Berlin, The US-led NATO operation in Afghanistan achieved less than planned, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Monday, adding that she shared the pain of families of soldiers killed in the mission “as it seems right now like it was all in vain”.

The mission managed to stop Al-Qaeda repeating its September 11, 2001 attack on the United States, but “everything else that has followed has not been as successful and has not been achieved in the way that we had planned,” Merkel told journalists.