Azernews.Az

By Kamila Aliyeva

Fifteen NATO countries announced that they will send additional troops to Afghanistan.

This was stated by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg before the meeting of defense ministers of the alliance in Brussels, TASS reported.

“Our military authorities have requested a few thousand more troops for the Mission in Afghanistan and today, I can confirm that we will increase our presence in Afghanistan.

“Fifteen nations have already pledged additional contributions to Resolute Support Mission. And I look forward to further announcements from other nations,” he said.

NATO has completed the withdrawal of its fighting forces from Afghanistan in 2014. Since then, the mission of the Alliance "Resolute Support" numbering 13,500 people is acting in the country.

Despite all these measures, in recent years, the Taliban, which opposes the government, has made significant progress in Afghanistan, regaining control of up to 40 percent of the country's territory.

Stoltenberg stressed that the focus will be on the development of Afghan Special Forces and aviation, as well as logistics and command and control capabilities.

"What we do is not to conduct combat operations but to help the Afghans fight, and to help the Afghans take full responsibility for the security in their own country," he said.

“We have seen that the Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan have been very professional and very important in the fight against the Taliban and we are now working on how we can further strengthen the Special Operations Forces of the Afghan Army,” he said.

He added that the air force was important in the fight against terrorist groups and the Taliban; and for medical evacuations and providing support to the armed forces on the ground.

But Stoltenberg reiterated this was not about returning to a combat role.

Earlier, the Pentagon announced that it will send nearly 4,000 additional troops to Afghanistan in an effort to turn around a war that commanders have described as a stalemate.

President Trump provided his defense secretary, Jim Mattis, with the authority to determine troop levels in Afghanistan.

The AP cited a Trump administration source who was not authorized to discuss the decision publicly and said the decision could be announced as early as next week.

There are about 8,400 U.S. troops in Afghanistan now.

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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

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