US COULD BE OUT OF AFGHANISTAN NEXT
kabul — US President Donald Trump has decided to pull about 7,000 troops from Afghanistan, a US official said on Friday, but the Afghan presidency brushed off concerns the drawdown would affect security.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the US official told AFP that “roughly half” of the 14,000 US forces in Afghanistan would leave “within the next several months.”
The move stunned and dismayed diplomats and officials in Kabul who are intensifying a push to end the 17-year conflict with the Taleban, which already controls vast amounts of territory and is causing “unsustainable” Afghan troop casualties.
“If you’re the Taleban, Christmas has come early,” a senior foreign official in the Afghan capital told AFP on the condition of anonymity.
“Would you be thinking of a ceasefire if your main opponent has just withdrawn half their troops?”
Taleban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid would not comment about the troop withdrawal when contacted. But a senior Taleban commander welcomed the decision.
“Frankly speaking we weren’t expecting that immediate United States response,” the official told AFP from an unknown location in northwest Pakistan.
“We are more than happy, they realised the truth. We are expecting more good news.”
It is not clear if US peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad or the Afghan government had been warned of Trump’s plans in advance.
A spokesman for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Haroon Chakhansuri, downplayed the news, saying: It “will not have a security impact because in the last four and half years the Afghans have been in full control.”
But Afghans expressed fears that a US troop withdrawal could return the Taleban to power, and dissolve the country into civil war. “We are terrified that history will be repeated,” Fazli Ahmad, a car washer in the southern city of Kandahar, said. —
2,400 Soldiers the US has lost since 2001
kabul — The withdrawal of half of the 14,000 US troops serving in Afghanistan will have little impact on the fighting capacity of the Afghan National Security Forces, the spokesman for President Ashraf Ghani said.
Haroon Chakansuri was responding to reports the Pentagon is developing plans to withdraw 7,000 American soldiers by the summer. He said Afghanistan’s military has been in charge of the country’s security since 2014 when more than 100,000 Nato troops withdrew. Since then, US forces have provided training and advice, assisting in military operations only when requested by Afghan troops.
However, the Taleban are stronger today than they have been since their ouster in 2001. They control or hold sway over nearly half the country, carrying out near daily attacks that mostly target Afghan security forces.
The Taleban have so far refused to comment on the report.
Since leading the multi-nation invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the US has lost more than 2,400 soldiers and spent more than $900 billion in its longest war
While US soldiers occasionally accompany Afghan troops on ground operations, the bulk of American military action in Afghanistan is the air support provided to Afghan ground troops. In recent months, there has been a renewed effort to make progress on peace talks with the Taleban. Officials now worry that any move to withdraw US troops this year could dampen those prospects and encourage the Taleban to wait it out until they can take advantage of the gaps when US forces leave.
Withdrawing troops would also seem to contradict US President Donald Trump’s earlier statements that promised to deny Taleban insurgents advance warning of US military strategy. Trump strongly criticised former President Barak Obama for announcing the 2014 withdrawal nearly a year before troops left.
For many Afghans there is a mixed reaction to the presence of US and Nato troops. —