Herve Morin, the defense minister of France, which has 3,300 troops under NATO command in Afghanistan, announced that he may deploy "medium-sized supplementary troops" after the January 28 conference on Afghanistan in London. [13] 800 French Legionnaires are at the moment engaged in a fierce combat operation along with American counterparts east of the Afghan capital.
The top NATO military commander in Europe, Admiral James Stavridis, was in Poland earlier this week to "to discuss the Alliance's ISAF mission in Afghanistan" [14] and to recruit more Polish troops for the war. Warsaw has already pledged to raise its force level to nearly 3,000 troops as it recently signed a status of forces agreement to base U.S. missiles and troops, the first foreign soldiers on its soil since the collapse of the Warsaw Pact eighteen years ago.
The Czech Republic "is for the first time in history sending its own helicopter unit to Afghanistan."
"Czech soldiers and three upgraded Mi-171S transport helicopters will be...sent to the Sarana base in the southeast of the country to serve the needs of the NATO forces in the ISAF mission....The unit underwent comprehensive training for one and half a years, for instance in the Alps mountains and in desert areas in Israel and Texas....Czech soldiers will be first trained by their U.S. colleagues." [15]
Not only full NATO member states but Partnership for Peace nations are being strong-armed to provide more troops. Finland and Sweden, both of which have increased their troop strength in northern Afghanistan in recent months, have been involved in their first combat operations since World War II in the first case and in almost 200 years in the second. Troops from both nations were engaged in the latest of a series of firefights on December 13.
The Bundeswehr will soon train the first contingent of troops from former Soviet republic and current Collective Security Treaty Organization member Armenia in Germany for action in Afghanistan.
The defense minister of nominally neutral Austria, Norbert Darabos, said that the U.S. and Britain were bullying his nation to send more troops to Afghanistan, bemoaning the fact that "America's pressure on Austria is relatively intense, sometimes it is a little bit improper" and asserting that "Austria is a sovereign country [which] will not give in to the pressure." [16]
What Darabos may be concerned about in part is the rising rate of NATO casualties in Afghanistan. During the past few days two Dutch troops were injured, one critically, in a roadside bomb attack in Uruzgan province.
An Estonian soldier was killed in a similar incident in Helmand province, bringing the country's casualties to four killed and 23 wounded this year.
Two more British soldiers were killed this week, raising United Kingdom deaths to 239, 102 this year.
Nearly 500 Western soldiers have been killed so far this year, 305 of them American, compared to 155 U.S. military personnel lost during all of last year.
Undaunted, on December 16 the U.S. House of Representatives - by a vote of 395 to 34 - "passed a massive military spending bill to defray annual expenses, fund operations in Afghanistan, and pay for the troop withdrawal from Iraq."
The $636.3 billion package, "which does not include monies for President Barack Obama's recently announced decision to send 30,000 more US troops to Afghanistan," allots "80 million to acquire more unmanned Predator drones, a key tool in the US air war in Afghanistan and Pakistan....With little public debate in the United States, the pace of the drone bombing raids has steadily increased, starting last year during ex-president George W. Bush's final months in office and now under Obama's tenure." [17]
In approving the Pentagon's request, the American Congress endorsed "$130 billion to cover the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq" excluding an "estimated $30 billion that will be needed to fund President Barack Obama's recent decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan."
The bill also authorized the funding of "new Air Force global strike programs - including work on new manned and unmanned systems - Army brigade combat team modernization, a Navy attack submarine, and the Navy's new Carrier Long-Range Strike system....Analysts called the decision a victory for Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who has lobbied the White House for more funding.
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