{"id":33829,"date":"2017-07-05T07:01:47","date_gmt":"2017-07-05T07:01:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=33829"},"modified":"2017-07-05T07:01:47","modified_gmt":"2017-07-05T07:01:47","slug":"afghanistan-u-s-senators-call-coherent-policy-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/world-news\/afghanistan-u-s-senators-call-coherent-policy-trump.html","title":{"rendered":"In Afghanistan, U.S. senators call for coherent policy from Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Afghanistan, U.S. senators call for coherent policy from Trump<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

A bipartisan delegation of U.S. senators visiting Afghanistan on Tuesday called for a new strategy from the Trump administration to turn the tide against an increasingly strong Taliban insurgency and end the longest war in U.S. history.<\/span><\/p>\n

The delegation led by Senator John McCain was in Kabul on a regional trip that included two days in neighbouring Pakistan.<\/span><\/p>\n

The visit preceded an expected Trump review later in the month of the strategy for the United States\u2019 longest war, now in its 16th year, a subject that was largely absent from last year\u2019s presidential campaign.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since the exit of most foreign troops in 2014, Afghanistan\u2019s U.S.-backed government has lost ground to a Taliban insurgency in a war that kills and maims thousands of civilians each year and has made Afghanistan the second-ranking country in people seeking refugee status abroad last year, behind Syria.<\/span><\/p>\n

McCain said in a Kabul press briefing on Tuesday at NATO-coalition headquarters that “none of us would say that we are on a course to success here in Afghanistan”.<\/span><\/p>\n

“That needs to change and quickly,” added McCain, a sharp critic of Trump within their Republican party.<\/span><\/p>\n

McCain was accompanied by U.S. senators Lindsey Graham, Elizabeth Warren, Sheldon Whitehouse and David Perdue on the regional tour.<\/span><\/p>\n

Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, said she came to get “the view on the ground about what is happening” in Afghanistan.<\/span><\/p>\n

“We need a strategy in the United States that defines our role in Afghanistan, defines our objective and explains how we can get from here to there,” Warren said.<\/span><\/p>\n

U.S. officials have told Reuters that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis will present Trump with strategic options for Afghanistan by mid-July.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last month, Trump gave Mattis the authority to set American troop levels in Afghanistan, but as commander in chief Trump must sign off on an overall strategy for the war.<\/span><\/p>\n

U.S. security officials have privately said the most likely options will be to increase training and air support by 3,000-5,000 troops for still-inexperienced Afghan security forces, while also tracking down al Qaeda, Islamic State and other global Islamist militants based in Afghanistan.<\/span><\/p>\n

The commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, has said “several thousand” more foreign troops \u2013 mostly trainers – are needed to break a military stalemate with the Taliban.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2001, a U.S.-backed military intervention in Afghanistan toppled the Taliban regime, whose ultra-hardline interpretation of sharia (Islamic law) banned most women from public life and executed people not seen as sufficiently pious, such as men with beards not considered long enough.<\/span><\/p>\n

More than 15 years later, around 10,000 U.S. and allied troops remain in Afghanistan to support an elected government that has increasingly been losing ground to a Taliban insurgency that now controls or contests some 40 percent of territory.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source:-\u00a0https:\/\/in.reuters.com\/article\/afghanistan-usa-idINKBN19Q09M<\/span><\/p>\n

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