The Taliban said the United States decision would only prolong the war.
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Obama has also relaxed the rules of engagement, making it easier for USA troops to proactively target the Taliban and assist Afghan forces, instead of waiting to respond to an attack.
Nicholson told reporters that he will have 3,000 US troops working as advisers in Afghanistan, 2,150 troops doing counterterrorism and 3,300 working in a supporting role as enablers.
Speaking during a press conference with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Carter also said that progress by the Afghanistan government on economic and anti-corruption reforms “is central” to the continued global support for the country.
Carter, who also met with Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, urged the leaders of the national unity government to work together. But they can: A relative handful of highly qualified Americans can go a long way toward organizing counterinsurgency campaigns and training Afghan security forces. Carter also will meet with Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah in Kabul before heading back to Bagram to meet US troops.
Haroon Chakhansuri, Ghani’s spokesman, said on Thursday that the four-nation group – Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States – has no plans to meet again anytime soon.
The Afghan leader also thanked Obama for announcing last week that he will leave 8,400 US troops in Afghanistan through the end of his term as president, rather than shrinking the number to 5,500, as previously planned. He also praised Afghan forces, who he said had been “standing tall” since the departure of foreign combat forces. Mansoor was killed in a USA drone strike in May and replaced by a religious extremist, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, who has also rejected peace talks.
Army Gen. John. W. Nicholson Jr. told reporters that he is applying new authorities approved by President Obama in June “almost daily”, and that they extend beyond carrying out airstrikes to providing specific kinds of USA troops to plan and carry out operations.
But Carter, while stressing the USA would work with Pakistan “wherever it can” on extremism, warned that Washington would “continue to target and strike terrorist leaders everywhere in the world where they might threaten Americans or our interests and our friends”.
He blamed the Afghan side for scuttling the peace process by going last July with a statement that Taliban founder and leader Mullah Mohammad Omar had been dead for more than two years.
They said that Pakistan is distinguishing between “Good Taliban”, groups that advance Pakistan’s foreign policy goals and do not threaten the state or wage war within its border and ‘Bad Taliban, ‘ the jihadist faction that challenges the primacy of the Pakistan.
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Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed by a U.S. drone in Pakistan earlier this year in a strike that Islamabad said violated its sovereignty. He unjustifiably criticized Pakistan for making “dangerous” distinction between pro and anti-Kabul Taliban during his address to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation summit in Warsaw and despite assurances to the contrary made by all relevant quarters in Pakistan, he chose to take his diatribe to new heights by making an apparently absurd demand that Pakistan should hand over anti-talks Taliban to Afghanistan, as if these are under safe custody of Pakistan Government. On Monday in Iraq, Carter announced that the US would be sending 560 additional troops there in the coming days and weeks.
