The actions U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has taken to combat terrorists in Afghanistan have been “encouraging” and “promising” so far, the Afghan ambassador to the United States declared during the 2017 Aspen Security Forum.
“Everything that we’ve seen so far has been encouraging in the sense it’s going in the right direction. I agree with the policy right now as I mentioned we’re fighting the war. We’re actually making tremendous gains agains the Taliban,” said Hamdullah Mohib, the ambassador of Afghanistan to the United States during a panel discussion on the ongoing war.
“In the last six weeks we’ve managed to disrupt Taliban activities and offensive operations across Afghanistan—close to 1,000 Taliban and Daesh [Islamic State] fighters have been killed or captured,” he added.
Margaret Brennan, a journalist for CBS News who served as the moderator for the Aspen Institute event in Colorado, interrupted the ambassador when he was praising Trump’s handling of the Afghan war, noting that Secretary of Defense James Mattis bluntly told lawmakers last month the U.S. is “not winning in Afghanistan right now.”
“We need to have that cohesive policy and that needs to address the difficult questions on what we need to do with both internal and external elements and what we’ve seen so far is all promising and going in the right direction,” continued Amb. Mohib. “The fact that funding to Pakistan has been reduced or put on hold the fact that the [Trump administration] appointments that were made that are working on Afghanistan [and] who know the country well have all been promising in that regard.”
The ambassador explained that although the Trump administration has not yet unveiled its much anticipated Afghan war strategy, the U.S.-backed fight in Afghanistan has continued to rage.
“There is a policy in place right now. It’s not the new policy that we are waiting for, but we’re in an ongoing fight with the Taliban and all of the terrorist groups that operate in Afghanistan,” said Mohib.
“What we’ve lacked in the past is not necessarily a … policy but a lack of coherent policy that addresses both the geopolitical aspects and moves towards one direction,” he added, noting that in the past the different U.S. agencies involved in the war have not worked in sync.
Trump presided over a full National Security Council (NSC) meeting on the Afghanistan war in the White House on Wednesday. Breitbart News learned from a U.S. official that the president suggested his administration may have to go back to the drawing board to craft a strategy that does not mirror the failed ones of the past.
The president has already dramatically increased the number of U.S. airstrikes against terrorists in the war-ravaged country to 1,634 already this year, more than during all of 2015 and 2016, respectively.
In accordance with U.S. law, Trump’s Pentagon has also decided to withhold from Pakistan millions of U.S. taxpayer funds in military reimbursements over Islamabad’s support to the Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked Haqqani Network, deemed the top threat to the coalition in Afghanistan.
“I want to start by thanking those [American] veterans who served in Afghanistan without them we wouldn’t be where we’re at today,” declared the Afghan envoy.
President Trump inherited a difficult and deteriorating situation in Afghanistan that accumulated over the tenure of his predecessors: a Taliban resurgence, an ISIS presence, record-level opium cultivation and heroin production which is the top source of terrorism funding for the Taliban, and a historic number of casualties suffered by the Afghan civilians and security forces, among other problems.
Although the Pentagon seems to be taking the lead, the NSC also appears to be involved in crafting the much-anticipated plan.
The Afghan ambassador said his country can currently do more with less U.S. troops because “most of the burden” to secure the nation has fallen on the Afghan security forces.
Afghanistan is “anxiously” waiting on the final Afghan strategy so that “we can end this conflict once and for all,” proclaimed Mohib.
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