Time to say goodbye at Herat

The mission of the Spanish soldiers at the Herat base in Afghanistan is coming to an end after over a decade of uninterrupted presence. Most of the personnel are already back in Spain and the remainder, together with the materiel, will be out of the Asian country by the end of October.

The bulk of the Army troops in the last rotation, the 38th, constituted the base Protection Force and Logistic Unit. Personnel for the former came from Mountain Troops Headquarters, while the latter was made up of soldiers from the 81st Logistic Support Group and the Logistic Group of the 16th Brigade “Canarias”. They were backed by an Engineers Unit from the 1st Engineer Regiment, which has returned to Spain after four months carrying out route cleaning and explosives reconnaissance tasks.

The aforementioned Logistic Unit has been charged with the redeployment operation, which was similar to the one it undertook when the Spanish troops left the Qala-i-Naw base in 2013. Nearly 2,000 tonnes of materiel has to be repatriated and will be transported by land, air and sea from Jebel Ali Port in the United Arab Emirates and from Karachi Port in Pakistan.

Materiel which cannot be repatriated – e.g. infrastructures such as the lodging areas, the Role 2E hospital or the power plants, as well as 33 light vehicles – has been donated to the Afghan government.

This redeployment brings to an end the Spanish presence in the Herat province but does not mean a Spanish withdrawal from the “Resolute Support” operation in Afghanistan. Involvement will continue with the presence of 20 Spanish soldiers at the headquarters of the mission in Kabul.

Antonov aircraft being loaded during redeployment (Photo: Julio Maiz)