
So while the theatricals in the parliament this evening can be smirked at, the fact is that seven years on the ghost of the Iraq fiasco has suddenly arisen to cause havoc once more.
Maybe the lesson to draw here is that the Netherlands is a real pro when it comes to international arbitration, institutional politics, and orchestrating back-room deals, but it can’t deal with the major stakes of power politics on the global stage.

Foto: Reuters

With the cabinet in disarray following the presentation of the Davids report on Iraq and premier Balkenende’s lacklustre response yesterday, the Dutch parliament has called for an emergency debate this evening to assess the current state of play. D 66 leader Alexander Pechtold called for the debate because of the political chasm that is opening up at the centre of the ruling cabinet, between the Christian Democrats and Labour, or more precisely between premier Balkenende and Minister of Finance Bos. Pechtold duly received support from the whole of the chamber for this initiative.

A cabinet meeting this morning between Balkenende, Bos, and coalition partner Andre Rouvoet of the Christen Unie did not resolve anything. The question is whether the premier is going to answer Labour’s demand that he give more than a nod to the criticisms that Davids outlined with regard to Iraq: lack of leadership, insufficient informing of parliament, and no legal grounds for the invasion under international law. Balkenende is renowned as a principled politician who does not go in for nuance – things are either right or wrong, good or bad. It would be a very bitter pill for him to swallow, having claimed all along that there was no basis for assuming any wrongdoing on his part or on the part of the government in 2002-2003, if he now has to acknowledge that there was.

Labour know this and want to hear it loud and clear. There is a heavy dose of sangfroid at work here. Labour are at their lowest point for years and years in the opinion surveys, so any election in the short-term is hardly going to do them any favours. Yet one gets the impression that bringing an end to the successive Balkenende cabinets (he’s been in power consistently since 2002) would somehow bring a smile to the party’s parliamentary rank and file, even if it would mean suicide at the polls. Iraq does not seem to grip the Dutch public as much as it has, slowly but surely, got a grip on the Dutch parliament over the last two-three years, and it has been rumbling around the Dutch tv and print media since the events themselves. So it hardly would be a vote-getter – most punters favour easing the country out of recession and somehow coping with the impending massacre of public spending due to the hole in public finances left by major bank bail-outs.

But will Balkenende walk before Labour push him? Its a possibility. Although he denied it, he certainly seems to have wanted the EU Council Presidency that went to van Rompuy instead. And after eight years at the helm of what has been, to say the least, a rough time in Dutch politics and society (with rougher politics to come, one imagines), it wouldn’t be a huge surprise if he brought the curtain down himself.

So who will benefit most? Pechtold’s D 66, for leading the way in demanding parliamentary propriety? Or Geert Wilders’ PVV, by simply biding their time, recognising that there’s no real public outcry, and waiting for the collapse?

Commissie Davids (ANP)

The Davids Commission delivered its report today on the involvement of the Netherlands in the build-up to and actual invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The reactions so far have been revealing for their focus on premier Jan Peter Balkenende, who has never shown any interest or inclination to dig into the Iraq past. The report partly explained why.

Three principal conclusions have been drawn out from the forty-nine listed at the end:

1) There was disagreement among civil servants within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs over the legality of the Iraq invasion without a specific UN mandate.

This has been known for sure since the NRC Handelsblad published  in January 2009 Memorandum DJZ/IR/2003/158 from 29 April 2003, in which clear as day was stated that there were serious doubts within the Foreign Ministry’s legal division over the political (never mind military) support given by The Hague for the invasion. The top civil servant who sent this critical legal advice to the archive instead of to the Minister, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, was Frank Majoor - now Dutch representative to NATO. You have to appreciate the significance here of Dutch legal advisors saying that ‘if the Netherlands ended up in a procedure at the International Court of Justice, it would lose’. In The Hague, the ‘capital of international law’, these were not idle words. The Davids report is clear: ‘The Security Council resolutions from the 1990s [1441 in particular] did not provide a mandate for the American-British invasion in 2003.’ And for the Americans, the difference between political and military support wasn’t that clear anyway.

2) Premier Balkenende was absent (as was Minister of Defence Korthals) from the deliberations within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that led to confirming Dutch support for the invasion. Balkenende only came on the scene in early 2003, but by the then the cast had been set. This means that Foreign Minister de Hoop Scheffer (and his ministerial advisors) effectively set out the government’s policy between August and December 2002. 

Balkenende tried to brush this away in his post-report press conference this afternoon. Ah, he had been fully occupied with the following year’s budget, and oh yes, he’d been away at the major sustainable development conference in South Africa. So he was doing a spot of maths and some tree-hugging while the most serious crisis to hit the post-Cold War era was playing out across the globe? This is beyond parody.

3) The Dutch military and civilian intelligence services were cautious in their assessments of Iraq and its possession of weapons of mass destruction, but were unable to make this information have an impact within the government. 

Once again, here is the proof that intelligence lost out to politics. Useful tit-bits have been taken out of context, manipulated, and served up to parliament and public as justification for war. What is more – although the Dutch services were cautious, they were still completely reliant on Anglo-American intelligence as their main source of information. In these circumstances there was nowhere to go.

As expected, the report caused plenty of knee-jerk reactions from the opposition parties as they lined up to take a dig at Balkenende, still in power seven years (and counting) since these events took place. Above all, the premier’s assumption that he can simply respect the report but disagree with its main conclusions - and then walk away regardless – has gone down badly, none more so than with his erstwhile cabinet colleagues in the Labour party. Labour has been itching to regain a grip on the Balkenende/Hoop Scheffer/Iraq issue since it was forced to drop it in 2006 as the price for joining the current cabinet. Unless Balkenende turns up tomorrow wearing sackloth and ashes, the Labourites are not going to be satisfied.

What next? The Davids report flatly denies that Dutch military forces participated in either the preparations for or the actual invasion of Iraq, despite hard rumours and some unforgettable anomalies – such as Jan Bot standing amongst the Coalition of the Willing at a Tommy Franks press conference on 22 March 2003.

Jan Blom, far right, behind Franks. Coalition of the Willing?

Its highly likely that these suspicions won’t go away, and more revelations may come. It also looks quite likely at the moment, considering the mood amongst all the parties except the Christian Democrats, that a parliamentary enquiry will be established, which would have a more stringent mandate than Davids – something Balkenende would not be able to walk away from. 

But perhaps the most important reflection on the path the Dutch took in wandering into the Iraq fiasco come in conclusion points 14 and 16. The decision to support the invasion was based on international political considerations, and ‘in the first place these were scarcely explicitly mentioned [but ever-present] considerations for Atlantic solidarity.’ These came at a cost – this ‘Atlantic reflex’ prevaled over a more European outlook that may have enabled The Hague to play a negotiating role between Washington and London on the one hand and Paris and Berlin on the other.

Is this Atlantic reflex still in place in 2010? For some such as Minister of Foreign Affairs Verhagen with his human rights agenda – absolutely. For others – notably State Secretary for Europe Frans Timmermans –  it should be abandoned for a more flexible, rational foreign policy that recognises the common ground but that allows room for manoeuvre. Surely if Davids shows anything, its that Timmermans is right?

(ABC News/Handout/SaharaReporters.Com)

In the Washington Post on 10 January terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman noted the core features of AlQaeda’s latest strategy. Number three was “create divisions within the global alliance arrayed against it by targeting key coalition partners,” and he used the attacks in Madrid 2004 and London 2005 as examples. The Madrid attack of 11 March was certainly  remarkable in its timing and its effects, allegedly contributing to the swing against Aznar’s ruling Partido Popular in the general election three days later. Hoffman then went on to say that “within the last two years serious terrorist plots orchestrated by al-Qaeda’s allies in Pakistan, meant to punish Spain and the Netherlands for participating in the war on terrorism, were thwarted in Barcelona and Amsterdam.”

This was news to the Algemene Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst (AIVD), the Dutch intelligence and security service, which issued a brief repost a day later denying that there had been any thwarted attacks during that period. So is the Netherlands a sea of calm in an otherwise threatened West?

The AIVD’s website already gives some indication of the answer to this question. In December last year the service issued two reports, one claiming the impact of salafi Islam was declining in the Netherlands, mainly due to its rejection by muslims themselves, and the other indicating that the threat from local jihadi networks had also declined. Since the demise of the so-called Hofstad group in 2004, which allegedly sought to attack political targets, radical elements now seek jihad abroad instead, as illustrated by the group from The Hague who turned up near the Kenya-Somali border ‘on holiday’ in July 2009. Why this success? Firstly, the upgrading of the counter-terrorist infrastructure. AIVD recruitment went through the roof in the early 200s as terrorism became a major growth industry, and while the creation of the National Coordinator for Counter-terrorism initially caused quite a lot of bureaucratic in-fighting, it does seem to have galvanised the relevant parts of government to work together. It is quite true that communications surveillance by these bodies in the Netherlands is remarkably extensive and, as a result, very effective. But this is only the first reason. The second reason is that a vast majority of Dutch muslims have no interest in jihad, and local leaders have been effective in monitoring their communities and reducing the impact of radical teachings. So while there might at times be social unrest and difficult relations with the police among some Turks and Moroccans, it is related more to second and third generation integration problems than radical religion.      

So far so good. But the AIVD reports are not the whole story, because while the locals are covered, there are others coming in. In March 2008 the Pakistani student Aqueel Ur Rahman Abassi was arrested in Breda due to information that linked him with radical Islamic groups in Barcelona. According to Spanish police Abassi was on his way to becoming a suicide bomber, destination Frankfurt. His time as a student in the Netherlands was purely part of the cover.

Abassi’s case caused deep concern because he illustrated a whole new category of threat. As a student he could enter the Netherlands fairly easily. Many like him obtain an education visa and then disappear, making use of the loophole. Following his arrest, all known Pakistani students were screened and it has become very difficult for applicants from that country to obtain visas to study at a Dutch university. Like Abdulmutallab, Abassi was apparently using the Netherlands as no more than a transit country on the way to his eventual intended target. But with the Afghanistan debate going to heat up here in the coming months, one does wonder if it will stay that way.

Minister for Development Bert Koenders in Afghanistan, 2009 (Ministerie van Defensie)

At the end of December the Ministry of Defence in The Hague declared that the Dutch mission in Afghanistan has caused 80 civilian deaths since its inception in mid-2006. Other reports – making use of UN figures from the fighting around Chora in June 2007 – place the total at 120.  When this figure is placed in the context of total civilian deaths since the beginning of Enduring Freedom – with a whole range of estimates between 10 and 18,000 – it looks pretty insignificant. Likewise, the number of Dutch military fatalities - 21 –  is low compared to, say, Canada (138), the UK (246), or even France (36) (and this includes the fact that the first five Dutch casualties were the result of accidents, not combat).  

How are these figures going to weigh up when the Dutch cabinet decides on the future of the mission? If between 80 and 120 Afghans have died due to Dutch military action, has the Dutch presence contributed to saving many more Afghans from the repression of a religious fundamentalist regime in power in Kabul? Or the unscrupulous violence of a regional warlord getting rich on the drug trade? Or – surely the main point – Dutch civilians in danger of terrorist attacks planned from Afghan territory?

Or has the Dutch presence exactly provoked the development of new threats, run by new networks coming out of other locations? Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s trip through Schiphol on the way to his failed attempt to take out a Delta / North West flight was not due to Amsterdam airport’s slack security. With the possible exception of ElAl, just about any airline (or airport) would struggle to detect this kind of threat. The symbolic significance of the US-Netherlands connection as represented by flight 253 is what is at stake here. Jasper Schuringa comes out as the hero, but what conclusions should be drawn beyond praising a quick-witted member of the public?

Compensation paid out to Afghans for loss of family members or damage to property so far totals 350,000 Euro. A death of an Afghan civilian brings $1500 to the next of kin. To prevent undermining the positive effects of the 3-D approach (development, diplomacy, and defence) in Uruzgan, the Dutch even pay out to Afghans who suffer from the military activity of other ISAF forces stationed in the province. Considering this, it is remarkable how some of their ISAF colleagues seem to have a low opinion of the Dutch approach – just listen to the Australians (even though, for instance, four of the civilian deaths noted by the Ministry came from faulty targeting by Australian forces). 

What kind of an impact is this all going to have in the coming decision-making period? On 12 January the Davids Commission will be presenting its report on Dutch involvement in the build-up to the Iraq war in 2003. Few surprises are expected, but the timing of the delayed report could not be more awkward, with the cabinet having stated its wish to indicate an Afghanistan strategy by the end of this month. And as of today, after another hours-long debate amongst the ministers concerned, there is no consensus to speak of at all.

Minister for Development Bert Koenders was one of the guests on Matthijs van Nieuwekerk’s Top 2000 music show after Christmas, talking up the merits of Deep Purple’s epic Child in Time for best song. Using the song to reflect on his own political development, Koenders made clear that protests against the Vietnam war in the early 1970s were fundamental. Considering the many linkages that have been made between Vietnam and Afghanistan in recent years, Koenders was in light-hearted mode and was in no way going to make difficult parallels with the present. He has after all been one of the main supporters of a long-term military/development strategy in Afghanistan, putting him out of step with large parts of his own Labour party. But maybe Koenders learnt one thing from Vietnam which is highly relevant today – if you commit to an intervention, you have to know when and how to get out. So he can continue to praise the success of the Dutch mission and the need for a future perspective while relying on his party and the rest of the opposition to focus on the failure and pull the plug.