Press TV
May 28, 2014
Presence of US troops in Afghanistan ‘against the will’ of nation: Activist
Audio
The Obama administration’s decision to keep thousands of US troops in Afghanistan until the end of 2016 is a “violation of Afghanistan’s sovereignty” and “against the will” of the country’s people and government, an anti-war activist in Chicago says.
The Taliban militant group on Wednesday condemned US President Barack Obama’s decision to keep troops in Afghanistan beyond the 2014 withdrawal deadline.
Obama confirmed Tuesday that the 32,000-strong US deployment in Afghanistan would be scaled back to around 9,800 by the start of 2015.
Those forces would be halved by the end of 2015 before eventually being reduced to a normal embassy presence with a security assistance component by the end of 2016, according to AFP.
Obama’s decision to keep troops in Afghanistan with the prospect of keeping them indefinitely is “against the will of not only the Afghan nation and its people but even against the government that has been supported by the United States,” said Rick Rozoff, a member of Stop NATO International.
“The US and NATO have failed to accomplish anything positive in Afghanistan,” Rozoff told Press TV on Wednesday. “They’ve simply been the engine that has caused the dislocation of hundreds of thousands of civilians, the death of tens of thousands, a massive explosion of opium cultivation.”
Tension between Washington and Kabul is high as outgoing Afghan President Hamid Karzai has refused to sign a long-delayed Bilateral Security Agreement laying out the terms and conditions of the US military presence in the country after this year.
The US and its Western allies invaded Afghanistan in 2001 as part of a so-called war on terror. The offensive removed the Taliban from power, but the country is still gripped by insecurity.
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