KABUL, Afghanistan: The Taliban has said that the US president’s decision to keep troops in Afghanistan beyond 2016 will not help Washington or Kabul, rather the militants would continue their efforts to push foreigners out of the country.
On Thursday, the US President Barack Obama announced that 9,800 US troops would remain in Afghanistan through 2016. His decision was welcomed by the Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.
However, the Afghan Taliban said in a statement on Friday that the United States has deceived the Afghans by not fulfilling its earlier announced commitment to withdraw all the foreign troops from Afghanistan by the end of next year.
The Taliban said that their activities against the US troops and the US-backed Afghan forces would continue to be intensified regardless of the fact that the US keep its troops even through 2017.
“Maintaining American troops in Afghanistan can in no way slow down the rapid process of our jihad and struggle,” the Taliban statement said according to Reuters.
“If the invaders lost the war in Afghanistan with the presence of hundreds of thousands of troops, their hopes of reversing the tide with five thousand troops are also misguided,” it added.
In a press conference in White House on Thursday, Obama unveiled his plan and announced that 9,800 US soldiers would remain in the war-torn country through next year while 5,500 soldiers would be present in Afghanistan even the following year, 2017.
Obama said that the remaining US soldiers would be at three US bases in Afghanistan including Bagram, Jalalabad and Kandahar. He said that the US troops would continue to train the Afghan forces and be involved in anti-terror operations.
