Afghanistan Times
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AT-KABUL: Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign spokeswoman Katrina Pierson on Saturday accused President Barack Obama of founding the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
She claimed that Obama was responsible for the invasion of Afghanistan.
Pierson’s comments came during an exchange with CNN’s Victor Blackwell, when she was asked to explain the Republican nominee’s recent assertion that President Obama is the “founder of ISIS.” Trump has since called the comment sarcastic, “but not that sarcastic.”
Pierson blamed the rise of ISIS on Obama and Hillary Clinton’s opposition to the surge in Iraq, when she was a senator from New York.
“If you want to go way back, we can look at the troop surge, and after 2007 al Qaeda was essentially in ashes,” Pierson said. “It was Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton who then destroyed the entire rollout by wanting to pull out early… That is the reason why ISIS is a global issue.”
She furthered that US military effort in Afghanistan “was Obama’s war.”
“Remember, we weren’t even in Afghanistan by this time. Barack Obama went into Afghanistan, creating another problem,” Pierson said.
Blackwell asked her to clarify, and she said, “That was Obama’s war, yes.”
Pierson went on to say, “I thought we were talking about the founding of ISIS. I mean ISIS came out of the Obama side of the war. Is that not a fact?”
However, it seems that her knowledge regarding Afghanistan mission is less as the mission was not launched on Obama’s watch. However, she later took to twitter in a bid to clarify her remarks.
It is worth mentioning that the war in Afghanistan began in 2001, following the attacks on September 11.
US mission in Afghanistan started more than seven years before Barack Obama to oath office. The Afghanistan fight, initiated during the presidency of George W. Bush, stands as the longest running war in the history of the country.
This is also fact that IS, which is also known as Daesh, has emerged in Afghanistan in presence of US troops under leadership of President Barack Obama.
Though the Afghan and security forces are fighting militants loyal to Daesh militants through ground and air operations, the operation is very good to stop Daesh from gaining foothold, but as a whole US failed to stop the terror group Daesh from emerging.
Besides Taliban insurgents, Daesh is another terror group that Afghan and foreign forces must fight as they pose insecurity.
The Taliban group recently declared full-scale war against the Islamic State. Spokesman for the militant group, Zabihullah Mujahid, said the Taliban fighters would fight Daesh (also known as Islamic State in the Global North) in the country. “Our fighters [Taliban] are committed and ready to eliminate Daesh from Afghanistan.
Recently, the ministry of defense said that all those who are fighting in Afghanistan and killing innocent people are our enemies. “We will fight every terrorist group,” Ministry of Defense spokesman, Dawlat Waziri told Afghanistan Times.
He reiterated that Afghan security forces would fight Daesh and the Taliban to bitter end. “Those groups fighting in Afghanistan—no matter under which label—are actually destroying our country, killing innocent people, and turning our houses into ruins. This is not acceptable to us,” he said.
In the past three years several Afghan leaders including the former and current presidents said that they would not allow any country to use Afghanistan as ground for proxy wars. Waziri told Afghanistan Times that war inside Afghanistan is totally unacceptable. “If anyone wants war, he should do it outside Afghanistan. Afghanistan is not a ground for proxy wars.”
