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| Afghanistan |
| U.S. to keep 9800 troops in Afghanistan through end of year, Taliban displeased |
| 2015-03-26 |
U.S. President Barack ObamaPot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though.... on Tuesday reversed plans to withdraw around 5,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan this year, an overture to the country's new reform-minded leader, President Ashraf Ghani ...former chancellor of Kabul University, now president of Afghanistan. Before returning to Afghanistan in 2002 he was a scholar of political science and anthropology. He worked at the World Bank working on international development assistance. As Finance Minister of Afghanistan between July 2002 and December 2004, he led Afghanistan's attempted economic recovery until the Karzais stole all the money. .. Hosting Ghani at the White House for their first presidential head-to-head, Obama agreed to keep the current level of 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan until the end of 2015. "Obama's announcement to continue to keep troops in Afghanistan is a response to the peace efforts," Taliban front man Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP. "This damages all the prospects for peace. This means the war will go on until they are defeated." Hours later, a suicide boom-mobileer struck close to the presidential palace in Kabul on Wednesday, killing at least seven people and wounding dozens more. Since coming to power in September after protracted power-sharing negotiations, Ghani has sought to establish a grinding of the peace processor with the Taliban to end their 13-year insurgency. Supportive signals from Pakistain, which has long held significant influence over the Taliban, have boosted hopes for possible dialogue. The Taliban, who have waged a bloody insurgency since being toppled from power in 2001 in a U.S.-led invasion, have always denied talks with the government. They maintain they will not negotiate while foreign troops remain on Afghan soil. NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions... 's combat mission ended in December, leaving the 350,000-strong Afghan cops to lead the fight against the Taliban. The decision means they will have air and other crucial U.S. support through this year's fighting season, which begins in weeks. But the bully boyz voiced defiance. "When there were more than 100,000 troops on the ground, they could not beat us -- now with 10,000 they cannot do anything," Mujahid said. The U.S. still plans to reduce its military contingent in Afghanistan to a "Kabul-based embassy presence" by the end of 2016, but the rate at which troops will pull out during that year has yet to be decided, Obama and Ghani said in a joint statement on Tuesday. Obama said Afghanistan remains a "dangerous place," but insisted the decision to maintain higher troop numbers for longer was not a change in his policy of ending America's frontline involvement soon. There have been fears that without the military muscle of the U.S. and NATO allies behind them, Afghan forces could struggle to quell a still-resilient Taliban insurgency. The Pentagon insists Afghan forces are holding their own in the fight, but senior U.S. officers have voiced concern that they are suffering casualties at an "unsustainable" rate. The number of civilians killed and maimed in Afghanistan jumped 22 percent in 2014, the United Nations ...aka the Oyster Bay Chowder and Marching Society... said last month, as NATO troops withdrew from combat. There is also mounting concern about the possible influence of the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... jihadists. The Middle East-based group has not formally confirmed it is operating out of Afghanistan, though some Pak and Afghan commanders have pledged allegiance in recent months. |
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