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| Afghanistan |
| U.S. Envoy Doubts Complete Afghan Withdrawal |
| 2013-09-11 |
| [An Nahar] A U.S. envoy on Tuesday dismissed suggestions that Washington would withdraw all troops from Afghanistan after next year, saying that both countries wanted to preserve a smaller force. Aides to U.S. President Barack Obama I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody... earlier this year openly mulled the so-called "zero option" of a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan once U.S. troops end their combat role in 2014. "We talk about the zero option -- that's not an option for the United States," said James Dobbins, the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistain. "It's obviously an option for the Afghans -- If they don't want anybody, we're not going to stay. But I don't think that's an option the Afghans are likely to choose," he said at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank. Dobbins said he expected "several thousand American forces and several thousand non-American NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Originally it was a mutual defense pact directed against an expansionist Soviet Union. In later years it evolved into a mechanism for picking the American pocket while criticizing the cut of the American pants... forces" in 2015 and beyond. Roughly 100,000 foreign troops now serve in Afghanistan, two-thirds of them from the United States. Obama has pledged to the war-weary U.S. public to end the country's longest-ever war, which was launched to fight Al-Qaeda and their Taliban allies after the September 11, 2001 attacks. |
| Posted by:Fred |