Misunderstanding over Dutch mission

Published on 15 February 2011 at 11:12

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“We want to fight the Taliban say Kunduz police,” reports Volkskrant. According to the Dutch daily, Afghan police are “very puzzled by the Dutch mission.” At the end of January, when the Netherlands’ opposition gave a green light for a new mission to safeguard security and facilitate reconstruction in Afghanistan, the GreenLeft party insisted that the contract with the Afghans should stipulate that the Dutch mission was for “civil police training and not for combat instruction.” Expressing his surprise to Volkskrant, a spokesman for the Afghan police remarks “we don’t need police to patrol the streets and arrest small-time thieves. There is a war on here.” He further adds that the Afghan army “is in need of assistance” from the country’s police who “will have to fight.”

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