Washington: US President Donald Trump has chosen to pull 7,000 troops from Afghanistan, a US official said Friday, but the Afghan presidency brushed off concerns the drawdown would influence security. Speaking on condition of anonymity,'' the US official told AFP that"about half" of the 14,000 US forces in Afghanistan would depart"within the upcoming few months" The move stunned and dismayed diplomats and officials at Kabul that are intensifying a push to finish the 17-year battle with the Taliban, which already controls vast amounts of land and also is causing"unsustainable" Afghan troop casualties.
"If you're the Taliban, Christmas has arrived early," a senior foreign official in the Afghan capital told AFP about the condition of anonymity. "Are you considering a ceasefire if your principal competitor has just withdrawn half of their troops?"
"We're more than happy; they realised that the truth. We're hoping more great news." It's not clear if US peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad or the Afghan government was 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 effect because in the past four and half years the Afghans have been in complete control."
However, Afghans across the nation expressed worries that a US troop withdrawal could derail peace efforts, go back the Taliban into power, and dissolve the country into civil war. "We're fearful that history is going to be replicated," Fazli Ahmad, a car washer from the southern city of Kandahar, told AFP.
Shaima Dabeer, a 50-year-old housewife in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, '' she feared for the future of her children. "Afghanistan will return to the Taliban era," she informed AFP. Trump's decision allegedly came Tuesday since Khalilzad met with the Taliban at Abu Dhabi, part of efforts to bring the militants into the negotiating table with Kabul.
They discussed issues which range from the group's longstanding demand for a pullout of foreign troops, the release of prisoners and a ceasefire,'' Khalilzad told Afghan press in Kabul on Thursday. A NATO spokesperson would not comment on Trump's decision, referring reporters to US authorities, but stressed the alliance's continued commitment to its support mission in Afghanistan. Tuesday was also the day Trump advised the Pentagon he wished to pull all US forces out of Syria. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis resigned Thursday, saying his views were no longer reconcilable with Trump's.
Critics suggest the president's twin foreign policy choices on Syria and Afghanistan could unspool a series of cascading and unusual events across the Middle East and in Afghanistan. "If we continue on our current course we are putting in motion the reduction of all our profits and paving the way toward another 9/11," warned US Senator Lindsey Graham via Twitter.
Afghan forces have been accepting what experts describe as"unsustainable" casualties since NATO pulled its combat forces from the nation in 2014. Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie, nominated to lead the US army's Central Command, warned that unless recruiting and training enhance, local forces will not overcome the casualty rate.
Ghani said last month almost 30,000 Afghan security forces were killed since the beginning of 2015, a figure higher than anything previously confessed. In an interview with BBC Radio 4 broadcast Friday but recorded before news of the troop withdrawal was leaked,'' Ghani said a"sacrifice" of more than 45,000 local forces in the past four years. It was uncertain whether that figure referred to deaths or also contained harms. The US troops in Afghanistan work with all the NATO mission to support Afghan forces or in separate counter-terrorism operations.
- Longest war -
The Taliban was toppled from power by a US-led invasion in 2001 following the 9/11 attacks masterminded by Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who had been harboured by Afghanistan. The war is now America's longest, with more than 2,200 US military personnel killed since the start of 2001, including 13 this year.
Mattis and other top military advisers last year persuaded Trump to commit tens of thousands more troops as part of a plan that included more airstrikes targeting the Taliban and its relatively small but powerful rival, the Islamic State group. Trump in the time said his instinct was to depart Afghanistan.
Khalilzad, who has met with Taliban representatives several times in recent months, has expressed hopes for a peace deal before the Afghan presidential elections scheduled for April. Foreign observers and officials stated Trump's movement had passed the Taliban that major propaganda and strategic victory.
"It has gotten the troop withdrawals it has always desired without even having to make any concessions," Michael Kugelman of the Wilson Center informed AFP. "Now it has a tremendous battlefield edge, which gives it the opportunity to scale up its struggle in a massive way."
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