The Spanish Minister of Defence, Pedro Montes, has announced that the withdrawal from Afghanistan would be accelerated, but that it would not affect Spain’s pledge to remain there until 2014.

He claims that the increase in tempo is because of ‘good conditions for handing over,’ rather than because of defence cuts. However, he stated in Parliament that the reduction in overseas commitments had reduced the cost for these operations by almost 100m euros.

Spanish troops, who are primarily based at Bagdhis and Herat, saw ten percent of their number withdrawn during 2012 and it is envisaged that the reduction reaches 50% during 2013. As far as numbers rather than percentages go, at present there are 1,406 Spanish servicemen in Afghanistan, to whom 1,047 belong to the army, 41 to the navy, 281 to the air force, as well as 37 Guardia Civil policemen. The cost of the mission during 2012 has been 443m euros.

The minister considers that the Afghan mission is being “reasonably positive,” especially in Herat, where 1,395 insurgents have reportedly laid down their arms, and the pace of handing over security operations to local forces “continues at a good pace,” explained Sr. Montes.

However, Sr. Montes was unwilling to go into details on what the situation would be in 2014. The Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, on the other hand, during a visit to the troops there on the 22nd of December, assured the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, that Spain would maintain a “symbolic” military presence in Herat from 2014 onwards. Herat is a military air base with civil traffic.

In total, Spain has 6,839 servicemen on international missions, both on land and at sea.

(News: Spain)