WASHINGTON D.C (SW): In an exclusive report, the Wall Street Journal has claimed the U.S President Donald Trump has ordered the start of a reduction of American forces in Afghanistan.
More than 7,000 American troops will begin to return home from Afghanistan in the coming weeks, a U.S. official told the WSJ. The move will come as the first stage of a phased drawdown and the start of a conclusion to the 17-year war that officials say could take at least many months. There now are more than 14,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Mr. Trump announced Wednesday that he would pull all of the more than 2,000 American troops from Syria.
Taken together, the Syria withdrawal and the likely Afghan drawdown represent a dramatic shift in the U.S. approach to military engagement in hot spots around the world, reflecting Mr. Trump’s aversion to long-running military entanglements with their high costs and American casualties, the WSJ reported.
On Thursday, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis submitted a letter expressing his intent to leave, saying, “you have the right to have a secretary of defense whose views are better aligned with yours.”
In Afghanistan, the U.S. is part of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization mission that includes dozens of other countries. Unlike the withdrawal ordered in Syria, the Afghanistan drawdown is expected to be more deliberative because of the presence of treaty allies. The disclosure of the Afghan troop reductions comes as U.S. officials had begun to voice greater confidence about negotiations to end to the war with the Taliban. The Trump administration has made negotiating a deal with the Taliban a priority, appointing former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad, as the top envoy for talks.
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