After the September 11 attacks. In September, the U.S. began almost 18 years ago, a war with Afghanistan. Now the US government wants to pull thousands of troops out of the country, but critics warn that the price is too high.
What gifts are allowed to adopt a US soldier from Afghan village elders? How should prisoners be treated? Who is allowed to be shot in the fight, and with what weapons? Answering such questions is the Job of Lindsay L. Rodman, who was stationed with the U.S. Marines from September 2010 to March 2011 in Afghanistan. As a legal Advisor, or “judge advocate,” she explained for her troop in the southwestern provinces of Helmand and Nimrus was in use, legal issues of all kinds.
In a town of Rodman, and their colleagues, for peace, and buildings resulted in a relatively stable health care system. However, a few years after their stay, nothing was left of it. The war had brought the city back. “One of the Hardest for us members of the military is to see how some parts of the country fall back into a worse state back,” Rodman said in the interview -. “I don’t want to say that it was worth the effort. But it is hard to see the hard work that we have done, again to be set at naught.”
Afghan troops during a security exercise in Helmand province in February 2019
The planned withdrawal of 5,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan Rodman did not wish to speak. She is the spokesperson of the organization “Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America” (IAVA), and stresses that the IAVA represents all the members with their different opinions. But critics of the planned withdrawal are worried that he will have exactly the consequences that Rodman describes: A re-descent of Afghanistan into Chaos and violence.
How reliable is the word of the Taliban?
Marvin Weinbaum, Afghanistan expert with the think tank Middle East Institute, writes that the US-government forces want to pull off according to a strict schedule from the country, no matter what the cost it. “We have always said that a deduction was dependent on the security situation in the country. But if he is depending on the situation, how can there be a precisely timed schedule?”, he asks.
According to the US envoy Khalizad, the agreement with the Taliban is “in principle” ready, only a President Trump would have to sign it.
With the schedule Weinbaum refers to a preliminary agreement between the US government and the Taliban, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, at the beginning of September presented. The agreement, which only needs to be confirmed by US President Donald Trump, provides that the United States pull off some 5,000 of its 14,000 troops in the country within a period of 135 days. In return, the Taliban terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda should not provide a safe haven in Afghanistan, and their own attacks to reduce.
However, on the same day, Khalilzad, the document presented to the Public, perpetrated by the Taliban in the Afghan capital, Kabul, an attack with a car bomb, in which at least 16 people were killed. “We have to rely in good Faith on your word [the Taliban],” says Weinbaum. A troop drawdown as the United States, be it plane, however, a tangible action that is difficult to reverse.
Deduction as a campaign strategy for Trump
A group of nine American diplomats, among them several former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, have their criticism of the agreement in an open letter drafted by the think tank Atlantic Council, published on its Website. “We must not deprive our Afghan friends so much support, that they can no longer protect himself or a representative democracy”, – said in the Letter.
The group is also critical that the United States negotiated the withdrawal of troops exclusively with the Taliban, and not with the Afghan government: “We are Afghanistan’s legitimate government, and should not be undermined by excluding them from the negotiations.”
US President, Donald Trump is said to have told his advisers that he wants to withdraw all U.S. troops before the U.S. presidential election in November 2020 from Afghanistan. Publicly, the President speaks to around half of the troops soon out of Afghanistan, pull it off. Experts believe that such rapid actions is dangerous, and fear that a hasty withdrawal could lead to a civil war in the country.
“I think the US government is so desperately looking for a way out [of Afghanistan], you see, how much difficult the Situation might be,” says Weinbaum. “I believe that this government puts on a card: ‘If in Afghanistan everything goes down the drain, please don’t do it after the election to happen!'”
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Distrust remains
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