Reuters, Brussels :NATO and its allies will hold their biggest military exercise in more than a decade from October, deploying 36,000 personnel across the Mediterranean to counter the threat of Islamic State on the alliance’s southern flank.Briefly turning attention away from Russia, NATO commanders said on Wednesday the alliance would carry out some of its toughest training yet in a complex “artificial threat scenario” in which militants attack on land, from the air and at sea.”We cannot choose between the eastern threat and the southern threat, we have to train for both,” said General Hans-Lothar Domrose, commander of the Nato military command in Brunssum, the Netherlands, who is preparing the exercise.After more than a decade of Nato-led combat operations in Afghanistan, the U.S.-led military alliance is shifting to defend its territory.More than 30 countries – including non-Nato nations such as Sweden and Austria – will take part in the exercises in Italy, Spain, Portugal and in the Mediterranean from October 3 to November 6.Much of Nato’s focus has been on what it sees as an increasingly hostile Russia, but the rise of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is a central concern. Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has warned the Arab Spring uprisings have ushered in a “brutal winter” of instability.Nato has not held exercises on this scale since 2002, when 15 members of the alliance and 12 partner nations tested their capabilities in Norway and Poland.
