The Dutch government has decided to send a 545-strong police training mission to Afghanistan, 11 months after the last government fell over military deployment there. The three-year mission, announced by Prime Minister Mark Rutte today, will take effect from the middle of this year and will not involve offensive military activities. Parliament still has to vote on the proposal.

The new mission will be based in the northern province of Kunduz - one of the more insecure provinces in the north-, the capital Kabul and, eventually, the province of Bamiyan where it will be charged with the training of the civil police force. Four F-16 jets currently stationed in Afghanistan will be retained there for the new mission. They will be moved from the present southern base in Kandahar to the northern Mazar-e-Sharif.

Dutch F-16s for emergency use
The mission will include 225 trainers, deployed under the EU and NATO flag. An additional 125-strong military force will support the trainers. The F-16 unit will have a 120-member staff. The jets will be used to detect bombs and to protect the Dutch, Afghan and international units in cases of emergency. The mission will also be accompanied by legal experts and administrative personnel. The cost of the mission amounts to 470 million euros, including the post-withdrawal logistics which will take until 2015.

Afghan mission politically-loaded
Sending Dutch military personnel to Afghanistan is a controversial political issue. The previous cabinet collapsed when the Labour Party (PvdA) clashed with its Christian Democrats coalition partner on extending an earlier mission. The two parties in the current conservative-led rightwing minority cabinet are in favour of the new police mission, but the far-right Freedom Party on which they rely for support in parliament, opposes it. Some opposition parties, however, were in favour of the police training mission, as long as the military personnel involved are not combat troops. The government has accepted this condition.

Some 1,950 Dutch troops were deployed in Afghanistan until August last year, mainly in the central Uruzgan province under the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). The four-year mission, which had what's known as a '3D approach', a mix of defence, diplomacy and development, cost the lives of 24 soldiers.
 

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