THE HAGUE: US President Donald Trump swept into NATO’s Hague summit Tuesday, with allies hoping a pledge to ramp up defense spending will keep the mercurial leader of the military superpower committed to protecting them.
Trump joined leaders from NATO’s 31 other members to kick off the two-day gathering with a dinner hosted by Dutch King Willem-Alexander in the ornate Orange Hall at his royal residence.
The alliance hopes to keep Trump bound to its mutual defense vow by meeting his demand for a headline figure of five percent of GDP on defense spending.
But Trump refused to say he was committed to NATO’s Article Five clause and protecting Europe in comments that will likely rattle his counterparts on the continent.
“Depends on your definition. There’s numerous definitions of Article Five,” Trump told journalists aboard Air Force One. “I’m committed to being their friend.”
To keep Trump on board, NATO members have thrashed out a compromise deal to dedicate 3.5 percent to core military needs by 2035, and 1.5 percent to broader security-related areas such as cybersecurity and infrastructure.
NATO says the military build-up is crucial to deter Russia, which officials warn is rapidly rebuilding its forces depleted by the war in Ukraine and could be ready to attack the alliance in five years.
But it is just as important for keeping Trump engaged as Washington warns it may shift forces from Europe to face the threat from China.
“They’re going to be lifting it to five percent, that’s good,” Trump said. “It gives them much more power.”
But while the promise of more spending could win Trump over, deep divisions remain over the approach to Europe’s key security issue: Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Trump said he would probably meet Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky while in The Hague, with Kyiv hoping it can avoid a repeat of the pair’s infamous Oval Office bust-up.
European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen told an audience in The Hague that NATO’s “historic” spending pledge showed that “the Europe of defense has finally awakened.”
Alliance leaders meanwhile — many of whom are struggling to find the money that will be required — lined up to argue that the threats facing the continent required bold steps.
“We must navigate this era of radical uncertainty with agility,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in announcing the UK’s commitment to meet the target.
Starmer on Wednesday will formally announce that his country is buying a dozen F-35A fighters, capable of carrying atomic weapons to support NATO’s nuclear mission.
The purchase marks an expansion of Britain’s nuclear deterrence, which is currently limited to submarine-launched missiles.
A statement late Tuesday from Starmer’s office quoted Rutte as saying: “I strongly welcome today’s announcement,” calling it “yet another robust British contribution to NATO.”
Separately, powerhouse Germany announced plans to hit the 3.5-percent figure for core defense needs by 2029 — six years before the timeline.
At the other end of the scale, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has risked Trump’s ire by insisting his country doesn’t have to meet the five percent target.
For its part, the Kremlin attacked NATO for its “rampant militarization,” with spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying: “This is the reality that surrounds us.”
Since storming back to power, Trump has upended the West’s approach to the three-year conflict by turning his back on Kyiv and opening the door to closer ties with Moscow.
Zelensky was set to play less of a central role than at recent NATO gatherings and will not attend the main working session.
But Ukraine’s president said he would discuss with Trump buying a package of weapons made up mainly of air defenses.
Zelensky would also push Trump on imposing new sanctions on Russia as Moscow has stalled peace efforts being pressed by Washington, Kyiv said.
“There are no signs that Putin wants to stop this war. Russia rejects all peace proposals including those from the US. Putin only thinks about war,” the Ukrainian leader told a defense forum held alongside the summit.
Trump did briefly meet on the sidelines of the summit late Tuesday with Turkiye’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who urged “close dialogue” to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Rutte said allies would send the message that support for Kyiv was “unwavering and will persist.”
But despite his insistence that Ukraine’s bid for membership remains “irreversible,” NATO will avoid any mention of Kyiv’s push to join after Trump ruled it out.
Trump rattles NATO allies as he descends on summit
https://arab.news/myjdw
Trump rattles NATO allies as he descends on summit
- The alliance hopes to keep Trump bound to its mutual defense vow by meeting his demand for a headline figure of five percent of GDP on defense spending
Afghan returnees in Bamiyan struggle despite new homes
- More than five million Afghans have returned home since September 2023, according to the International Organization for Migration
BAMIYAN, Afghanistan: Sitting in his modest home beneath snow-dusted hills in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan province, Nimatullah Rahesh expressed relief to have found somewhere to “live peacefully” after months of uncertainty.
Rahesh is one of millions of Afghans pushed out of Iran and Pakistan, but despite being given a brand new home in his native country, he and many of his recently returned compatriots are lacking even basic services.
“We no longer have the end-of-month stress about the rent,” he said after getting his house, which was financed by the UN refugee agency on land provided by the Taliban authorities.
Originally from a poor and mountainous district of Bamiyan, Rahesh worked for five years in construction in Iran, where his wife Marzia was a seamstress.
“The Iranians forced us to leave” in 2024 by “refusing to admit our son to school and asking us to pay an impossible sum to extend our documents,” he said.
More than five million Afghans have returned home since September 2023, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), as neighboring Iran and Pakistan stepped up deportations.
The Rahesh family is among 30 to be given a 50-square-meter (540-square-foot) home in Bamiyan, with each household in the nascent community participating in the construction and being paid by UNHCR for their work.
The families, most of whom had lived in Iran, own the building and the land.
“That was crucial for us, because property rights give these people security,” said the UNHCR’s Amaia Lezertua.
Waiting for water
Despite the homes lacking running water and being far from shops, schools or hospitals, new resident Arefa Ibrahimi said she was happy “because this house is mine, even if all the basic facilities aren’t there.”
Ibrahimi, whose four children huddled around the stove in her spartan living room, is one of 10 single mothers living in the new community.
The 45-year-old said she feared ending up on the street after her husband left her.
She showed AFP journalists her two just-finished rooms and an empty hallway with a counter intended to serve as a kitchen.
“But there’s no bathroom,” she said. These new houses have only basic outdoor toilets, too small to add even a simple shower.
Ajay Singh, the UNHCR project manager, said the home design came from the local authorities, and families could build a bathroom themselves.
There is currently no piped water nor wells in the area, which is dubbed “the dry slope” (Jar-e-Khushk).
Ten liters of drinking water bought when a tanker truck passes every three days costs more than in the capital Kabul, residents said.
Fazil Omar Rahmani, the provincial head of the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation Affairs, said there were plans to expand the water supply network.
“But for now these families must secure their own supply,” he said.
Two hours on foot
The plots allocated by the government for the new neighborhood lie far from Bamiyan city, which is home to more than 70,000 people.
The city grabbed international attention in 2001, when the Sunni Pashtun Taliban authorities destroyed two large Buddha statues cherished by the predominantly Shia Hazara community in the region.
Since the Taliban government came back to power in 2021, around 7,000 Afghans have returned to Bamiyan according to Rahmani.
The new project provides housing for 174 of them. At its inauguration, resident Rahesh stood before his new neighbors and addressed their supporters.
“Thank you for the homes, we are grateful, but please don’t forget us for water, a school, clinics, the mobile network,” which is currently nonexistent, he said.
Rahmani, the ministry official, insisted there were plans to build schools and clinics.
“There is a direct order from our supreme leader,” Hibatullah Akhundzada, he said, without specifying when these projects will start.
In the meantime, to get to work at the market, Rahesh must walk for two hours along a rutted dirt road between barren mountains before he can catch a ride.
Only 11 percent of adults found full-time work after returning to Afghanistan, according to an IOM survey.
Ibrahimi, meanwhile, is contending with a four-kilometer (2.5-mile) walk to the nearest school when the winter break ends.
“I will have to wake my children very early, in the cold. I am worried,” she said.
