Poland’s foreign minister has called the country’s 20-year mission in Afghanistan a “spectacular success” because it proved Warsaw to be a “reliable, trustworthy partner” in NATO.
Zbigniew Rau also hailed the recent efforts made by Polish diplomats and military personnel to evacuate over 1,000 people – mainly Afghans who worked with Poland and its allies in the country – from Taliban-controlled Kabul. It had been “a challenge unprecedented in the history of Polish diplomacy,” he said.
Speaking at the foreign ministry on Wednesday, Rau noted that the 2001 decision to join the US-led invasion and later NATO mission in Afghanistan had been upheld by each successive government.
This has allowed Poland to be “recognised as a reliable, trustworthy partner” in NATO, he said. That, in turn, has contributed to creating a “zone of safety, political stability and peace” in Central and Eastern Europe, he added.
“We owe this unquestionable success of our partner mission in Afghanistan mainly to the soldiers of the Polish armed forces,” said Rau, quoted by Interia.
👉 During today’s press conference Polish FM @RauZbigniew summed up 🇵🇱 successful evacuation from Kabul (1232 ppl)
& two decades of Poland’s engagement in #Afghanistan 👉 He said that it was a spectacular foreign policy success for a number of reasons [thread 1/9] https://t.co/nRGES8rOau— Sławomir Dębski (@SlawomirDebski) September 1, 2021
The foreign minister also commented on Poland’s efforts to evacuate Afghan citizens. A total of 52 military and 15 civilian flights were organised to bring 1,232 people to Poland, said Rau.
“We had to take the risk of conducting a direct rescue operation on the spot,” he said, noting that the evacuation flights from Afghanistan required approvals from several states, “sometimes even nine countries”.
Rau also commented that a “new legal status” had to be created, with a bilateral Polish-Afghan agreement entering into force “within a few hours”.
Polish troops were present in Afghanistan from 2002 until this year, as part of the international forces stationed in the country following the US-led invasion of 2001. As well as combat duty, Polish soldiers were involved in infrastructure projects and training local security services.
At the peak of the operation, over 2,500 Polish troops were stationed there, with a total of more than 33,000 Polish personnel serving in the country across almost two decades. That made it the largest peacekeeping mission in Poland’s military history.
At the end of June this year, the last of Poland’s soldiers left Afghanistan, as international forces evacuated the country. During the mission in Afghanistan, 43 Polish personnel were killed while a further 200 were injured.
Main image credit: Gabriel Piętka/MSZ Press material
Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.
