US President Donald Trump has decided to pull about 7,000 troops from Afghanistan, but the Afghan presidency brushed off concerns the drawdown would affect security.
The move stunned and dismayed diplomats and officials in Kabul who are intensifying a push to end the 17-year conflict with the Taliban, which already controls vast amounts of territory and is causing “unsustainable” Afghan troop casualties.
Afghans across the country expressed fears that a US troop withdrawal could derail peace efforts, return the Taliban to power, and dissolve the country into civil war.
Tuesday was also the day Trump told the Pentagon he wanted to pull all US forces out of Syria. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis resigned Thursday, saying his views were no longer reconcilable with Trump’s. Critics suggest the president’s twin foreign policy decisions on Syria and Afghanistan could unspool a series of cascading and unpredictable events across the Middle East and in Afghanistan.
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