Great Britain and Poland criticized the US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth for his statement that few NATO allies actually participated in combat operations in Afghanistan. The reaction came after his public statement, in which he questioned the scale of the contribution of other countries from the Alliance.
Hegseth said that as a captain he visited NATO headquarters in Kabul, where he saw the flags of about 50 countries. According to him, however, only about five of them actually contributed to the combat operations, and by the end of the mission their number was “one or two” countries. He added that American servicemen jokingly interpreted ISAF as “I saw Americans fighting“.
The British Prime Minister's Office rejected this assessment. In his position, spokesman Andy Burnham said that thousands of British families and families of servicemen from allied countries had made enormous sacrifices to fulfill their role in the war and protect common values. More than 450 British servicemen have not returned from Afghanistan.
Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski reacted with a post on social networks. He called on Hegseth to repeat his words to the families of the 44 Polish soldiers who died providing security in Ghazni province.
All 28 NATO members at the time participated in the US-led war in Afghanistan. The alliance triggered Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty on September 12, 2001, the day after the terrorist attacks in the US. This remains the only time in NATO's history that the collective defence clause has been used.
The dispute over the allied contribution
Hegseth's statement is not the first time that Washington has questioned the role of other NATO members in Afghanistan. In January, Donald Trump caused discontent in Britain after saying that non-US forces had been "a little behind" and “a little away from the front line“.
The new comments have once again drawn attention to the price paid by the Allied armies during the nearly two-decade mission. For London and Warsaw, Hegseth's assessment ignores both the participation of their servicemen in the operation and the sacrifices made by British and Polish forces.
Sources: news.bg, theguardian.com, tvp.info