U.S. official visits Kabul, praises ‘reliable’ partner

KABUL, Afghanistan — U.S. national security adviser H.R. McMaster was in Kabul on Sunday, the first visit by a U.S. official since U.S. forces killed dozens of militants with a 22,000-pound bomb in eastern Afghanistan.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani met Sunday with McMaster and discussed mutual cooperation in Afghanistan’s fight against the Taliban and the Islamic State extremist group.

A statement released Sunday said both sides talked about relations in the arenas of security, counterterrorism, regional issues and economic development.

In an interview on ABC’s This Week, McMaster praised Ghani, saying that before Ghani’s 2014 election, “at a period of our maximum effort, we didn’t have as reliable a partner in the Afghan government as we would’ve liked.”

“Now we have a much more reliable Afghan partner and we have reduced considerably the degree and scope of our effort,” he said.

More than 8,000 U.S. troops are helping Afghan forces battle the Taliban. The commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Gen. John Nicholson Jr., has said he will need thousands of additional troops to better support the international coalition’s mission.

McMaster, who served in Afghanistan for two years, met with Nicholson, senior Afghan officials and other NATO commanders overseeing the mission to advise Afghan security forces.

“The leaders discussed regional dynamics and joint efforts to counter terrorist groups, including al-Qaida and ISIS,” the U.S. Embassy in Kabul said in a statement,

using an alternative acronym for the Islamic State.

McMaster also encouraged Afghanistan to intensify its efforts “to strengthen governance,” the embassy said. The office of the Afghan chief executive, Abdullah Abdullah, said McMaster praised the government as “one of the most reliable allies of the United States,” and the Afghan Defense Ministry said the visit marked a “new phase of friendship and cooperation” between the two countries.

But perhaps the most important task for McMaster is evaluating the progress in the fight against the Taliban insurgency. Taliban militants control more territory than at any other time since 2001, when U.S. troops helped overthrow the regime.

The United States has spent roughly $117 billion on reconstruction in Afghanistan, including $70 billion to support Afghan security forces, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, a U.S. government oversight commission. Despite that, desertion rates and civilian casualties are on the rise — and Afghan security forces continue to lose ground.

Officials in Afghanistan said the government would raise its request for more military aid with McMaster, who is seen as an ally of those pushing for President Donald Trump to send more troops. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is expected to make a formal recommendation on troop numbers to the president. But it is unclear how McMaster’s suggestions will fit into that review.

“I have said this repeatedly to foreign commanders,” said Sayed Malik Maluk, an official in the policy department of the Afghan Defense Ministry who also served as a corps commander in the volatile Helmand province in the south from 2008-15. “We need better and more modern gear, especially for the air force.”

McMaster has been critical of deploying small numbers of troops to fight wars, instead advocating for a more comprehensive approach, including the use of development funds and diplomacy.

In Afghanistan, McMaster has said that the U.S. reliance on militias ended up undermining the government. When serving here from 2010-12, McMaster oversaw a task force with a mandate to clean up corruption within the contract system used by the international military forces.

However, McMaster told This Week on Sunday that the Trump administration will support its “partner forces” in Syria and is not likely to send more ground troops there. The U.S. has been expected to provide additional arms to the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, but it hasn’t been clear about troops.

“It is a matter of time only until ISIS is defeated there,” McMaster said of Syria. “And what’s going to be really critical, though, is what forces can then establish enduring security in those regions that have a legitimacy with the population, that are representative of the population, that can set conditions for reconstruction to begin.”