Ghani reassures ANDSF of ‘no compromise’

President Ashraf Ghani said on Monday at an event at the Ministry of Defense that there will be no compromise on Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) as long as he is “alive”.

Addressing high-ranking officials and soldiers Ghani said: “There will be no compromise on Security and Defense Forces of Afghanistan as long as I and the nation are alive. You are the pride of the Afghan people.”

Ghani stated the Afghan security forces had given the “highest sacrifice” in the last six years.

Ghani also presented a number of security force members with medals and bestowed the Ghazi Wazir Mohammad Akbar Khan medal on Army Chief General Yasin Zia.

This comes just a day after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sparked a backlash from Afghan officials when he said US President Donald Trump’s administration had managed to convince the Taliban to sit down around the peace talks tables.

In doing this, Pompeo said, no US serviceman had been killed by the Taliban in almost a year.

Afghan officials reacted to this and pointed out that while the US might not have suffered casualties, the Afghan people were paying a heavy price.

The deputy spokesman for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Dawa Khan Meenapal, said on Sunday that the reason why the US has not suffered casualties among its forces in the past 10 months is because foreign forces are no longer fighting in Afghanistan.

Meenapal said this was not because of the US-Taliban deal as Pompeo stated but because the US was no longer actively involved in the war on the ground.

Meenapal said the casualties are being sustained by the Afghan security forces and that the Taliban is now at war with the Afghan people and with the country’s own security forces.