INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
decided to pull a significant number of troops from Afghanistan, a US official told AFP on Thursday, a day after he announced a withdrawal
from Syria."That decision has been made
There will be a significant withdrawal," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.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.Trump made his
decision Tuesday, the same time he told the Pentagon he wanted to pull all US forces out of Syria.Defense Secretary Jim Mattis quit earlier
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.Mattis and other top military advisors last year persuaded Trump to commit thousands of new troops to Afghanistan, where the
Taliban were slaughtering local forces in the thousands and making major gains.Trump at the time said his instinct was to get out of
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.(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by TheIndianSubcontinent staff and is
published from a syndicated feed.)
