{"id":3132,"date":"2015-10-28T11:35:10","date_gmt":"2015-10-28T11:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/box5917.temp.domains\/~iriacom\/\/news\/?p=3132"},"modified":"2015-10-28T11:35:10","modified_gmt":"2015-10-28T11:35:10","slug":"uk-to-extend-its-military-presence-in-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/uk-to-extend-its-military-presence-in-afghanistan\/","title":{"rendered":"UK to extend its military presence in Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"

UK Defence Secretary Michael Fallon says the country is set to extend its military presence in Afghanistan by a year.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fallon said the extension is made due to the ongoing security challenge faced by Afghan forces.<\/p>\n

He went on saying that the Afghan National Defence (ANDSF) and Security Forces had been “tested” over the last year but were increasingly professional and competent.<\/p>\n

“The UK government recognized it would take time for the ANDSF to develop into a fully-fledged fighting force capable of providing complete security for the people of Afghanistan,” he said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The statement also read:\u00a0“We have now concluded that we should maintain the scale of the UK’s current military mission in the country in 2016, to help build a secure and stable Afghanistan. The scope and role of the UK mission are unchanged.”<\/p>\n

This comes as\u00a0Britain had previously announced that it would keep troops in Afghanistan until the end of this year.<\/p>\n

UK has around 450 troops in Afghanistan who are involved in training at the Afghan National Army Officer Academy, working with the Afghan security ministries, and supporting NATO operations in Kabul.<\/p>\n

British troops ended their combat operations in Afghanistan last year, 13 years after taking part in the U.S.-led invasion which launched a long and costly war against the Taliban.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, the US President Barak Obama said Washington would slow the pace of troop withdrawal due to the “very fragile” security situation there.<\/p>\n

Despite the deployment of US-led forces in Afghanistan, the Taliban has remained active in the country. \u00a0Many districts across the country are now fully or partially under Taliban control.<\/p>\n

The UK’s military mission in Afghanistan has brought with it a heavy human toll. Over 450 British troops have lost their lives in Afghanistan since 2001.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UK Defence Secretary Michael Fallon says the country is set to extend its military presence in Afghanistan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[124,62,1],"tags":[9,6,5,113,11,61,128],"class_list":["post-3132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-europe","category-news","tag-afghanistan","tag-defense","tag-military","tag-security","tag-terrorism","tag-uk","tag-war"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/UK-Special-Forces.jpg?fit=660%2C345&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jJWb-Ow","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3132"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3144,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3132\/revisions\/3144"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}