Prince Harry was deployed twice on active service in Afghanistan – including a ten-week period in Helmand province
Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, departs the Royal Courts of Justice after attending Day 4 of a court case against Associated Newspapers Ltd. in London on Thursday.Max Mumby / Indigo / Getty Images.
Prince Harry, who served in the war in Afghanistan, said the “sacrifices” of British soldiers during the conflict there “deserve to be spoken about truthfully and with respect” — a rebuke of President Donald Trump’s comments about NATO soldiers.
In an interview Thursday, Trump said troops from non-American NATO countries stayed “a little off the front lines” in Afghanistan. The comments drew fierce criticism across Europe, including from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who called them “insulting and frankly, appalling.”
Harry, who served two tours in Afghanistan with the British Army, said in a statement Friday that U.S. allies “answered” the call to stand with American troops after NATO invoked the Article 5 mutual defense pact following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
“I served there. I made lifelong friends there. And I lost friends there. The United Kingdom alone had 457 service personnel killed,” the Duke of Sussex said. “Thousands of lives were changed forever. Mothers and fathers buried sons and daughters. Children were left without a parent. Families are left carrying the cost.”
“Those sacrifices deserve to be spoken about truthfully and with respect, as we all remain united and loyal to the defense of diplomacy and peace,” Harry added.
In response to a request for comment, White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said: “President Trump is absolutely right — the United States of America has done more for NATO than any other country in the alliance has done combined.”
Trump made the remarks about NATO troops on Fox Business, telling the cable news network that the U.S. had “never needed” the trans-Atlantic military alliance, one of the pillars of the post-World War II international order.
“We have never really asked anything of them,” Trump said. “You know, they’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan or this or that, and they did. They stayed a little back, little off the front lines.”
The comments worsened diplomatic relations with traditional European allies already smarting from Trump’s push to acquire Greenland, a self-governing territory of Denmark, a NATO member.
Trump also riled allies after using part of his speech at this week’s World Economic Forum in Davos to excoriate Europe, saying countries there are “destroying themselves” and “certain places in Europe are not even recognizable, frankly, anymore.”
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. led an international coalition in Afghanistan with the aim of toppling the terror group Al Qaeda and the country’s ruling militant group, the Taliban. NATO triggered Article 5 for the first and only time to date, with the British military deploying more than 150,000 troops.
Starmer, asked whether his American counterpart should apologize, said that if he had “misspoken in that way or said those words, I would certainly apologize.”
Prince Harry undertook his first tour of duty in 2007. He served a second tour of duty, as an Apache helicopter pilot, beginning in September 2012, according to a British government news release at the time.
The Duke of Sussex wrote in his 2023 memoir “Spare” that he killed 25 “enemy combatants” during his two tours in Afghanistan. “It wasn’t a number that gave me any satisfaction. But neither was it a number that made me feel ashamed,” Harry wrote in the book.
NBC News
