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Denmark out of Mali but back into Afghanistan

While a Hercules transport aircraft and 40 soldiers prepare to leave Mali despite the UN's request to extend the mission, Denmark agrees to send 76 men and three helicopters to assist German troops in Afghanistan.

Published: 27 June 2014 13:55 CEST

Denmark out of Mali but back into Afghanistan

A Herculus transport aircraft and 40 personnel will be returning home from Mali. Photo: Aldo Bidini/WikiCommons

Denmark is pulling a military aircraft out of one conflict-stricken country while sending three helicopters to another.

The Air Force and foreign ministry confirmed yesterday that Denmark has turned down a UN request to remain stationed in Mali for an additional two months.

Denmark’s presence in Mali consists of one Hercules military transport aircraft and 40 military personnel.

The Mali mission was scheduled to last from February to June, and despite the UN request to remain on longer than planned, the Danish forces will be coming home.

“The aircraft and crew will, as planned, fill roles in a domestic structure,” an Air Tactical Command (Flyvetaktisk Kommando) spokesperson told Avisen.dk.

A team of approximately ten intelligence officers will remain in Mali.

According to revelations by Avisen.dk, the Danish effort in Mali was a pricey one. The soldiers were housed in a five-star hotel, resulting in a lodging bill of more than 7.5 million kroner ($1.4 million).

While the Mali mission winds down, Denmark has agreed to send three military transport helicopters and 76 soldiers to Afghanistan. The helicopters will be used by German soldiers based in Camp Marmal near Mazar-e Sharif. The number of Danish soldiers could be increased slightly to 80, a military spokesperson said.

Denmark ended its 12-year military engagement in Afghanistan on July 22nd of last year. Forty three Danish soldiers lost their lives in Afghanistan and the war cost a total of 15 billion kroner ($2.7 billion).

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Erdogan links Swedish Nato approval to Turkish EU membership

“First, open the way to Turkey’s membership of the European Union, and then we will open it for Sweden, just as we had opened it for Finland,” Erdogan told a televised media appearance, before departing for the NATO summit in Lithuania.

Erdogan said “this is what I told” US President Joe Biden when the two leaders spoke by phone on Sunday.

Turkey first applied to be a member of the European Economic Community — a predecessor to the EU — in 1987. It became an EU candidate country in 1999 and formally launched membership negotiations with the bloc in 2005.

The talks stalled in 2016 over European concerns about Turkish human rights violations.

“I would like to underline one reality. Turkey has been waiting at the EU’s front door for 50 years,” Erdogan said. “Almost all the NATO members are EU members. I now am addressing these countries, which are making Turkey wait for more than 50 years, and I will address them again in Vilnius.”

Sweden’s prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, is due to meet Erdogan at 5pm on Monday in a last ditch attempt to win approval for the country’s Nato bid ahead of Nato’s summit in Vilnius on July 11th and 12th.

Turkey has previously explained its refusal to back Swedish membership as motivated by the country’s harbouring of people connected to the PKK, a Kurdish terrorist group, and the Gülen movement, who Erdogan blames for an attempted coup in 2016.

More recently, he has criticised Sweden’s willingness to allow pro-Kurdish groups to protest in Swedish cities and allow anti-Islamic protesters to burn copies of the Quran, the holy book of Islam.

In a sign of the likely reaction of counties which are members both of Nato and the EU, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that the two issues should not be connected.

“Sweden meets all the requirements for Nato membership,” Scholz told reporters in Berlin. “The other question is one that is not connected with it and that is why I do not think it should be seen as a connected issue.”

Malena Britz, Associate Professor in Political Science at the Swedish Defence University, told public broadcaster SVT that Erdogan’s new gambit will have caught Sweden’s negotiators, the EU, and even Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg off guard.

“I think both the member states and Stoltenberg had expected this to be about Nato and not about what the EU is getting up to,” she said. “That’s not something Nato even has any control over. If Erdogan sticks to the idea that Turkey isn’t going to let Sweden into Nato until Turkey’s EU membership talks start again, then Sweden and Nato will need to think about another solution.”

Aras Lindh, a Turkey expert at the Swedish Institute of Foreign Affairs, agreed that the move had taken Nato by surprise.

“This came suddenly. I find it hard to believe that anything like this will become reality, although there could possibly be some sort of joint statement from the EU countries. I don’t think that any of the EU countries which are also Nato members were prepared for this issue.”

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