ISLAMABAD – Pentagon has given a strong response over reported US Presidentdecision of troops withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Recent gains by US and Afghan forces under the Trump administration’s SouthAsia strategy could be in jeopardy if Washington presses ahead with plansto slash the number of American troops in Afghanistan by half, says aPentagon assessment of the 17-year-old conflict in Afghanistan mentioned ina report by Washington Times.
The report says that US Defense Department analysts suggest in an annualassessment of the Afghan war that any let up in pressure against theTaliban could derail efforts to secure peace talks with the insurgentgroup.
“The reinforcement and realignment of US and coalition forces andauthorities under the South Asia Strategy have significantly increasedpressure on the Taliban,” defense officials wrote in the report andsubmitted to Congress on Thursday.
Trump’s decision last year to send an additional 3,000 US troops in toAfghanistan as part of his South Asia strategy “stabilized the situation inAfghanistan, slowing the momentum of a Taliban march that had capitalizedon US drawdowns between 2011 and 2016,” the analysts wrote, adding that“the key to success remains sustained military pressure against theTaliban” by Afghan forces backed by the nearly 14,000 US services membersstill in country.
Read Top Stories
“Convincing the Taliban that they cannot win on the battlefield, andcredibly committing to a conditions-based strategy” under the South Asiaplan, Kabul and Washington “have greatly increased the odds of concluding asettlement” to bring America’s longest war to an end, they said.
On Sunday, the US and NATO Forces Commander in Afghanistan Gen. ScottMiller in a meeting with Nangarhar governor on Sunday assured that theywill continue to support the Afghan forces even if they get an order abouttroop withdrawal – an issue which Miller says is rumors by “newspapers”.
