NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg reemphasized the purpose of NATO’s mission in Afghanistan while meeting with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and senior alliance commanders in Kabul on Tuesday.
“We are here in Afghanistan of course to help Afghanistan, but we are also in Afghanistan to help ourselves, we are here to fight international terrorism and we have seen before how damaging and how dangerous that can be for our own societies,” Stoltenberg said.
From his part, Ghani thanked NATO for providing support to Afghanistan, where NATO and its coalition partners have around 16,000 troops from 39 countries. The president also underlined the importance of negotiating “an inclusive Afghan peace that all Afghans buy into.”