KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) – The Afghan Interior Minister said on Saturday that Afghan security forces could hold out even if US forces withdraw, challenging a warning from the United States that predicts a withdrawal would bring rapid gains for the Taliban.
Masoud Andarabi’s comments in an interview with The Associated Press on Saturday were the government’s initial response to the warning from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a sharply worded letter to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani last weekend.
In the letter urging Ghani to step up efforts to make peace with the Taliban, Blinken said, “I am concerned that the security situation will deteriorate and the Taliban could gain ground quickly” after the US military withdrew.
Andarabi said Afghanistan’s national security forces could retain territory but would likely suffer heavy losses trying to hold remote checkpoints without US close air support.
“The Afghan security forces are fully capable of defending the capital and the cities and areas where we are now present,” he said. “We think the Afghan security forces have proven to the Taliban this year that they will not be able to conquer territory.”
While the Taliban did not attack US or NATO forces as a condition of the agreement, Afghan national security forces have faced some blistering attacks.
Interviewed at the heavily fortified Interior Ministry, Andarabi also reiterated his government’s warning against a hasty US withdrawal from the war-ravaged country, saying that the Taliban’s ties to al-Qaeda remain intact and that a rapid withdrawal would exacerbate global counter-terrorism efforts.
He said Afghan national security forces, backed by US aid, have so far pressured terrorist groups operating in Afghanistan, including the local IS affiliate.
A hasty “uncalculated withdrawal could certainly provide an opportunity for those terrorists … to threaten the world,” he said from inside the compound, protected by concrete explosion walls, barbed wire and a phalanx of guards.
The warning comes as Washington is reviewing a deal the Trump administration struck with the Taliban over a year ago calling for the withdrawal of the remaining 2,500 US troops by May 1.
That deal also calls on the Taliban to cut ties with terrorist groups, such as Al Qaeda. US officials have previously said some progress has been made, but more was needed, without elaborating further.
No decisions have been made on the review, but US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is trying to initiate a stalled peace process between the government and the Taliban’s armed opposition, has warned the President of Afghanistan that all options remain open table and that he should. increase peacemaking efforts.
Violence has increased since the US signed the deal with the Taliban, with poverty and high unemployment driving crime. Despite billions of dollars in international aid to Afghanistan since the collapse of the Taliban government in 2001, 72% of Afghanistan’s 37 million people live below the poverty line, with an income of $ 1.90 or less per day. Unemployment fluctuates around 30 percent.
Residents of the Afghan capital Kabul are terrorized by runaway crime, bombings and murders, and bitterly complain about security vulnerabilities.
Andarabi sympathized with the complaints from civilians, but said that nearly 70 percent of Afghan police are fighting the Taliban, eroding efforts to maintain law and order. Every day, police face more than 100 Taliban attacks across the country, he added.
Even the United Nations Security Council has expressed concern about the targeted killings targeting civil society activists, journalists, lawyers and judges. Islamic State has taken responsibility for many, but the Taliban and the government blame each other for the spike in attacks.
In a press conference on Friday, the UN Security Council “called for an immediate end to these targeted attacks and stressed the urgent and compelling need to bring the perpetrators to justice”.
Andarabi said some progress had been made to end the violence in the past month, with more than 400 arrests.
But he underlined that Afghanistan still desperately needs continued support from the international community, including the United States and NATO, in both war and peacetime.
For example, it will take a major effort to reintegrate the tens of thousands of armed men who pass through the country into a peacetime society – regardless of which faction they come from, he said. The police are facing a daunting fight against narcotics in a country that produces more than 4,000 tons of opium, the raw material used to make heroin, more than any other opium-producing country put together. Peace, Andarabi said, would release police to wage the drug war that is also fueling rising crime rates in Afghanistan.