The White House sidestepped questions on whether Tuesday’s Pakistan terrorist attack, which killed more than 100 children and adults, indicates that Afghanistan will face greater threats from the Taliban as the U.S. continues to draw down its troops there.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest pointed out that the Pakistani Taliban claimed credit for the attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar in retaliation for the Pakistani military’s offensive against extremist hideouts in the Waziristan region along the border with Afghanistan.
“I’m not in a position to say from here who is responsible,” he said. “This is something that Pakistani authorities are looking into.”
A spokesman for the Pakistan military says the government has responded with airstrikes in the northwest Khyber region.
“Based on actionable intelligence several ops have been put into action including 10 air strikes in Khyber today,” tweeted Asim Bajwal early Tuesday.
The nearly 11,000 U.S. troops remaining in Afghanistan at the start of the year will continue to help train Afghan forces and help with counter-terrorism, Earnest said. But he described the U.S. troop presence there as “merely a bridge as our NATO allies make their troop commitments and deploy them to the region.”
“The president is committed that we remain on track in terms of a responsible draw down in Afghanistan,” he said, though he noted what he said is a key difference between the Obama administration’s policies in Iraq and Afghanistan and those of President George W. Bush.
“We’re not going to do it for them,” he said. Earnest insisted that the U.S. left Iraq in a “peaceful and stable situation” and then-President Nouri al-Maliki failed to form an inclusive central government, leaving an opening for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria to exploit.
“We are employing a similar strategy in Afghanistan,” he said. “We want to see the Afghan government govern in a way that is inclusive.”
The attack in Pakistan comes the day after Obama marked the end of U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan in a speech at a joint military base in New Jersey.
“For the first time we’ve seen the peaceful transfer of power in Afghanistan’s history,” Earnest said Tuesday. “There will be setbacks, but the U.S. government remains committed to standing with our [allies] in Afghanistan.”
