NATO considers expanding its mission in Afghanistan
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced a possible expansion of Resolute Support mission within NATO. He spoke about this in an interview with the newspaper Welt am Sonntag published on Sunday, April 30. According to him, some members of the alliance advocate that the mission should be extended not once a year, as now, but once every few years. It is expected that the final decision on these issues will be made in June.
Mission "Resolute Support" started in early 2015, replacing a 13-year-old combat mission by the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan (ISAF). Under ISAF, 140,000 NATO soldiers were deployed in the country’s territory; the number of personnel for the new mission is limited to approximately 13,000 soldiers who are not involved in combat operations, but are training and advising the Afghan security forces.
After the departure of most foreign military from Afghanistan, the militants began to once more capture the territories. According to the American watchdog organization SIGAR, which prepared a report on the situation in Afghanistan for the U.S. Congress, as of November 2016 the official authorities in Kabul controlled slightly more than half of the country's territory.