The 28-nation US-led alliance would look at the situation again next year before deciding future force commitments. North Atlantic Treaty Organisation will also cooperate with the European Union’s efforts to shut down human smuggling operations that have fueled Europe’s greatest migrant crisis since World War II.
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“By keeping troops in Afghanistan, the United States is trying to maintain its worldwide credibility as a superpower, to show that it has not “abandoned” Afghanistan and was not defeated”, University of Arizona Professor of History David Gibbs told Sputnik.
“We’re going to achieve those reductions by moving some capabilities out that can be conducted over the horizon – that don’t necessarily need to be done in Afghanistan – to support the force”, he said, without elaborating. Other NATO countries are also expected to announce their own commitments to Afghanistan. The previous administration tried the approach where the USA would try to impose a military solution on a country like Afghanistan.
The Liberal government is renewing more than $150 million in annual funding for aid projects and to help Afghan security forces until 2020. Their major activity is supporting the Afghan National Army Officer Academy which aims to turn out competent junior leaders for the Afghan army.
“We are very close (to the target) and I’m certain that we will reach that level”, he added. “This is our time”, he said during a visit to Strasbourg, Germany for a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation summit in 2009.
KABUL, July 8 – President Barack Obama’s decision to withdraw roughly 1,400 USA troops from Afghanistan won’t adversely impact America’s mission there, a top general said before arriving in Kabul on Friday, adding that some jobs could be done from overseas. But he said he believed that, based on commitments made Saturday, force levels will remain largely stable.
He also said Russia’s own military buildup far exceeds in both numbers and intensity what North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is doing. Instead, he has been forced to return US troops to Iraq and keep thousands in place in Afghanistan, now America’s longest-running war. Other countries that were involved in the post-9/11 coalition against the Taliban have provided 6,000 troops to train and assist Afghan forces.
Gen. Joseph Votel, head of U.S. Central Command, arrived in Kabul Friday to meet with his commanders to discuss a “resurgent” Taliban two days after President Obama announced he would keep thousands of additional troops in Afghanistan when he leaves office in January, reversing a previous decision.
Stoltenberg clarified that the Resolute Support Mission is to train, advise and assist the Afghan security forces and not a non-combat mission, noting that North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ended its combat mission in Afghanistan in 2014. “Yet here, in the pre-dawn darkness of Afghanistan, we can see the light of a new day on the horizon”.
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“NATO has begun preparations for escalating from the Cold War into a hot one”, the 85-year-old is quoted as saying by Russia’s Interfax news agency.
