US drawdown won’t undermine security: Presidential aide

KABUL, a presidential aide said on Friday.

President Ashraf Ghani’s spokesman Haroon Chakhansuri said this in reaction to US leader Donald Trump’s announcement of withdrawing nearly 7,000 American troops from the country within months.

In a post on his Facebook account, Chakhansuri wrote media outlets painted a grimmer picture of the security environment in Afghanistan in 2014 than the concerns being speculated these days.

Four years back, the spokesman recalled, analysts feared the country would slide into anarchy in the wake of 100,000 foreign soldiers’ departure. But the concerns were proved wrong by the valiant Afghan forces with their sacrifices, he argued.  

The Afghan security personnel, who had been in the frontline in the war on terror since 2014, had since been safeguarding the country’s territorial integrity and protecting the citizen, the spokesman maintained.

Chakhansuri wrote the Afghan air force and ground troops, despite the war imposed on their country, had considerably grown in strength over the last four years — a journey that continued on a successful note,

“The Afghans have been in charge of their security over the past four years. Our ultimate goal is that Afghan forces should stand on their own feet in defending their motherland and nation in a permanent manner,” he concluded. 

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