UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has criticised comments by US President Donald Trump suggesting British troops were not on the frontline in Afghanistan, describing the remarks as “insulting and frankly appalling”.
Speaking on Friday (23 January), Starmer said the comments had caused deep distress to veterans and the families of those killed or wounded during the conflict. He added that if he had made similar remarks, he would “certainly apologise”.
The intervention follows an interview in Davos in which President Trump questioned NATO’s reliability and claimed allied forces stayed “a little off the frontlines” in Afghanistan.
Trump told Fox News on Thursday that he was “not sure” the military alliance would be there for the US “if we ever needed them”.
“We’ve never needed them,” he said, adding: “We have never really asked anything of them.”
“They’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan,” he said, “and they did, they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines”.
The UK lost 457 service personnel during the war, with many hundreds more wounded. British forces carried out sustained frontline combat operations throughout the conflict, which followed the only invocation of NATO’s Article 5 collective defence clause after the 11 September attacks.
ℹ️ Sky News
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