LONDON: US President Donald Trump provoked outrage and distress among many in the United Kingdom on Friday with his suggestion that troops from NATO countries — other than Americans — stayed away from the front line during the war in Afghanistan.
In an interview with Fox News in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday, Trump said he was not sure
NATO would be there to support the United States if and when requested.
“I’ve always said, will they be there if we ever needed them, and that’s really the ultimate test, and I’m not sure of that,” Trump said.
“We’ve never needed them; we have never really asked anything of them. You know, they’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan, or this or that, and they did, they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines.”
In October 2001, nearly a month after the Sept. 11 attacks, a US-led coalition launched an invasion of Afghanistan to destroy al-Qaida, which had used the country as its base, and the group’s Taliban hosts.
Alongside the US were troops from dozens of countries, including from NATO, whose mutual-defence mandate had been triggered for the first time after the attacks on New York and Washington. In Britain, the reaction to Trump’s comments was raw, and Prime Minister Keir Starmer was being urged to request an apology from the US president.
After 9/11, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair said the UK would “stand shoulder to shoulder” with the US in response to the al-Qaida attacks. Troops from the UK took a key role in many operations during the
Afghan war until their withdrawal in 2014, particularly in Helmand Province in the south of the country. American troops remained in Afghanistan until their chaotic withdrawal in 2021, when the Taliban
returned to power.