Around 25 containers of military materiel will be transported back to Hungary with the withdrawal of the Hungarian Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) from Afghanistan – the Ministry of Defence informed Hungarian News Agency MTI in a press release on Sunday.

Hungary has been running a Provincial Reconstruction Team in Baghlan Province, Northern Afghanistan since 2006. The Hungarian-led PRT is going to complete its mission in this spring, and the Hungarian Defence Forces will withdraw this contingent from Baghlan Province. Concurrently, Hungary will terminate its provincial development activity in Afghanistan.

The MoD press release says that after attending a ceremony which closed the activity of the HDF Provincial Reconstruction Team (HUN PRT),  Maj.-Gen. László Domján, the commander of the HDF Joint Force Command (HDF JFC) continued his tour in Afghanistan with visiting the HDF military contingents stationed in Kabul and Mazar-e Sharif, where he was briefed about the current tasks and met the personnel serving there as well.

Col. László Zentai, the commander of the sixth rotation of the Hungarian Defence Forces National Support Element – which is based in Mazar-e Sharif and Kabul to provide logistic supply for Hungarian military contingents – reported to the HDF JFC commander about the tasks related to the withdrawal of the PRT, telling him that around 40 containers of military materiel would be brought from the Provincial Reconstruction Team, of which around 25 containers would be transported to Hungary. They would reallocate part of the equipment and vehicles in use with the PRT to the Hungarian contingents serving in Afghanistan, whereas they would return to the US military part of the items of equipment they received from the American partner as battlefield aid, the colonel told Maj.-Gen. László Domján.

The around 230-strong HDF Kabul International Airport Force Protection Contingent (HDF KAIA FPC) is the largest of all the contingents of the Hungarian Defence Forces deployed in missions abroad. Col. László Benda, contingent commander said that after taking over their duties, the Hungarian soldiers reorganized the protection of the airport, which has thereby become much more secure than before.  The Hungarian soldiers are responsible for the undisturbed operation of the military side of the Kabul International Airport – which manages an air traffic comparable to that of the airport of Marseille – and for the protection of the airport area inside the fences.

More than 100,000 troops from 50 countries are currently serving with the NATO International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) operation, which is being conducted by NATO under the mandate of the UN Security Council. Afghanistan continues to be NATO’s most important mission. The Hungarian Defence Forces contribute around 1,000 troops to international peace support operations, of which more than 530 are deployed in Afghanistan where they are serving with eight contingents altogether.

Speaking about his weeklong visit to Afghanistan, Maj.-Gen. László Domján stressed that he had made sure that the plans worked out in Hungary were being precisely implemented in the area of operations. “I met several military leaders, and all of them spoke highly of the job done by the Hungarian soldiers serving here”, the Ministry of Defence quoted the commander of the HDF JFC in its press release.

(MoD Press Office)