US President Donald Trump has decided to pull about 7,000 troops from Afghanistan, a US official said Friday, but the Afghan presidency brushed off concerns the drawdown would affect security.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the US official told AFP that “roughly half” of the 14,000 US forces in Afghanistan would leave “within the next several months.”
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.
A spokesman for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Haroon Chakhansuri, downplayed the news, saying: It “will not have a security impact because in the last four and half years the Afghans have been in full control.”
But 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.
