NATO says it’s sending 3,000 more troops to Afghanistan, but won’t say how many of those are U.S. troops already there.
At the end of a two-day defense ministerial, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced that the ministers approved an increase in the size of NATO’s Resolute Support training mission in Afghanistan from around 13,000 to roughly 16,000 personnel.
But the U.S., which confirmed in August that it had 11,000 troops in Afghanistan already, announced it was sending more than 3,000 U.S. troops more as part of President Trump’s new strategy to drive the Taliban to the bargaining table.
That would bring the total U.S. force to close to 15,000.
Asked to clear up the confusion, NATO’s Supreme Commander Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti told reporters, “I am going to disappoint you in one way because I am not going to talk numbers.”
At a news conference at NATO headquarters, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis was similarly tight-lipped.
“I don’t want to talk specific numbers,” Mattis said. “Basically, I don’t give the enemy information they could use to their advantage. And I’m told by some, ‘Well, people used to do that.’ That’s not me.”
While Stoltenberg indicated the increase was 3,000, later NATO officials indicated the additional contribution from other NATO nations was in the neighborhood of 700 troops.
Scaparrotti says discussions with NATO nations are still going on, and some are considering an “additional plus up” of their contributions.
“So this is all very encouraging and I would just say that as you look at the contributions to the nations to date, we will fulfill Gen. [John] Nicholson’s requirement substantially, in a very satisfactory way in my mind. I’m very encouraged by this.”
