BERLIN (SW): The German parliament on Thursday voted in favour of a continued military deployment in Afghanistan, raising the contingent‘s size from 850 to 980 troops.
Nearly 80 per cent of lawmakers in the Bundestag, Germany‘s lower house of parliament, voted in favour of the troop increase in the Hindu Kush region, which is meant to bolster a NATO-led training force in Afghanistan, the dpa reported.
NATO had initially planned to withdraw its training force in Afghanistan by 2016. "The original plan was too ambitious and too fast," Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen was quoted saying. "It emboldened the Taliban”, she added.
German military deployments require an annual approval by lawmakers in the Bundestag. Parliamentarians have voted in favor of expanding Germany's involvement in two key military missions. The vote came two weeks after Germany also agreed to send troops to assist the international coalition against "IS.",
According to the country’s state broadcaster DW, a total of 480 out of 602 participating parliamentarians voted in favor of extending Germany'straining mission in Afghanistan through 2016.
The opposition Left party had submitted a petition to phase German troops out of Afghanistan. The party's parliamentarians voted against the motion to extend the mission. Niels Annen, chair of foreign policy for the Social Democrats (SPD), Angela Merkel's partner in the "grand coalition," stressed that the decision to prolong Germany's mandate in Afghanistan had been a difficult one for all involved, adding that there was still a great deal of work to be done in the country.
German service members are stationed in Afghanistan as part of NATO's Mission Resolute Support, which provides training and assistance mission to help Afghanistan strengthen its own defenses. The mission was created in December 2014 at the end of NATO's 13-year International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission in Afghanistan, which assisted Afghan forces during the war in Afghanistan.
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