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Dutch government pledges €90 million on security in Afghanistan

The Netherlands is to spend €90 million in development aid for the army and police in Afghanistan after it withdraws from its training mission in Kunduz.

The government agreed at the Nato summit in Chicago to provide extra money from 2015 until 2017 to ensure Afghan forces are able to look after the country’s security.

The last Dutch troops are scheduled to leave Afghanistan in the summer of 2014, where they are training civilian police officers.

‘We cannot stay for ever. The Afghans must take responsibility for their own country,’ said Nato secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen in Chicago.

However, with Afghan president Hamid Karzai reckoning the cost of maintaining the army and police at more than $4 billion (€3 billion) annually, the country’s security will remain dependent on Western investment for years to come.

The Kunduz mission has been hampered by poor recruitment levels. In March it emerged that new roles were being sought for10 instructors because there was not enough work for them.

In the same month Mark Rutte’s cabinet decided not to extend the parameters of the mission, which the Prime Minister admitted was a ‘delicate political question’.

The Dutch presence in Afghanistan has been a thorny issue for the last two governments. The previous cabinet headed by Jan-Peter Balkenende was brought down in 2010 after the coalition parties fell out over a proposed extension of the mission in Uruzgan.

Source: De Volkskrant: Nederland wil zich verder aan Afghanistan binden - maar alleen financieel

Photo by minister-president Rutte (official photo)