Last year, Trump had said that a rapid exit of the US troops from Afghanistan “unacceptable,” and sent more than 3,000 US troops to Afghanistan.
US President Donald Trump (Photo: IANS)
The Donald Trump-led US administration is considering a substantial reduction of US troops in Afghanistan.
Officials said that US troop reduction in Afghanistan could begin in next several weeks, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
Advertisement
Trump said last year that a rapid exit of the US troops from Afghanistan “unacceptable,” and sent more than 3,000 US troops to Afghanistan, Xinhua reported.
Advertisement
Currently, the United States has about 14,000 troops in Afghanistan working either with a NATO mission to support Afghan forces or in separate counter-terrorism operations.
The death toll of US service members has surpassed 2,400 since the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001.
Trump made his decision on Tuesday, the same time he told the Pentagon he wanted to pull all US forces out of Syria. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis quit earlier on Thursday, saying his views were no longer reconcilable with Trump’s.
The president’s twin foreign policy decisions on Syria and Afghanistan are nothing less than epic, and could begin to unspool a series of cascading and unpredictable events across the Middle East and in Afghanistan.
The Wall Street Journal reported that more than 7,000 troops would be returning from Afghanistan. The pull out comes as the US pushes for a peace deal with the Taliban.
(With agency inputs)
Advertisement
