US General: Russian Aid To Taliban In Afghanistan Is Increasing

U.S. President Donald Trump and his Afghan counterpart discussed security in a phone call on Thursday, officials said, hours after the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said thousands more troops were needed to break a stalemate with the Taliban.

There are still more than 13,000 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation troops – including 8,400 US service members – deployed to Afghanistan, but McCain said he’s been warning all along that the force is too small. Nicholson said Russian Federation, beginning in 2016, has been propagating the narrative that the Afghan government is not fighting ISIS and the Taliban is. He said he would need several thousand more troops – US and other countries’ forces – in order to break the stalemate.

The Taliban has expanded territory it controls in Afghanistan as the number of USA forces declined in recent years. Additional troops would bolster the number of US advisers with Afghan forces, he said. In addition, other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation countries have supplied some 6,400 troops for that mission.

Some 2,392 US troops have been killed in Afghanistan since the war started in 2001, according to iCasualties, which tracks military deaths there and in Iraq.

While Nicholson said his forces are adequate for executing counterterrorism operations, he requested more troops to train native forces to fight terrorist networks on the ground.

“Sir, that’s a conversation I need to have with my chain of command – but yes”, Nicholson said.

He said the unity government under President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Officer Abdullah Abdullah controls 57 percent of the nation’s districts, down from 72 percent. In fact, the report notes, Afghan poppy cultivation is at an all-time high. “We have information about some 1,000 gunmen of ISIS (the former name of Islamic State, a terrorist organization outlawed in Russia) stationed in Afghanistan’s north-western provinces”, said Kabulov, the director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Second Asian Department. He said Russia’s involvement is making the local situation more complicated. The disclosure was unusual since the Pentagon does not typically announce when troops are wounded.

“Offensive capability is what will break the stalemate in Afghanistan”, Nicholson told the senators.

Before becoming president, Trump publicly advocated for withdrawing from Afghanistan and characterized the war as a “disaster”.

He accused Russian Federation and Iran of trying to undermine North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in Afghanistan.

According to prosecutors, a USA soldier was killed and two others wounded during one of the attacks.

“If the United States just said we’ve had enough, you know, 15 years is long enough, let’s just roll up our operation there and come home”. US-led forces entered Afghanistan to remove Taliban control more than 15 years ago following the attacks on the USA of September 11, 2001.

The United States and Germany have temporarily pushed trainers below the corps level to provide units fighting on the front-lines across Afghanistan direct advise when necessary.

One of the factors for succeeding in Afghanistan, he said, will require a candid evaluation of US’ ties with Pakistan.