US commits to open-ended Afghan war
Trump talks tough on Pakistan
WASHINGTON/KABUL, Aug 22, (RTRS): President Donald Trump committed US troops to an open-ended war in Afghanistan, a decision the Afghan government welcomed on Tuesday but which Taleban insurgents warned would make the country a “graveyard for the American empire”.
Trump offered few specifics in a speech on Monday but promised a stepped-up military campaign against the Taleban who have gained ground against US-backed Afghan government forces. He also singled out Pakistan for harboring militants in safe havens on its soil, an accusation it denies.
While Trump said he would not discuss troop levels or details of the new strategy, US officials said on Monday he had signed off on Defense Secretary James Mattis’ plans to send about 4,000 more troops to Afghanistan.
Trump said “my original instinct was to pull out” all American troops but he was convinced by his military advisers after a lengthy review of the United States’ longest war.
“The consequences of a rapid exit are both predictable and unacceptable,” he said. “A hasty withdrawal would create a vacuum that terrorists, including ISIS and al-Qaeda, would instantly fill.”
While Trump said “our troops will fight to win”, he also stressed that ultimately Afghanistan’s police and army must to most of the fighting to defeat the Taleban and allied Islamist militants.
“The stronger the Afghan security forces become, the less we will have to do . ... We want them to succeed.”
Most of the approximately 8,400 US troops in Afghanistan work with a NATO-led training and advising mission, with the rest part of a counterterrorism force that mostly targets pockets of al Qaeda and Islamic State fighters.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani welcomed the strategy saying it would expand the training mission for Afghan forces, which includes building its fledgling air force and doubling the size of the Afghan special forces.
“I am grateful to President Trump and the American people for this affirmation of support ... for our joint struggle to rid the region from the threat of terrorism,” Ghani said in a statement.
The Taleban swiftly condemned Trump’s decision.
“If the US does not pull all its forces out of Afghanistan, we will make this country the 21st century graveyard for the American empire,” Taleban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement.
US-backed Afghan forces overthrew the Taleban’s hard-line Islamist government in late 2001 over its sheltering of al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, architect of the Sept 11, 2001, attacks in US cities that killed nearly 2,000 people.
But US forces have been bogged down ever since in a war that has vexed three presidents. About 2,400 US troops have died in Afghanistan.
Trump, who had criticized his predecessor
for setting deadlines for drawing down troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, declined to put a timeline on expanded US operations in Afghanistan.
Former president Barack Obama’s deadlines for troop decreases brought the US military footprint from about
100,000 in 2011 to 8,400.
“Our future presence will be based on conditions and not arbitrary timelines,” the top US commander in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, said in a statement.
Trump warned on Monday that US support “is not a blank check” for Afghanistan’s often-divided and corruption-plagued government and insisted he would not engage in “nation-building,” a practice he has accused his predecessors of doing at huge cost.
Trump insisted in his speech that the Afghan government, Pakistan, India, and NATO allies step up their own commitment to resolving the 16-year conflict.
“We can no longer be silent about Pakistan’s safe havens,” he said, referring to complaints that Taleban and other militants move freely in Pakistan.