KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) – Afghanistan’s interior minister said on Saturday that Afghan security forces can stand their ground even if U.S. troops withdraw, challenging a warning from the United States that a withdrawal would bring rapid territorial gains to the Taliban.
Masoud Andarabi’s comments in an interview on Saturday to The Associated Press were the government’s first reaction to the warning by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, issued in a harsh 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 worsen and that the Taliban will be able to achieve rapid territorial gains” after the withdrawal of the American military.
Andarabi said Afghanistan’s National Security Forces can maintain territories, but are likely to suffer heavy losses trying to maintain remote control points without U.S. air support.
“Afghan security forces are fully capable of defending the capital, the cities and the territories where we are present now,” he said. “We think that Afghan security forces this year have proved to the Taliban that they will not be able to gain territory.”
Although the Taliban did not attack US or NATO forces as a condition of the deal, Afghanistan’s National Security forces faced some violent attacks.
Interviewed at the heavily fortified Interior Ministry, Andarabi also echoed his government’s warning against a hasty US withdrawal from the war-torn country, saying the Taliban’s ties to Al Qaeda remain intact and that a rapid withdrawal would worsen global efforts to counterterrorism.
He said Afghanistan’s National Security Forces, supported by US aid, have so far restricted terrorist groups operating in Afghanistan, including the local Islamic State affiliate.
A hasty “uncalculated withdrawal could certainly provide an opportunity for these terrorists … to threaten the world,” he said from inside the compound, protected by concrete walls, barbed wire and a phalanx of security guards.
The warning comes at a time when Washington is considering an agreement that the Trump administration struck with the Taliban more than a year ago, which calls for the withdrawal of the remaining 2,500 American soldiers by May 1.
The deal also requires the Taliban to break ties with terrorist groups, such as Al Qaeda. US officials have previously said that some progress has been seen, but more was needed, without giving further details.
No decision has been made on the review, but U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is trying to start a stagnant peace process between the government and the Taliban’s armed opposition, warned the president of Afghanistan that all options are still over. the table, and that he should step up peacemaking efforts.
Since the United States signed the Taliban agreement, violence has increased, with poverty and high unemployment increasing crime. Despite billions of dollars in international aid to Afghanistan since the collapse of the Taliban government in 2001, 72% of the 37 million Afghans live below the poverty line, surviving on $ 1.90 or less a day. Unemployment is around 30%.
Residents of the Afghan capital, Kabul, are terrified of uncontrolled crimes, bombings and murders, and complain bitterly about security breaches.
Andarabi sympathized with citizens’ complaints, but said that nearly 70 percent of Afghanistan’s police force is fighting the Taliban, undermining efforts to maintain law and order. Every day, the police face more than 100 Taliban attacks across the country, he added.
Even the United Nations Security Council has expressed concern about the killings aimed at civil society activists, journalists, lawyers and judges. The Islamic State has taken responsibility for many, but the Taliban and the government blame each other for the increase in attacks.
At a press conference on Friday, the UN Security Council “called for an immediate end to these targeted attacks and emphasized the urgent and imperative need to bring perpetrators to justice.”
Andarabi said some progress was made to contain the violence in the past month, with more than 400 arrests.
But he stressed that Afghanistan still needs continued support from the international community, including the United States and NATO, both in times of war and in peace.
It will take, for example, a major effort to reintegrate the tens of thousands of armed men who roam the country into a peacetime society – regardless of which faction they come from, he said. The police face a daunting anti-narcotics battle in a country that produces more than 4,000 tons of opium __ the raw material used to make heroin __ more than all other opium-producing countries combined. Peace, Andarabi said, would free the police to fight the drug war, which also fuels Afghanistan’s rising crime rate.