NATO allies pledge funding of local forces in Afghanistan for 3 more years


During a two-day NATO summit in Warsaw, Poland, this week, the United States' allies agreed Saturday to send $1 billion annually to Afghan security forces for three more years, a decision that comes despite their citizens' disinterest in ongoing intervention in the Mideast nation.
The Pentagon already funnels $3.45 billion to Afghanistan's army each year, and the White House said Wednesday at least 8,400 U.S. troops will stay in Afghanistan indefinitely. "NATO and NATO partners will continue to support Afghanistan," said NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg a the summit, "but we expect [Afghan leaders] will step up their efforts to fight corruption and to implement reforms."
President Obama announced Friday he will cut his Europe trip for the summit short to visit Dallas, where five police officers were killed Thursday evening.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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