International

'The conditions that the Green Left parliamentary group has imposed on its support for a police training mission to the Afghan province of Kunduz are far from having been fulfilled,’ says SP Member of Parliament Harry van Bommel. Foreign affairs spokesman Van Bommel bases his assertion on the results of a detailed investigation carried out by his party’s research department. ‘If Green Left votes next week to support participation in this mission, its credibility will be blown,’ he adds.

The SP Research Bureau has produced a report on the Kunduz mission and the government’s guarantees to the various parties which supported it, including the Green Left. The report compares all of the promises made by Prime Minister Mark Rutte and measures them against what has actually occurred. The conclusions are clear: most of those promises have not been kept. This is not a civilian mission but a military intervention: the police training will last only six weeks as opposed to the stated total of eight; and the F16 fighter planes are there not solely for the training mission, but could be deployed anywhere in Afghanistan. “If, despite these facts, the Green Left votes definitively to agree to the Kunduz mission, I would expect many of their supporters and members to turn their backs on the party,” says Van Bommel.

The Green Left, with its ten MPs (out of a total of 150) is not the only party which has its doubts about the Kunduz mission, moreover. The Christian Union (CU - five MPs) has imposed more detailed conditions on its support for the mission, complaining that fellow Christians are still being murdered in Afghanistan. “That remains the practicality in Afghanistan,” Van Bommel agrees. “Not only corruption but lawlessness is endemic.”