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Mohib says troop withdrawal happening ‘sooner than expected’
Afghanistan’s National Security Adviser Hamdullah Mohib implied this week that the troops’ withdrawal had come sooner than expected.
In an interview with VICE Media, Mohib said: “We weren’t expecting it to come this soon so there hasn’t really been a proper transition,” he said.
Mohib said the looming withdrawal has “put us at risk” in some ways but added that it forced the Afghan government to “expedite self-reliance and self-sufficiency with our security forces at a much faster pace than when what we were preparing for.”
He said the concern was that “the Taliban could see this as an opportunity to attack us like they did and think that they could overrun a couple of provinces and put us in a situation where it may be hard for us to take them back.”
“The capabilities we have built over the last 20 years have equipped us to be able to do the job relatively well. We have always emphasized that it’s not the number of Us troops, it’s the capabilities that they provide us to do what we need to do but nonetheless we’re preparing for that zero troops option.
“There were conditionalities attached to the US Taliban agreement. The Taliban have not met that; one of them was a reduction in violence and we have not yet seen the Taliban to really comply with that and we are seeing an increased number of attacks.
“It seems like they still think they can take power by force in Afghanistan.”
Mohib also said the Taliban should take peace negotiations seriously.
“The Afghan people want an end to this war,” he said.
VICE Media also visited an almost deserted US military base in Helmand. Once a base for thousands of foreign troops, the base is now virtually a ghost town and only the skeleton of the camp remains.
Tents, furniture and brick structures lie discarded or destroyed, with some locals blaming the US military for having destroyed non-military equipment that could have been handed over to the Afghan security forces.
US and Afghan officials said earlier this month that US forces will hand over bases and military equipment, that is not being shipped to the United States, to Afghan forces.
“The war needs equipment; it needs strong management and strong planning,” said Shaoor Gul Pashtoon, a former commander of 203 corps.
On the other hand, Dean Thompson the acting assistant secretary of south & central Asian affairs at the US State Department said in a visit to Kabul that Washington would provide continued assistance to Afghanistan.
This comes as after US-Forces commander in Afghanistan General Austin Scott Miller said Sunday the evacuation of some bases has already started in Afghanistan.
“We will turn over the bases primarily to the Ministry of Defense and other Afghan forces,” Miller told reporters in a press conference in Kabul on Sunday, adding that: “The notification day will be the first of May but at the same time as we start taking local actions, we have already begun that”.
The US is expected to hand over three military bases and one airport to the Afghan forces in the next two weeks as part of the US plan for the full troop withdrawal from Afghanistan by September 11, sources said last week.
The Embassy of Japan in Afghanistan announced on Friday that the country has allocated $19.5 million in humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan.
In a statement, the Japanese Embassy said it hopes the aid will help bring positive change to the lives of vulnerable Afghans.
According to the statement, the assistance will cover the basic humanitarian needs of vulnerable communities in Afghanistan.
The embassy added that the aid will be delivered through United Nations agencies, international organizations, and Japanese non-governmental organizations operating in Afghanistan.
Japan’s total assistance to Afghanistan since August 2021 has reached more than $549 million.
Security forces at the Islam Qala border in Herat province prevented hundreds of young Afghans from illegally entering Iran.
Officials from the 207 Al-Farooq Army Corps said that around 530 people attempted over the past two days to illegally enter Iranian territory through areas of Kohsan district in Herat, but border forces detained them and transferred them back to their original areas.
Meanwhile, officials in the local administration of Herat said that due to severe cold along the illegal migration route to Iran, three Afghan migrants have lost their lives in the Kohsan district of the province, and a shepherd has also died there for the same reason.
Mohammad Yousuf Saeedi, spokesperson for the Herat governor’s office, said that some statistics and images shared on social media regarding the incident are not reliable.
According to him, further investigations are underway to determine whether any individuals have died on the other side of the border.
President Donald Trump suspended the green card lottery program on Thursday that allowed the suspect in the Brown University and MIT shootings to come to the United States.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a post on the social platform X that, at Trump’s direction, she is ordering the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause the program, the Associated Press reported.
“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” she said of the suspect, Portuguese national Claudio Neves Valente.
Neves Valente, 48, is suspected in the shootings at Brown University that killed two students and wounded nine others, and the killing of an MIT professor. He was found dead Thursday evening from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials said.
Neves Valente had studied at Brown on a student visa beginning in 2000, according to an affidavit from a Providence police detective. In 2017, he was issued a diversity immigrant visa and months later obtained legal permanent residence status, according to the affidavit. It was not immediately clear where he was between taking a leave of absence from the school in 2001 and getting the visa in 2017.
The diversity visa program makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries that are little represented in the U.S., many of them in Africa. The lottery was created by Congress, and the move is almost certain to invite legal challenges.
Nearly 20 million people applied for the 2025 visa lottery, with more than 131,000 selected when including spouses with the winners. After winning, they must undergo vetting to win admission to the United States. Portuguese citizens won only 38 slots.
Lottery winners are invited to apply for a green card. They are interviewed at consulates and subject to the same requirements and vetting as other green-card applicants.
Trump has long opposed the diversity visa lottery. Noem’s announcement is the latest example of using tragedy to advance immigration policy goals. After an Afghan man was identified as the gunman in a fatal attack on National Guard members in November, Trump’s administration imposed sweeping rules against immigration from Afghanistan and other counties.
While pursuing mass deportation, Trump has sought to limit or eliminate avenues to legal immigration. He has not been deterred if they are enshrined in law, like the diversity visa lottery, or the Constitution, as with a right to citizenship for anyone born on U.S. soil. The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear his challenge to birthright citizenship.
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