Tweet by Trump stuns Afghans

Many fear exit of U.S. troops by Christmas will create chaos

KABUL, Afghanistan -- After months of tortuous negotiations and diplomatic efforts to settle the 19-year-old conflict in Afghanistan, President Donald Trump's tweet last week saying he intends to bring all U.S. troops home by Christmas has landed in Kabul like a bomb from nowhere, leaving Afghan hopes for nascent peace talks scattered like shrapnel.

Taliban leaders have reacted with open delight, welcoming Trump's Oct. 7 statement and reportedly telling CBS News that they hoped he will win reelection. The group's top spokesman later said his comment had been "incorrectly" interpreted after it set off a frenzy of controversy and was rejected by the White House.

But many Afghans and analysts say they fear that if Trump follows through, abruptly dropping the U.S.-Taliban agreement for a conditions-based and gradual pullout of the roughly 4,500 remaining U.S. troops by May, the country may plunge back into full-scale war and political mayhem.

"If the withdrawal takes place according to the tweet, it will create chaos. The peace process will collapse, and we will go back to square one," said Ehsanullah Zia, a former senior Afghan official who heads the Kabul office of the U.S. Institute of Peace. "This is the only thing the Taliban really wanted. People were becoming hopeful, but this sudden tweet has changed the scenario. Now all that investment, all that sacrifice, could go down the drain."

Fazel Mohammed, 60, a taxi driver who once served as a soldier in the Soviet-backed Afghan government of the 1980s, predicted that a quick withdrawal of U.S. troops could "plunge the country into a civil war, exactly like what happened after the Soviet forces left."

Afghan officials are playing down the impact of any early U.S. troop pullout, insisting that their forces are prepared to take on the Taliban alone and noting that they have fought largely without U.S. military help in recent months. Shah Mahmood Miakhel, a deputy defense minister, said that today, "99 percent of all military operations are planned and executed by Afghans."

U.S. AIRSTRIKES

However, just over the past couple of days, American forces conducted several airstrikes in support of Afghan security force under attack by the Taliban in southern Helmand province, the spokesman for the U.S. military in Afghanistan said Monday.

Col. Sonny Leggett said on his Twitter account that the strikes did not violate the U.S.-Taliban agreement signed in February.

"The Taliban need to immediately stop their offensive actions in Helmand Province and reduce their violence around the country. It is not consistent with the US-Taliban agreement and undermines the ongoing Afghan Peace Talks," Leggett's tweet said, quoting Gen. Scott Miller, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Leggett said U.S. forces will continue to provide support in defense of Afghan national security forces under attack.

The announcement of U.S. strikes comes after a gunbattle was reported Monday in and around Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province.

"The Taliban have destroyed several bridges over the main highway, so the highway is closed right now and no one can travel," said Omer Zwak, spokesman for the provincial governor in Helmand.

Ataullah Afghan, head of the provincial council, attributed the defense failures to a problem that has plagued Afghan forces in the south for years: the presence of a large number of "ghost soldiers" in their ranks.

"In Babaji and Chahanjir, on paper there are 150 police, the salary of 150 police is paid, but only 50 police are present in the whole area, with each outpost getting no more than five or six police," he said. "We shared this problem with higher officials, with the interior minister, with the president of the country, but no action was taken. Now we see the result of those imaginary police."

Lashkar Gah has been one of the most badly affected cities of the long war, with the civilian population bearing the brunt. Families have been forced to relocate repeatedly. The most recent fighting has displaced at least 1,500 families, officials said.

WORST-CASE SCENARIO

Several officials said that even if the Afghan-Taliban talks in Qatar -- which have made virtually no progress since opening a month ago -- break off and the war continues, the insurgents will never be able to win power through violence. They said the insurgents lack the skills to govern, enjoy little popular support and would be shunned by both regional powers and the international community, which has propped up Afghanistan's flawed democracy for years.

"Whatever the Taliban claims, they are not winning hearts and minds. Nobody wants them back, including people who are unhappy with the current government," said Miakhel, the deputy defense minister. "Even in the worst-case scenario, if the war continues with zero foreign troops or support, we will face difficult days, but they cannot gain the upper hand."

Other officials said the government of President Ashraf Ghani has long become accustomed to mercurial outbursts by Trump and does not take them as seriously as it once did. Some suggested that the U.S. leader might change his mind again or be talked out of the early troop departure, which is widely seen here as motivated by domestic campaign concerns.

Said one senior national security aide, speaking on condition of anonymity to be candid, "This is a big blow, and it has dampened the national mood, but Afghans have already lost trust in the Americans. After Nov. 3, there could be another tweet."

​​​​​Information for this article was contributed by Pamela Constable and Sharif Hassan of The Washington Post; by Mujib Mashal and Taimoor Shah of The New York Times; and by Abdul Khaliq and Rahim Faiez of The Associated Press.

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