Army needs two years to recover from Afghanistan, says chief

It will take the Dutch army two years to fully recover from the mission in Afghanistan commander Rob Bertholee says in Thursday’s Volkskrant.


Not only has a lot of equipment been damaged, but training has been disrupted and some units broken up.
Bertholee said he will need two years to make sure his brigades are once again ‘complete entities’, a situation which has been compounded by cash shortages.
Bertholee told the paper the consequences of the financial constraints are ‘very embarrassing’. ‘It has happened that new soldiers find their footwear is ‘being ordered’. That means they have to start without boots.’
The Netherlands began pulling its forces out of Afghanistan in August, four years after if first went in. On average, 1,400 Dutch soldiers served in the region at any one time

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