Every second soldier on mission will be serving in Afghanistan

On his visit to Afghanistan the defence minister has found deficiencies in the
provision of the mission, therefore in agreement with the chief of defence staff he has
launched an inquiry at the Ministry of Defence and the concerned organisations of the
HDF.
Minister of Defence Csaba Hende had nearly ten meetings and talks in Kabul.
The minister was received with military honours before his meeting with Defence
Secretary Abdul Rahim Wardak, who said: this year is very important for Afghan
people because the election will be held in the autumn, and NATO will launch an
extensive operation in the southern province of Kandahar to secure it. The help of the
Hungarians is essential to the transition to Afghan lead. The defence secretary said
their plans are to have a 134,000-strong Afghan National Army by the end of October.

Csaba Hende pointed out that a further 200 troops will join the Hungarian mission,
which means that more than fifty per cent of our soldiers serving abroad will be
working in Afghanistan. But in order to reinforce the Hungarian PRT it is necessary
to extend our military camp, which means state land around the camp should be
expropriated. The minister asked his Afghan counterpart to mediate in this issue.

The Hungarian defence minister also visited the HDF’s co-called logistics mentor
team where Lt.Col. Gábor Sári reported to him. It has turned out that owing to the
incomplete preparatory work of the previous defence leadership, the team, which
prepares the Afghan military and runs driving, maintenance, cooking, and supply/
storage trainings, had to ask the Germans, the leading nation at the base, to help them
with their work in several cases because the technical agreement did not reflect the
local conditions. In order to start working, the Hungarian logistics team had to ask the
Germans for example to lend them vehicles or hire interpreters because the armoured
vehicles they had been promised did not arrive.