Nato ordered a cutback on Tuesday in operations with Afghan forces in response to a surge of so-called insider attacks on foreign servicemen, but said the restriction was temporary and would not derail a 2014 handover of security to Afghans. The order indefinitely suspending most mentoring operations came from the second most senior US commander in Afghanistan, Lieutenant-General James Terry, and applies to all front-line missions involving units smaller than an 800-strong battalion.
But a senior Nato spokesman, US Colonel Tom Collins, said the order was only a "temporary and prudent response" to current threats of insider attacks and a week of mounting anger across the Muslim world over a blasphemous film. "It will apply only until the threat level returns to a tolerable level," Collins said, adding that separate training missions would be unaffected.
So-called enabling missions, such as Nato helicopter support for Afghan troops and medical evacuations by air, would also be unaffected, Collins told Reuters. But even a limited cutback is a major turnaround for Nato's core mission of a strong training role for the 350,000 members of the Afghan security forces. They will now have to cope with reduced support from the 100,000-strong Nato-led force backing the Afghan government against Taliban insurgents.
Nato Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen denied the step showed that Taliban insurgents were dictating events in Afghanistan and also said the Nato strategy of gradually handing over security responsibility to Afghan forces was unchanged. "We have said all along that we will take every step necessary to minimise the risks to our troops and that's what we are doing," he told reporters at Nato headquarters in Brussels. Afghan commanders were not told of the order until Tuesday, in a hurried meeting with Nato counterparts.
Comments
Comments are closed.