Trump sparks anger with claim Nato troops avoided Afghanistan front line

Donald Trump sparked new anger in the UK when he said NATO troops were “just off the front lines” during the war in Afghanistan.

Labor MP Emily Thornberry, chair of the foreign affairs committee, called it a “complete insult” to the 457 British service personnel killed in the conflict, while Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said: “How dare he question their sacrifice?”

Conservative MP Ben Obese-Jecty, who served in Afghanistan, said it was “sad to see the sacrifice of our nation and our NATO partners being made so cheaply”.

The United Kingdom was among many allies who joined the United States in Afghanistan since 2001, after NATO enacted the collective security clause following the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The US president told Fox News on Thursday that he is “not confident” the military alliance will be there for America “if we need it.”

“We never needed them,” he said, adding: “We never really asked them for anything.”

“They’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan,” he said, “and they did, they stayed a little bit behind, a little bit outside the front lines.”

He noted that the United States “has been very good to Europe and many other countries,” adding: “This should be a two-way street.”

Thornberry told the BBC’s Question Time that the remarks were “much more than a mistake”.

“This is such an insult… How dare he say we are not on the front lines, how dare he?

“We were always there when the Americans wanted us,” he said, calling Trump “a man who has never seen any action but is now the commander in chief and knows nothing about how America is defended.”

He said the US was a “friend” of Britain but its leader “behaved in a bullying and rude way, deliberately trying to undermine us and trying to undermine NATO”.

On the same programme, Conservative shadow cabinet member Stuart Andrew also described the comments as “disgraceful” and “appalling”.

“There are many people in this country who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, many of whom lost their lives but also returned with life-changing injuries, and we must thank them.”

He added that the UK-US special relationship was important for both defense and security, and that Trump in recent weeks had steered the conversation towards the security of the Arctic, saying there was a “very serious threat” there.

Sir Ed wrote on social media that Trump was “avoiding military service” and added: “How dare he question their sacrifice?”

Speaking to BBC’s Newsnight program, Dutch foreign minister David van Weel rejected Trump’s words as “wrong” and said, “Europeans shed blood in support of US troops in Afghanistan.”

He said NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte pushed back on similar comments made by Trump at a joint news conference in Davos on Thursday.

Asked about the US president repeating the claim, van Weel said: “We must state the facts, as Mark Rutte did. And if he repeated it, we need to repeat it once again, because history did not go like that.”

Former British Army officer Obese-Jecty, meanwhile, said it was “sad to see the sacrifices of our nation and our NATO partners retained so cheaply by the US president”.

“I saw first-hand the sacrifices made by British soldiers,” he wrote to X.

“I do not believe US military personnel share President Trump’s views; his words harm them as our closest military allies.”

Labor MP and former RAF officer Calvin Bailey, who served with US special operations units in Afghanistan, said the president’s claim “bears no resemblance to the reality experienced by those of us serving there”.

“As I reminded the US Forces with whom I served on 4 July 2008, we were there because of the shared belief, expressed at America’s founding, that free people have inalienable rights and should not live under tyranny,” he told the PA news agency.

“This belief underpinned the response to 9/11, and it is worth reflecting on now.”

The BBC has approached the Ministry of Defense for comment.

A spokesman noted Trump’s comments were preceded by remarks made by Defense Secretary John Healey while visiting NATO ally Denmark on Wednesday.

He said: “In Afghanistan, our forces trained together, fought together and, in some cases, made the ultimate sacrifice and died together.”

The United States invaded the region in October 2001 to oust the Taliban, who it said were harboring Osama Bin Laden and other Al Qaeda figures linked to the 9/11 attacks. NATO countries contributed soldiers and military equipment to the US-led war.

By 2021, when the United States withdrew from the country, more than 3,500 coalition soldiers had died; about two-thirds of them were Americans.

With 2,461 deaths, the United Kingdom became the country with the second highest number of military deaths in conflicts, after the United States.

The United States is the only country that invokes the collective security provisions of NATO’s Article 5, which states that “an armed attack against one NATO member shall be deemed an attack against all of them.”