Defence Forces never considered extension of Afghanistan mandate

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The additional force of about 80 Finnish crisis management soldiers sent to Afghanistan to help ensure security during the Presidential elections in August will definitely be brought back to Finland in October.
      “At no stage has it even been considered that we would stay. We drew up a report on the matter a few days ago, and there was no need to stay on”, says Colonel Jari Kallio, chief of the operative section of the Finnish army Staff.
      Some confusion about the homecoming timetable of the additional forces arose when both President Tarja Halonen and Minister for Foreign Affairs Alexander Stubb (Nat. Coalition Party) said recently that they expected the forces to remain past their deadline in order to help secure the second round of the elections, scheduled for November 7th.
     
The deployment contracts of the forces extend through the end of October, when the election process was to have been over. Finnish political leaders said that they hoped that the Finnish presence would remain strong through the end of the second round.
      The situation was different in the field. According to Colonel Kallio, there had been talk about extending the contracts, but soon it became apparent that the extension would not be needed.
      Army Staff Brigadier General Veli-Pekka Parkatti said on Tuesday that most of the additional forces want to come home.
      The peacekeepers’ contracts include a flexibility clause of a few days which can be needed for the sake of organising transport. Extending the mandate past the second round of the elections would have required completely new contracts.
     
Minister of Defence Jyri Häkämies (Nat. Coalition Party) says that he fully supports the withdrawal. He notes that Swedish forces will replace the Finns who are pulled out after a very difficult four-month mission.
      “As I know the kind of pressure that they have been under, I completely support the decision. The safety of the peacekeepers is always the top priority for me.”
      Kallio said that the arrival of the new Swedish forces meant that there would have been a shortage of space at their camp if the Finns had remained.
     
The group of 80 peacekeepers who are to be withdrawn include 35 who were trained recently at the Pori Brigade. The group of young soldiers had just completed their military service. They were given special training before their departure.
      Pekka Saariaho, Chief of Staff at the Pori Brigade, rejects the notion that the group comprised inexperienced young soldiers who simply did not want to stay on in difficult conditions.
      “They were prepared for four months, and arranged their lives accordingly. It is very difficult to alter arrangements for a homecoming this quickly.”
      Even if individual peacekeepers had wanted to stay on, placing them in new tasks would have been difficult.
     
Former Chief of Defence Gustav Hägglund, who is on record as severely criticising the Afghan peacekeeping operation, suspects that the new soldiers ultimately did not know what kind of a task they had committed themselves to.
      “I believe that they ultimately did not like the mission, and that they did not want to stay on. The nature of peacekeeping in Afghanistan is completely different from what it used to be.
      Hägglund feels that the whole concept of peacekeeping should be dropped in the case of Afghanistan.
      “Neutrality, and staying above conflicts has always been a matter of honour for Finnish peacekeepers. Now the situation is such that some shoot, and others build”, he continues.
      However, Hägglund does not believe that the additional forces that have been deployed would have been too young or inexperienced. He feels that an indication that training was sufficient is the fact that the Finnish forces have not suffered worse losses than they have.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Additional Finnish forces to be withdrawn from Afghanistan before election runoff (21.10.2009)

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