Kabul, Afghanistan | AFP | –

The move has stunned foreign diplomats and officials trying to end the 17-year conflict with the Taliban, which already controls vast amounts of territory and is causing ‘unsustainable’ Afghan troop casualties

US President Donald Trump has decided to pull about 7,000 troops from Afghanistan, a US official said Friday, but the Afghan presidency brushed off concerns the drawdown would affect security.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the US official told AFP that “roughly half” of the 14,000 US forces in Afghanistan would leave “within the next several months.”

The move stunned and dismayed diplomats and officials in Kabul who are intensifying a push to end the 17-year conflict with the Taliban, which already controls vast amounts of territory and is causing “unsustainable” Afghan troop casualties.

“If you’re the Taliban, Christmas has come early,” a senior foreign official in the Afghan capital told AFP on the condition of anonymity.

“Would you be thinking of a ceasefire if your main opponent has just withdrawn half their troops?”

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid would not comment about the troop withdrawal when contacted by AFP. But a senior Taliban commander welcomed the decision.

“Frankly speaking we weren’t expecting that immediate US response,” the official told AFP from an unknown location in northwest Pakistan.

“We are more than happy, they realised the truth. We are expecting more good news.”

It is not clear if US peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad or the Afghan government had been warned of Trump’s plans in advance.

A spokesman for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Haroon Chakhansuri, downplayed the news, saying: It “will not have a security impact because in the last four and half years the Afghans have been in full control.”

But Afghans across the country expressed fears that a US troop withdrawal could derail peace efforts, return the Taliban to power, and dissolve the country into civil war.

“We are terrified that history will be repeated,” Fazli Ahmad, a car washer in the southern city of Kandahar, told AFP.

Shaima Dabeer, a 50-year-old housewife in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, said she feared for the future of her children.

“Afghanistan will go back to the Taliban era,” she told AFP.

Trump’s decision apparently came Tuesday as Khalilzad met with the Taliban in Abu Dhabi, part of efforts to bring the militants to the negotiating table with Kabul.

They discussed issues ranging from the group’s longstanding demand for a pullout of foreign troops, the release of prisoners and a ceasefire, Khalilzad told Afghan media in Kabul on Thursday.

A NATO spokesman would not comment on Trump’s decision, referring reporters to US authorities, but stressed the alliance’s continued commitment to its support mission in Afghanistan.

Tuesday was also the day Trump told the Pentagon he wanted to pull all US forces out of Syria. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis resigned Thursday, saying his views were no longer reconcilable with Trump’s.

– ‘Unsustainable’ casualties –

Critics suggest the president’s twin foreign policy decisions on Syria and Afghanistan could unspool a series of cascading and unpredictable events across the Middle East and in Afghanistan.

“If we continue on our present course we are setting in motion the loss of all our gains and paving the way toward a second 9/11,” warned US Senator Lindsey Graham via Twitter.

Afghan forces have been taking what experts describe as “unsustainable” casualties since NATO pulled its combat forces from the country in 2014.

Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie, nominated to lead the US military’s Central Command, warned this month that unless recruiting and training improve, local forces will not overcome the casualty rate.

Ghani said last month nearly 30,000 Afghan security forces had been killed since the start of 2015, a figure higher than anything previously acknowledged.

In an interview with BBC Radio 4 broadcast Friday but recorded before news of the troop withdrawal was leaked, Ghani mentioned a “sacrifice” of more than 45,000 local forces in the past four years. It was unclear whether that figure referred to deaths or also included injuries.

The US troops in Afghanistan work either with the NATO mission to support Afghan forces or in separate counter-terrorism operations.

– Longest war –

The Taliban was toppled from power by a US-led invasion in 2001 following the 9/11 attacks masterminded by Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who had been harboured by Afghanistan.

The war is now America’s longest, with more than 2,200 US military personnel killed since the start of 2001, including 13 this year.

Mattis and other top military advisors last year persuaded Trump to commit thousands more troops as part of a strategy that included more air strikes targeting the Taliban and its relatively small but potent rival, the Islamic State group.

Trump at the time said his instinct was to leave Afghanistan.

Khalilzad, who has met with Taliban representatives several times in recent months, has expressed hopes for a peace deal before the Afghan presidential elections scheduled for April.

Foreign observers and officials said Trump’s move had handed the Taliban a major propaganda and tactical victory.

“It’s gotten the troop withdrawals it’s always wanted without even having to make any concessions,” Michael Kugelman of the Wilson Center told AFP.

“Now it has a tremendous battlefield advantage, which gives it the opportunity to scale up its fight in a huge way.”

© Agence France-Presse

Featured Photo: “US President Donald Trump plans to bring home a chunk of the 14,000 US troops deployed in Afghanistan — but the NATO alliance has stressed its continued commitment to its support mission in the country (AFP Photo/Wakil KOHSAR).

The toll of 1,692 fatalities was one percent more than a year earlier and the highest for the period since the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) began keeping records in 2009.

Another 3,430 people were wounded in the war, down five percent from the same period last year, the report said.

Overall civilian casualties — 5,122 – fell three percent year on year.

Hours after the report was released a suicide attacker blew himself up at a government ministry in Kabul, killing at least seven people, including civilians. More than 15 were wounded.

The record high death toll came despite an unprecedented ceasefire by Afghan security forces and the Taliban last month that was largely respected by both sides, UNAMA said.

The ceasefire for the first three days of Eid was marked by scenes of jubilation as security forces and Taliban fighters celebrated the Islamic holiday, raising hopes that peace was possible after nearly 17 years of conflict.

But the suspension of hostilities was marred by two suicide attacks in the eastern province of Nangarhar that killed dozens of people and were claimed by the Islamic State group, which was not part of the ceasefire.

The Taliban refused a government request to extend the truce, returning to the battlefield and ignoring calls to enter talks with Kabul to end the war.

“The brief ceasefire demonstrated that the fighting can be stopped and that Afghan civilians no longer need to bear the brunt of the war,” Tadamichi Yamamoto, the UN secretary general’s special representative for Afghanistan, said.

“We urge parties to seize all opportunities to find a peaceful settlement — this is the best way that they can protect all civilians.”

– Air strike casualties up –

Suicide bombs and “complex” attacks that involve several militants accounted for 1,413 casualties — 427 deaths and 986 injuries — up 22 percent from a year earlier.

If that trend continues, the figure will top the 2017 full-year record of nearly 2,300 casualties.

UNAMA attributed 52 percent of civilian casualties from suicide and complex attacks to IS, mainly in Kabul and Nangarhar where the group established a stronghold after emerging in Afghanistan in 2014.

The Taliban was responsible for 40 percent.

While the Taliban is Afghanistan’s largest militant group and holds or contests more territory than any other, IS has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to carry out devastating attacks in urban areas.

The latest report comes almost a year after US President Donald Trump announced his new South Asia strategy that involved ramping up American air strikes against militants.

Civilians have paid a heavy toll for the intensified aerial bombing campaign, with 353 casualties recorded in the first half of the year, up 52 percent on last year, UNAMA said.

More than half of the civilian casualties were caused by the Afghan Air Force.

One of the worst incidents was in the northern province of Kunduz in April when an Afghan air strike on an outdoor religious gathering killed or wounded 107 people, mostly children, a previous UNAMA report found.

The government and military said it had targeted a Taliban base where senior members of the group were planning attacks.

UNAMA also recorded 341 civilian casualties in election-related violence — a trend that is expected to worsen as the October 20 legislative ballot draws closer.

Featured Photo: AFP/File / NOORULLAH SHIRZADA. The toll of 1,692 fatalities was one percent more than a year earlier and the highest since the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) began keeping records in 2009.