Members of the Tennessee National Guard are in Bulgaria for several weeks as part of the State Partnership Program (SPP).
The SPP began in the 1990s, during the breakup of the Warsaw Pact. The new focus of the SPP is to train partner nations for deployment to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which conducts operations in Afghanistan and provides support to the Afghan National Security Forces.
The Tennessee National Guard’s 212th Engineer Company is in Bulgaria training for humanitarian and engineering missions with the ISAF. Tennessee and Bulgaria have collaborated since 1993.
