Afghanistan Times
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The Taliban have ironically made advances across Afghanistan as the group overrun five key provincial capitals. Despite spending billions of dollars, the U.S. either intentionally or unintentionally has not trained and equipped the Afghan security forces sufficiently and properly during its 20-year presence. With the U.S. is going to complete exit by end of August- an official deadline announced by the American officials, the Afghan security forces are facing drastic challenges due to lack of reinforcement and logistic arrival in the combat lines. They have been giving a great number of casualties but still unable to defend their outposts from the militants. The irresponsible withdrawal of the U.S. and NATO has given the group a motivation to seek military win over the current government. But the sides involved in the Afghan conflict are forgetting a bitter reality- that due to this ragging violence thousands of people have been forced to leave their homes- and are scrambling with shortage of essential living materials. A high number of civilians have been suffering casualties in this senseless conflict. The fierce fighting between the government and the Taliban dragged the U.S. to throw heavy bombs from the bombing aircrafts of B-52 and Specter Ac-130. In addition to human loss, this dire fighting poses massive financial damages to the people as many of them have lost their business, residences and basic living materials. The government of President Ashraf Ghani last year, after the U.S. signed deal with the Taliban that also laid out troop withdrawal and release of 5,000 militants from the government’s custody- the deal was also supposed to open the way for the intra-Afghan negotiations and formation of the next government through which the Taliban would integrate, squandered a historic opportunity for peace due to his feud for power- waiting for a change in the White House’s administration,. The Taliban were then not as emboldened as they are now, and government held an actual presence of the U.S. and Western allied support- -that could fuel it to engage with an upper hand with the insurgent group in peace negotiations. But something is always better than nothing. It is still time to work for peace instead of triggering a long senseless war that may lead to a civil war and may conclude worst outcomes. It is better to take advantage of the accessible opportunities to put an end to this war which imposed by the foreigners on the Afghan nation.
