Another Romanian military was killed in action in Afghanistan
President Klaus Iohannis decided to award the post-mortem Romanian Star National Order to the Romanian military who was killed in Thursday's car bomb attack in Kabul, Afghanistan. Corporal Cirprian-Stefan Polschi was 38 years old, married with two children. He had been an employee of the National Ministry of Defense since 2004, and this was his third tour in Afghanistan. Early this week, an assault of Taliban rebels targeted the Romanian Embassy in Kabul. A Romanian embassy employee died in the attack, sacrificing his life to save the others, Foreign Ministry Ramona Manescu said. He was born in 1976 and was part of the embassy's security team. Coincidently enough, this Friday the city of Galati in southeastern Romania hosted a ceremony marking the safe return of the 480 Romanian military who have been taking part in a NATO support mission in Afghanistan since February. Their job was to ensure the security of Kandahar airport as well as the protection of counterterrorist NATO troops deployed on the ground.
Most are part of a mechanized infantry battalion, together with troops from artillery, tank and marine units, which marked a first for the history of Romanian military navy. "We are grateful to our military stationed in Afghanistan and other theatres of operations, who are doing their job, putting their lives on the line, together with our allies. By deploying military to conflict areas, our country is actively taking part in maintaining international peace and security, which is an important element of our NATO membership", President Klaus Iohannis said.
After nearly half a century of Soviet membership, Romanians finally found their Western aspirations confirmed in 2000, at the end of post-communist transition. Romania joined NATO in March 2004 with the biggest wave of NATO enlargement recorded in history. Three years later our country joined the European Union. Our troops were deployed to Afghanistan even before NATO accession. Since 2003, nearly 30 Romanians have been killed in the line of duty, with scores of others being killed in other international missions. Defense Minister Gabriel Les recently stated that nearly a 1,000 Romanians are deployed in international missions, although their number exceeded 2,500 in recent years. Of them, over 700 are deployed to Afghanistan. A few dozen are taking part in the UN mission in Kosovo, an anti-air defense unit totaling 120 soldiers is stationed in Poland, while 21 military are part of the general staff tasked with liaising with NATO.
(Translated by V. Palcu)
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