August 2, at night, the Lithuanian military and civil personnel who were patrolling in the southwestern part of the province of Ghowr, about 200 kilometers from its capital Chagcharan, in the region of Shahrak, were fired upon. Automatic and anti-tank weapons were used in the attack against them.
Lithuania-led PRT troops, in response, opened fire by using mortars, projectors and light rifles. The gunfight took about 10 minutes. No casualties among the Lithuanian troops were reported. It is still unknown who carried out the attack against the PRT patrol. The Afgan National Police were informed of the incident.
"The soldiers resisted the situation professionally. Long training in Lithuania and the participation in previous international missions provided our troops with sufficient experience to prepare well for such incidents," the commander of PRT-11 Col. Gintaras Smaliukas said.
PRT-11 patrol of military and civil personnel paid a visit to the southwestern part of the Ghowr province of Afganistan to meet with representatives of local authorities, provide the Afgan National Police Forces with training, and evaluate the construction work financed by Japan and Lithuania and give lectures.
Lithuania-led PRT of Ghowr is a joint civil and military mission, a part of NATO ISAF, which started operating in the province of Ghowr in 2005. The main tasks of the mission are to provide assistance to local authorities so that they can expand their influence in the province, to ensure security and create appropriate conditions for restoring the province. The mission will be finished only when the national security forces are capable to ensure the security of state and local inhabitants. In the meantime, a lot of attention is paid to the projects on training of the Afgan National Police Forces which is a part of the new NATO ISAF force strategy for Afganistan.
Due to its geographical position and poorly developed infrastructure, the Ghowr province which is in the central mountainous part of Afganistan, is considered one of more secure provinces in the country. However, the security situation is still defined as relatively calm. As the province borders the southern provinces where additional large numbers of allied forces were deployed in 2010, sometimes movements of insurgents are recorded in Ghowr. Lithuania-led PRT has been paying more attention for training the Afgan National Police Force, therefore, at the end of 2010 a POMLT (Police Operational Mentoring and Liaison Team) is to be established in Ghowr.
The present PRT-11 is comprised of mainly Lithuanian troops of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Kęstutis Motorized Infantry Battalion located in Tauragė district. This is the second time the Kęstutis Battalion takes part in the PRT mission. Many of the soldiers have served in the Balkans, Iraq and Afganistan before.
Along with the Lithuanian military and civil personnel, representatives from Denmark, Georgia, Japan, the USA, Poland, Finland and Ukraine, serve in the PRT camp in Chagcharan, Ghowr.
