Czech Republic offers NATO 150 soldiers to take part in operations in Afghanistan
At Monday's meeting of NATO defence ministers in Brussels, the Czech Republic offered to send a special unit to Afghanistan to join the International Security Assistance Force and the US-led operation Enduring Freedom. The offer is expected to be approved by the cabinet by the end of the year, to be then submitted to both houses of parliament in January.
Among the 150-strong unit that the Czech Defence Ministry has now offered NATO, there will be around 100 soldiers from the Czech Republic's elite forces squad based in the town of Prostejov. They are expected to be deployed in operations involving fighting Taliban supporters.
From April 2002 till January 2003, the Czech Army operated a military field hospital in the capital Kabul providing medical care to the civilian population.
Some people say the Czech Republic's involvement in Afghanistan has a special significance. Among them is independent journalist Jaromir Stetina, who recently returned from Afghanistan. He often travels to areas of conflict and humanitarian crises around the world. He says he believes Czechs should pay special attention to Afghanistan as, to a certain extent, the two countries share a similar past.
"Of course, Afghanistan was occupied by the Soviet Army for ten years only. Our country was occupied for almost a quarter of a century, twenty-three years. But for Afghanistan, the Soviet occupation was more difficult because during the ten years the Soviet Army killed about 1.5 million Afghans. This was really a difficult fate of the Afghan nation. I came from Afghanistan a few weeks ago and I saw hundreds and hundreds of thousands Afghan refugees coming back home from Pakistan and Iran. It means that these days are the beginning of peace in Afghanistan, I hope so. Our world is really a mad, mad world and there is not only war in Afghanistan, we have many wars now. We have a war in Iraq, we have wars in Africa, we have an old war in Kashmir but Afghanistan should be a very special country for Czech people because, really, our fate is common with Afghanistan."
Apart from the activities of the military, the Czech humanitarian aid organisation, the People in Need Foundation (Clovek v tisni), has been running a mission in the Afghan cities of Kabul and Mazar-e Sharif since November 2001, building schools and helping Afghan refugees return home.
