{"id":47917,"date":"2014-09-24T15:43:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-24T15:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?guid=1da32d386af08fe80648ecaab04af1f4"},"modified":"2014-09-24T15:43:00","modified_gmt":"2014-09-24T15:43:00","slug":"news-story-defence-secretary-salutes-first-afghan-officer-cadets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?p=47917","title":{"rendered":"News story: Defence Secretary salutes first Afghan officer cadets"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Defence Secretary met with a number of the 243 graduates who were selected from an initial pool of 10,000 to attend the British-mentored officer academy.<\/p>\n

The 42-week leadership course was inspired by the ethos of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst but tailored to Afghan experience. <\/p>\n

Mr Fallon said: <\/p>\n

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I am proud to see these new, highly-trained officers prepare to take their place in the Afghan National Army.<\/p>\n

Benefiting from UK-led mentoring, these leaders will strengthen Afghan forces as they continue to provide security for their people.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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\"Afghan<\/div>
One of the newly-graduated Afghan National Army officer cadets [Picture: Corporal Chantelle Cooke RAF, Crown copyright]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With UK combat troops due to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014, he added:<\/p>\n

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The country these new Afghan officers will soon patrol has the best possible chance of success thanks to the commitment and sacrifice of UK and ISAF<\/abbr> troops.<\/p>\n

Afghanistan is now a place where 7 million children attend school, almost 3 million of whom are girls, which was simply unthinkable under the Taliban.<\/p>\n

Most importantly, Afghanistan is no longer a safe haven for international terrorism.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

First intake of troops graduate from the Afghan National Army Officer Academy<\/a><\/p>\n

The Defence Secretary\u2019s visit to Afghanistan coincided with the first successful operational flights in Helmand of the new unmanned air system Watchkeeper.<\/p>\n

It is the first such system developed and built in the UK to become operational and will be a significant surveillance and reconnaissance capability for the Army for years to come.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Fallon has attended the passing out ceremony of cadets from the first intake of the Afghan National Army Officer Academy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47917"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47917"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47954,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47917\/revisions\/47954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}