Trump wants Afghan forces in Kabul, other big cities: Sources
Officials from the administration US President Donald Trump are pushing Afghan forces to move their soldiers to big cities like the capital Kabul, sources say.
Citing three officials familiar with the president’s war strategy, The New York Times reported Sunday that the incentive is avoiding aggressors’ attacks in isolated outposts manned by Afghan forces.
The officials further told the daily that the approach is a previously undisclosed part of the war strategy that the president announced in 2017.
“The withdrawal resembles strategies embraced by both the Bush and Obama administrations that have started and stuttered over the nearly 17-year war. It will effectively ensure that the Taliban and other insurgent groups will hold on to territory that they have already seized, leaving the government in Kabul to safeguard the capital and cities such as Kandahar, Kunduz, Mazar-i-Sharif and Jalalabad,” read the report.
Earlier this month, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Washington is ready to negotiate with Taliban.
This is while Trump has boosted US forces in Afghanistan, bringing the official number to 14,000 American soldiers.
He has also removed any timeline for the US forces to leave the country.
“The retreat to the cities is a searing acknowledgment that the American-installed government in Afghanistan remains unable to lead and protect the country’s sprawling rural population. Over the years, as waves of American and NATO troops have come and left in repeated cycles, the government has slowly retrenched and ceded chunks of territory to the Taliban, cleaving Afghanistan into disparate parts and ensuring a conflict with no end in sight,” read the Times.
The United States invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, and overthrew the Taliban regime. But US forces have remained bogged down there through the presidencies of George W. Bush, Barack Obama and now Trump.
Taliban militants have warned of stepping up their attacks until the US forces fully withdraw from Afghanistan after more than a decade and half of occupation.
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