WASHINGTON: The US link has revealed that it isseeking a side peace deal between Pakistan link andAfghanistan as President Donald Trump link saidWednesday he wants all US troops to leave Afghanistan by Christmas,speeding up the timeline for ending America’s longest war.
“We should have the small remaining number of our BRAVE Men and Womenserving in Afghanistan home by Christmas!” Trumplink wrote on Twitter.
In a February 29 agreement reached in Qatar with the Taliban, the UnitedStates promised to pull out all its troops by mid-2021 in return forinsurgents’ promises not to allow Afghanistan to be used by extremists.
The Taliban have since opened talks in Doha with the Afghan government, butthe meetings have immediately stalled as the hardline rebels insist ontheir form of Islamic jurisprudence.
Trump’s link promise comes one month before USelections in which the president, trailing in the polls, has sought to showthat he is making good on his promise to draw a close to “endless wars.”
After 19 years of US military operations his stance enjoys wide support,with Democratic rival Joe Biden — a critic during his time as vicepresident of further US involvement in Afghanistan — also backing awithdrawal.
The United States first intervened in Afghanistan following the September11, 2001 attacks and dislodged the Taliban regime, which had welcomedAl-Qaeda. But in the years since the resurgent militants have launched afresh battle to topple the US-backed government in Kabul, with civiliansbearing the brunt of spiraling violence since NATO combat troops withdrewin 2014.
Trump has already reduced US forces in Afghanistan to around 8,600 and theTaliban has stood by promises not to attack Western troops — even as themilitants continue their bloody campaign against government forces.
Meanwhile, the US negotiator seeking to end Afghanistan’s war voiced hopeWednesday that the Kabul government can reach a side deal with Pakistan.
The Taliban and Afghan government have opened slow-moving peace talks inQatar as the United States starts withdrawing its forces from Afghanistanto end its longest-ever war.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the US pointman on Afghanistan, said that both Pakistan’sPrime Minister Imran Khan and its powerful military chief, General QamerJaved Bajwa, have been “helpful” in the diplomacy.
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“We are seeking an agreement between Afghanistan and Pakistan as an adjunctto an internal peace,” Khalilzad told a forum at the University ofChicago’s Pearson Institute by video from Doha.
Both countries would “agree that their territory will not be allowed to beused against the other by extremist groups or groups that would underminethe security of the other,” he said.
Pakistan had hailed the February 29 agreement between the United States andthe Taliban, in which Washington declared that it would “facilitatediscussions” between Kabul and Islamabad.
Critics, especially in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s historic rival India, seeIslamabad as playing both sides and say its military and intelligenceapparatus has still backed Taliban violence as a way to exert influence inits neighbour.
But Khalilzad, who visited Islamabad last month, said he saw economicincentives for Pakistan, which suffers severe power shortages and couldimport power from electricity-rich Central Asia if the Afghan governmentand Taliban reach a deal.
“There are economic reasons that would be transformative for the regionshould peace in Afghanistan come,” Khalilzad said.
The upbeat tone by Khalilzad, who has tried to ensure that all key playerssupport Afghan peace, comes after years of on-off tensions between theUnited States and its Cold War ally Pakistan. -APP/AFP
Courtesy: (AFP)
