*Karachi – United States Army Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, General MarkMilley, has admitted that the US and its Afghan partners in Kabul made onlymodest gains in fight against Taliban over the past two decades, VoxNews reported.*

Speaking at a think tank virtual event in Washington about the planneddrawdown to 2,500 US troops in the country by January 15, Trump’s topmilitary advisor said: “We have been in a condition of strategic stalematewhere the government of Afghanistan was never going to militarily defeatthe Taliban.”

He added that till the time the US is supporting the Afghanistangovernment, Taliban cannot military defeat the regime.

Milley maintained American forces were deployed in Afghanistan to ensurethat the Afghan soil can never be used to strike the US. “We believe thatnow after 20 years — two decades of consistent effort there — we’veachieved a modicum of success.”

As part of the drawdown plan, Pentagon will keep two larger bases inAfghanistan. Mark Milley mentioned that in addition to the two largerbases, the United States would also keep “several satellite bases.”

On December 2, the US-backed Afghan government and Taliban representativesreached a preliminary deal to go ahead with peace negotiations.

In February this year, an agreement was struck between the United Statesand the Taliban in which it was agreed that 5,000 Taliban prisoners will bereleased from Afghan prisons before peace talks between the militant groupand the government.

On August 10, Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani issued a decree torelease the final batch of prisoners demanded by the Taliban as a conditionto move to peace talks. Later, the Afghan government released the remainingTaliban prisoners, kicking of intra-Afghan peace talks.

However, as the peace process was going forward, violent clashes andattacks between the militant groups and Afghan forces occurred, claiminglives of several people. It was feared that the attacks might disrupt theintra-Afghan peace talks but timely reconciliatory efforts by Pakistan andother states helped reviving the negotiations.