US mulls drastically cutting diplomatic staff in Kabul as part of deal with Taliban
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ISLAMABAD - US mulls drastically cutting diplomatic staff in Kabul as part of deal with Taliban, Afghanistan media has reported.
US officials have said that Washington is considering reducing its diplomatic footprint in Afghanistan as part of a broader effort to extricate the United States from its costly and deadly 18-year conflict, Foreign Policy reported on April 5, TOLO News has reported.
The State Department is preparing to cut by half the number of US diplomats posted in Kabul in 2020, according to three US officials familiar with internal deliberations as quoted by Foreign Policy.
It may also advance plans to reduce the number of diplomats posted to the US Embassy in Iraq, the report said.
This comes as the US and Taliban agreed in draft during the Qatar talks in mid-March on foreign forces withdrawal and counterterrorism assurances.
According to the report, in February, NPR reported on a leaked internal document from the US Embassy in Kabul that called the outpost too big and urged a “comprehensive review” of its size, though the document did not outline the scale of the proposed cuts.
