U.S. military officials grappled Friday with President Trump’s order to pull nearly half of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan, a move that would likely focus the war squarely on one of the few military efforts the president says he cares about: counterterrorism.
The order to draw up withdrawal plans, issued during a White House meeting this week, would reduce the military presence from more than 14,000 troops to about 7,000, drastically scaling back Pentagon efforts to assist and support Afghan forces.
Afghan forces have suffered hundreds of fatalities per month this year, as a resurgent Taliban puts pressure on the Afghan government despite a marginally expanded Pentagon mission there 16 months ago.
U.S. military officials in Afghanistan and at the Pentagon have declined to comment. Some U.S. officials close to the president, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said they are trying to talk the president out of making a change.
Trump has long expressed frustration with the 17-year war and nation-building in general. In announcing his Afghan plan last year, he criticized efforts by the Obama administration as not muscular enough, but also said he was going against his own instincts to pull out of Afghanistan entirely.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who resigned Thursday, and other senior advisers who lobbied for staying in Afghanistan are now on their way out. Other influential voices in foreign policy weighed in wearily Friday about Afghanistan, but focused mainly on the consequences of withdrawing all U.S. troops from Afghanistan, a move that would hamstring the Pentagon’s ability to carry out strikes against the Islamic State, al-Queda and other terrorist groups.
“An Afghan withdrawal would be even more calamitous than pulling out of Syria,” said James Stavridis, a retired Navy admiral, referring to Trump’s announcement this week that he would withdraw all American forces there. “It would lead to the resurgence of the Taliban, who would welcome al-Qaeda back with open arms.”
Stavridis made a case for keeping the existing strategy, adopted by Trump in August 2017, and said that not doing so undercuts U.S. efforts to strike a peace deal with the Taliban.
Withdrawing 7,000 troops would be a “big mistake,” he said but acknowledged that doing so would focus the mission most heavily on strikes against terrorist groups.
In Afghanistan and at the Pentagon, military officials have privately discussed the possibility that Trump would run out of patience with the war. But many hoped that they could at least make the case that the counterterrorism mission should continue.
Maintaining the mission will require the Pentagon to keep at least one major base open, most likely Bagram Airfield north of Kabul. Although the installation is smaller than it was at the height of the war in 2010 and 2011, when more than 100,000 U.S. troops were deployed, it is home to a Special Operations task force from which Army Rangers and other elite forces launch raids, F-16 jets and other strike aircraft, and units that support them.
Since September, U.S. forces in Afghanistan have been commanded by Army Gen. Austin “Scott” Miller, a Special Operations veteran. He previously commanded Joint Special Operations Command, which oversees elite counterterrorism forces all over the world.
This year, the Pentagon has dropped more bombs in Afghanistan than at any time in the war, according to Air Force data. Last month, it acknowledged a raid in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province against al-Qaeda forces in which an Army Ranger was killed by gunfire.
Less clear is the future of several major training efforts and the use of an Army unit known as a security forces adviser brigade, or SFAB. The first SFAB deployed to Afghanistan this year with backing from senior Army leaders and Mattis, and a similar unit was expected to deploy again in 2019.
Trump, speaking to The Washington Post in November, appeared to accept that terrorist groups remain and that he would have to deal with them.
“We’re there because virtually every expert that I have and speak to say if we don’t go there, they’re going to be fighting over here,” he said. “And I’ve heard it over and over again.”
Josh Dawsey contributed to this report.
This story was originally published by Washington Post
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