SOVIETS WERE RIGHT TO INVADE AFGHANISTAN, TRUMP SAYS IN A BIZARRE TAKE ON HISTORY

▶ In his first Cabinet meeting of the year, the US president gives his own analysis of the decade-long conflict

In a rambling history lesson on Wednesday, President Donald Trump applauded the Soviet Union’s 10-year invasion of Afghanistan.

“The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there,” Mr Trump said in his first Cabinet meeting of the year – seemingly unaware the US was the main international backer of the other side of the conflict with Moscow.

The US and its allies funded and armed Afghanistan’s mujahideen, a grouping of local anti-communist militias and foreign fighters.

Experts have since noted that contrary to Mr Trump’s claim, there were never any reports of terrorist attacks on Russia during the 1980s. Not even the “most shameless Soviet propagandist” claimed that Afghan terrorists were attacking Russia, New York University Afghanistan expert Barnett Rubin told The Washington Post.

During his bizarre speech, Mr Trump also connected the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 to Moscow’s role in Afghanistan.

Russia, he said, used to be the Soviet Union.

“Afghanistan made it Russia. Because they went bankrupt fighting in Afghanistan.”

He may have been confusing the Soviet Union’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan, which led to the deaths of between 500,000 and two million civilians, with the second Chechen War in 1999 that was preceded by what Moscow called terrorist and criminal activity by Chechen separatists in Russia.

Senior aides and Cabinet members were back at work on Wednesday despite the government shutdown, quietly listening as the US president delved into the causes of one of the world’s bloodiest and longest conflicts.

He also took a shot at his former defence secretary James Mattis, who resigned last month, saying he was not happy with the former military head’s work in Afghanistan.

“I mean, I wish him well,” Mr Trump said. “But, as you know, president Obama fired him and, essentially, so did I. I want results.”

It was Mr Trump’s first public appearance in nearly a week after being holed up in the White House for Christmas and New Year while his family celebrated at his private Mar-aLago club in Palm Beach, Florida. “You know, I was in the White House all by myself for six, seven days.

“It was very lonely,” Mr Trump said. He described channelflipping to fill the time.

“I felt I should be here just in case people wanted to come and negotiate the border security,” Mr Trump said. “I was all by myself in the White House – it’s a big, big house – except for all the guys out on the lawn with machine guns,” he said, referring to Secret Service and military personnel who guard the White House year-round.

“I was waving to them ... these are great people. And they don’t play games. They don’t, like, wave. They don’t even smile,” he said. “I was hoping that maybe somebody would come back and negotiate. But they didn’t do that.”

But now that the long, lonely holiday stretch is over, Mr Trump is back at work. And while some members of his administration were there, others were prevented from reporting for work because of the partial government shutdown that is now affecting hundreds of thousands of federal workers.

The shutdown, he said, would last “as long as it takes”.

And as for his favourite rapper, Mr Trump enthused: “Even Kanye West came out today and said great things about Trump.

“It’s going to be a very exciting year. I think it’s going to be a very good year. Some people think it’ll be controversial and tough and it probably will, but we’re going to get it done.”

He refrained from setting a timetable for the withdrawal of an estimated 2,000 US troops from Syria.

“Syria was lost long ago,” he said. “We are talking about sand and death. We are not talking about vast wealth.”

The US president is now saying that the withdrawal of US troops will happen “over a period of time”.

Mr Trump also pledged to protect the Kurdish population in areas now under US and Kurdish control.

The president last week appeared to link his Syria stance with receiving more financial input from the US’s Arab allies.

“Saudi Arabia has now agreed to spend the necessary money needed to help rebuild Syria, instead of the United States ... Thanks to Saudi A!” Mr Trump tweeted on Christmas Eve.

But the last publicly announced Saudi contribution to rebuilding Syria was in August, when Riyadh pledged $100 million (Dh367m) to the USled anti-ISIS coalition for restoring infrastructure in areas of north-east Syria recaptured from the extremists.

Mr Trump is also facing resistance to his withdrawal plan from his national security team and the State Department, an official told The National.

The State Department’s Syria team, led by James Jeffrey and Joel Rayburn, and the president’s National Security Adviser John Bolton are advocating a slow pull-out, and the Pentagon is preparing a list of options for the president.

Mr Bolton, Mr Jeffrey and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford are scheduled to visit Israel and Turkey next week to discuss the withdrawal plan.

On Iran, Mr Trump praised his own strategy, saying that the sanctions have worked and turned it into a different country.

“Iran is in trouble,” he said.