The U.S. will slow its troop drawdown in Afghanistan, leaving a force of 8,400 when President Barack Obama completes his term, the president announced Wednesday in a blunt acknowledgment that America will remain entangled there despite his aspirations to end the war. The ISIS group has also established a small presence in Afghanistan.
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Our Boys will be sent back into the crumbling state – which claimed nearly 500 British lives over 13 years – to bolster the flagging Afghan security forces.
He came into office promising to end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but he’ll leave with the USA still enmeshed in conflicts in both of those countries while wrestling with new ones in Syria and Libya.
Obama spoke in advance of a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation summit on July 8 and 9 in Warsaw, Poland, where alliance members are expected to confirm their support for the Kabul government.
“Instead of going down to 5,500 troops by the end of this year, the United States will maintain approximately 8,400 troops in Afghanistan into next year through the end of my administration”, Mr Obama said. Last year, Barack Obama delayed the departure of U.S. troops from the country, saying a force of 5,500 would stay beyond the end of his term of office in 2017.
Because groups like the Islamic State are “non-state actors, it’s very hard for us ever to get the satisfaction of MacArthur and the emperor meeting and a war being officially over”, Obama said, referring to the USA general and Japanese leader at the end of World War II.
The new deployment of 50 squaddies will join 450 British troops who never left when the UK’s combat mission officially finished, in October 2014.
Obama will leave office in January following presidential elections and he said he believes the move will leave his successor well placed to make continued progress in Afghanistan and fight extremism.
The US has pledged to provide $3.5bn annually to fund Afghan forces, and the government in Kabul is expected to contribute as much as $500 million.
“They (Al Qaeda) are really very active”, Afghan Defense Minister Mohammed Masoom Stanekzai said.
Obama’s announcement is further acknowledgement that Afghan security forces, who took charge of the country’s security in 2015, are still not ready to go it alone. “First, we agreed to sustain our Resolute Support Mission beyond 2016, through a flexible, regional model”.
The Times has also reported that the Afghan army, backed by US troops, recently overran a huge training area controlled by al-Qaida, which along with the Islamic State has a continuing presence in Afghanistan.
The United States in May killed the group’s leader, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, in a drone strike in Pakistan.
Since Obama surged troops into Afghanistan and then pulled them out faster than his generals wanted, he has had to keep a larger presence there than he had planned as the Taliban has rebounded.
There are about 9,800 US troops in Afghanistan.
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