The Pentagon has hinted for months that it’s just waiting for the political situation to stabilize in Afghanistan before pulling as many as 4,400 U.S. troops out of the NATO-led Resolute Support mission that supports the Afghan military as it battles the Taliban.
“We’ll continue those missions,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters yesterday. “I am convinced — because I’ve talked to commanders, I’ve visited there — that we can accomplish those missions at lower force levels.”
Esper declined to give exact numbers but said the United States currently has between 12,000 and 13,000 troops in Afghanistan. Asked how low he might go, Esper said: “You’ve heard that 8,600 number out there, that’s one number that we’ve talked about. But I’m confident we can go to that number and not affect our mission.”
Meanwhile, at a meeting with Iraqi President Barham Salih at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, yesterday, President Trump was cagey when asked if the U.S. might be ready to withdraw its remaining troops from Iraq.
“We’ll see what happens,” he said during a photo opportunity with Salih. “We’re down to a very low number. We’re down to 5,000,” he said. “So we’re down to a very low number, historically low, and we’ve been there for quite a while. So we’ll make a determination.”
The Iraqi Parliament voted on Jan. 5 to disinvite U.S. forces, after the drone strike that killed Islamic Revolutionary Guard commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani sparked protests in Iraq.
Iraq’s caretaker, Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, who initially requested the U.S. send a team to work out details of a withdrawal, now says he will leave any formal exit request to the next Iraqi government.
Read more from our senior writer on defense and national security in today’s edition of Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense.
