The military involvement in the international mission in Afghanistan cost Montenegro at least 32 million euros, and the Ministry of Defense did not tell "Vijesti" exactly how much.
Although she did not make decisions about the engagement of the Croatian Armed Forces in Afghanistan, Minister Olivera Injac remained silent on the questions of "Vijesti" about how much it cost the country in the period from 2010 to 2020 to send members of the Croatian Armed Forces in the ISAF and "Resolute Support" missions.
The efforts of both, led by the US, failed in early August, when within days of the sudden withdrawal of most US troops from Afghanistan, the Taliban defeated the dark army and security forces.
Injac became the Minister of Defense in December last year - almost three months after the engagement of the Croatian Armed Forces in Afghanistan ended, which was insisted on by all the former Defense Ministers from the DPS who declared it to be in the national interest.
According to previously published data from the Ministry of Defense, the costs of the participation of members of the Croatian Army in the "Resolute Support" mission amounted to two million euros per year, and included the amounts of funds for compensation, expenses for accommodation, travel, costs of deploying forces, as well as "other costs arising from engagement of VCG members in the mission in Afghanistan".
The costs of participating in the earlier ISAF mission, of which VCG was a part from 2010 to the end of 2014, amounted to around four million euros per year, as the contingent of soldiers in Afghanistan was twice as large as that of "Resolute Support".
In ten years, that is at least 32 million euros - an amount greater than what Montenegro will allocate for the purchase of three medium-heavy multi-purpose "bell 412" helicopters, which were purchased from the Canadians in 2019 in a very non-transparent procedure by the former Minister of Defense Predrag Bošković (DPS ).
For the money spent on sending our soldiers to Afghanistan, Montenegro, for example, has been able to buy as many as three new smaller patrol ships, which the Croatian Navy lacks, and which currently has almost nothing to go to sea with.
By the way, during the ISAF mission, members of the Croatian Armed Forces performed stationary security tasks (guarded) in the bases "Panonia" in the city of Pol-e-Komri, i.e. "Marmal" in Mazar-i-Sharif, and provided security in the field for members of the PRT (provincial teams for reconstruction), cooperating with soldiers from Hungary, Croatia and Germany. Their tasks gradually increased, so later they performed, among other things, the tasks of motorized patrols, establishing mobile checkpoints, escorting convoys, establishing observation positions and working on them.
In addition to soldiers on the ground and a small medical team, a small number of officers and non-commissioned officers of the Croatian Armed Forces were also engaged in Afghanistan at headquarters in Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif. The contingents that went to that country usually numbered up to 40 people, although there were also smaller ones - up to 20.
In addition to members of the VCG, the state also sent a small number of members of the Police Administration to Kabul to be instructors for Afghan police officers.
During the "Resolute Support" mission, the primary task of the military contingents was to protect the advisory teams that were training members of the Afghan National Army.
On several occasions, Montenegro also sent school supplies and computer equipment to Afghanistan, which the former longtime Chief of Staff, Admiral Dragan Samardžić, usually handed over to the local population in front of the cameras. He and Bošković liked to visit the soldiers in Mazar-i-Sharif and Kabul quite often for propaganda purposes, and Montenegro once donated 1.500 automatic rifles, 100 submachine guns and 250.000 bullets to the Government of Afghanistan from the surpluses of the Central African Republic.
In September 2020, at the end of the mandate of the then outgoing minister Bošković, the VCG ended the engagement by withdrawing the 12th contingent.
During the ten-year participation, 21 contingents were engaged (nine in ISAF and 12 in "Resolute Support"), with a total of 557 members of the Croatian Armed Forces, of which 12 were women. During that period, a third of the soldiers had the opportunity to gain experience in Afghanistan. During the tenure of the previous DPS ministers Bor Vučinić, Milica Pejanović-Đurišić and Bošković, the leaders of the VCG and MoD used the sending of soldiers to international military missions where they earned much better than in Montenegro as an additional means of pressuring the unfit and rewarding politically eligible members of the VCG .
There were examples of individual soldiers, non-commissioned officers and officers being sent to Afghanistan three or more times, and some who wanted to and met all the professional criteria for going, were not able to do so.
The Ministry of Defense did not respond to "Vijesti"'s request to comment on the failure of the international mission to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a meeting place for international radical elements, nor to the question of what lessons they learned from their engagement and what is happening in Afghanistan now.
Shared values with the civilized world
Former state leaders and MoD DPS officials claimed that participating in the war in Afghanistan was "a way for Montenegro to show that it shares common values with the civilized world", that it was "an extraordinary opportunity to increase the capacity of our army", but they denied that our going to Afghanistan has to do with the NATO integration of Montenegro, which became a member of the Alliance in 2017.
Former Minister of Defense Boro Vučinić (DPS), during whose mandate the first Montenegrin soldiers went to Afghanistan in 2010, said then that "we act globally, because it is something in the essence of our people, that they want to deal with global and big topics".
Bonus video:
