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KABUL: Joe Biden, the U.S. Democratic presidential candidate, in a rare incident said he agrees with President Trump’s decision to pull out American troops from Afghanistan and Iraq.
“Yes, I do. As long as he has a plan to figure out how he’s going to deal with ISIS,” Biden said referring to the Trump’s administration efforts to reduce US troops’ presence in Afghanistan and Iraq.
US Officials confirmed that Washington would drawdown the number of its troops from 8,500 to less than 5,000 in the near future in Afghanistan.
Biden’s cited the remarks ahead of the US presidential election which is set to be held in November this year. Trump’s administration is currently pressing the Afghan government and Taliban to engage into peace negotiations and reach a political settlement for the longest US war in Afghanistan. The US preliminary peace deal, with the Taliban signed on February 29th, laid out the reduction of roughly 13,000 American troops to 8,600.
Based on the deal, the government has freed more than 5,000 Taliban prisoners in exchange for the 1,000 Afghan security forces. But the fragile Afghan peace process, which has been started by the US retired diplomat, Zalmay Khalilzad, seems to face huge hurdles as the Afghan government and Taliban are still having disagreement between themselves.
