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Leaving Afghanistan under US-Taliban deal could spur chaos: LA Times
Fighting in Afghanistan will intensify sharply, and Taliban militants could threaten major cities unless the current push by Washington to end the 20-year conflict yields results in the next two months, Los Angeles Times reported citing two senior US commanders.
“If we withdraw and no deal was made with the Taliban, I think the government of Afghanistan is going to be in for a very stiff fight to retain possession of towns and cities,” said General Kenneth McKenzie, the commander of US Central Command.
This comes after McKenzie met with President Ashraf Ghani this week in Kabul.
“The two sides discussed the peace process, current security situation, and support to the Afghan National Security and Defense Forces (ANDSF),” the Presidential Palace (ARG) said in a statement.
The two sides also expressed concerns over the alarming violence across the country, the statement added.
Resolute Support commander General Scott Miller meanwhile warned that a U.S. withdrawal would leave the Afghan armed forces without vital support, especially for its fledgling air force, which relies on contractors to maintain its planes and helicopters.
“When you start talking about removing our presence … certain things like air, air support and maintenance of that air support becomes more and more problematic,” Miller was quoted by the LA Times as having said.
The Taliban has also carried out a large number of assassinations targeting activists, journalists and government officials, in recent months.
On this issue, Miller the Taliban is insistent that the U.S. abide by the May 1 deadline for leaving, he said.
“They are using violence and they are trying to put themselves in a position, if the things they want are not met … to force decisions in the political space,” Miller said in an interview.
US President Joe Biden’s administration has not decided yet on whether to extend troop presence in Afghanistan or withdraw by May 1 as per the US-Taliban deal which was signed in February last year.
According to the deal, the US has reduced its troops to 2,500 but in a report Sunday, the New York Times reported that there are in fact more American troops on the ground than the reported 2,500.
The New York Times reported that officials, both American and Afghan, have said the number is actually around 3,500. That’s 1,000 more than Washington has disclosed.
According to the NYT, one official said the “cloudy accounting” around troops numbers results from some Special Forces units having been put “off the books”.
According to him, the presence of some temporary and transitioning units also accounted for the additional troops.
A second official meanwhile told the NYT that these troops include Joint Special Operations Command units, some of them elite Army Rangers, who work under both the Pentagon and the CIA while deployed to Afghanistan.
Having more troops in a country than the Defense Department officially acknowledges is common practice, the NYT reported.
According to the report, the United States often details military troops to the CIA or other agencies, declares that information “classified” and refuses to publicly acknowledge their presence.
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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