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Democratic Nominee Joe Biden Has Won US Presidential Election. Afghan People, Who Have Been Watching the Bitterly-Fought US Election on Tenterhooks, Hope Biden Win Means a Washington Tougher on Taliban and a Responsible Withdrawal after a Successful Culmination of Peace Talks. Biden Is Expected to Make Better Foreign Policy Decisions on Afghanistan War and Peace and Compensate for All Previous Mistakes of the Impetuous Incumbent President Donald Trump Whose Leniency towards Insurgents Has Worsened Afghanistan’s Crisis and Buoyed the Militancy
AT News
KABUL: Joe Biden has won the rancorous US Presidential Election becoming the 46th President of the United States after defeating incumbent conservative populist President Donald Trump, who has refused to concede.
Afghan leaders have congratulated Biden’s win, hoping to bank on his enthusiasm to change the course of events in the war-ravaged country and to mount pressure on Taliban to concede to peace negotiations.
President Ashraf Ghani in a tweet congratulated President-elect Joe Biden on his win, saying Afghanistan looks forward to continuing deepening its strategic partnership with the United States in counterterrorism and peace building.
Biden has clear policies towards winning Afghanistan’s war and ending the conflict. He has vowed to bring U.S. combat troops home from Afghanistan, leaving just a small band of residual forces for counterterrorism operations. He is expected to pursue a policy of maximum pressure on insurgents and to stick to small-scale operations rather than large troop deployments.
Afghans largely hope Biden will be tough on the Taliban and ensure they stay the course with their commitments under a deal signed with Trump’s administration and genuinely pursue peace talks with the Afghan government. That means a reduction in violence which has seen a huge uptick in recent months since the accord and the Taliban forced to reduce violence. He could also pressure Taliban and Pakistan to yield to peace talks, which will provide a fair pretext for withdrawal of US troops.
Biden’s win has also excited former President Hamid Karzai who congratulated Joe Biden and Kamala Harris “on being called upon to serve the American people”. He said as “President-elect Joe Biden called for unity and healing in America, we need the same in Afghanistan in a much deeper and more profound way”.
Karzai hoped bringing peace and stability to Afghanistan will be the center point of Biden’s policy and relations with Afghanistan.
Many in Afghanistan blame the tremendous escalation of Taliban attacks on Trump’s leniency towards the insurgents which has worsened Afghanistan’s conflict and inflicted heavy toll on civilians. Trump has been quite subservient to Taliban, falling under the false notion that they would give in and that American could end its longest war by reconciling militants with Afghanistan’s political theater and having them severe their ties with trans-national jihadist groups such Al-Qaeda and Islamic State.
Trump even introduced a hasty exit strategy lately contemplating having to disengage and pull out all American soldiers from Afghanistan. This is as the US military has already shut several bases across the country and pulled out thousands of troops. This whirlwind exit plan will leave behind an emboldened Taliban and a weakened Afghan government to the detriment of Afghan people.
The US signed a peace deal with the Taliban in February this year, which also cleared the way for intra-Afghan talks. But those talks, which have been going on since September between the Afghan government and the Taliban, have not helped reduce the violence, to the chagrin of Trump administration’s wrong strategies.
