Resolute Support mission: NATO extends Afghanistan training mission

Alliance chief says country continues to face serious security challenges

BRUSSELS: Nato foreign ministers agreed on Friday to extend the alliance's key training and support mission in Afghanistan beyond this year as the country continues to face ‘serious security challenges’.

Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg said Afghan forces were doing well against Taliban rebels, benefitting from the current military training programmes launched in 2015 after the alliance ended its direct combat role.

"But Afghanistan continues to face serious security challenges. That is why today, ministers agreed to sustain the Resolute Support mission beyond 2016," Stoltenberg said, without saying how much longer it would continue.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday that Washington had 9,800 soldiers in Afghanistan, accounting for the bulk of foreign troops in the Resolute Support Mission, and the number would fall to 5,500 in 2017.

Nato members are separately reviewing financial aid to help the Afghan armed forces in a programme which was originally planned to run to 2017 but was later extended to 2020. Stoltenberg said total contributions to the Afghan National Army Trust Fund now totalled $1.4 billion.

Nato has built up the Afghan army to some 350,000 troops but the Taliban remain a major threat, and some analysts believe the government would struggle badly or even fall without foreign support.

Nato may rely on five battalions to deter Russia

Nato's build-up in eastern Europe could include up to 3,500 troops, Britain said on Friday, stressing that the planned deployments would not be aggressive towards Russia.

Russia's seizure of Crimea in 2014 has prompted the Western military alliance to consider deterrent forces in the Baltics and Poland which British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said would be a ‘trip wire’ to alert Nato of any potential threat.

Nato defence ministers are expected to decide on the troop levels next month, while making clear no large forces will be stationed permanently, to avoid provoking the Kremlin.

"It looks like there could be four, maybe five battalions ... the point of these formations is to act as a trip wire," Hammond told reporters."It isn't intended to be aggressive," he said following the meeting of Nato foreign ministers in Brussels.

Hammond added that the formation could amount to as many as 3,500 troops along Nato's border with Russia.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 21^st, 2016.