US Asks NATO Allies To Maintain Commitment On Afghanistan

 AVA -  “We recognize the important contributions of our NATO allies that have been made in Afghanistan, and we ask them to maintain their commitment to the mission,” Tillerson told reporters in Washington D.C. on Wednesday.
 
He added: “The end of the United States' new South Asia strategy is to destroy terrorist safe havens and deny their re-establishment while the Afghan government continues to strengthen its own capacity to maintain security and create the conditions for reconciliation with the Taliban and an inclusive government that accounts for the ethnic diversity of all Afghans. We know this will take time.”
 
According to him, failure to exercise vigilance and undertake action against the terrorist threat will risk re-creating the safe havens from which the 9/11 plot was hatched and carried out. 
 
“We urge proportionate contributions of troops, funds, and other forms of assistance as we seek to eradicate a terrorist threat that will not be confined to the place where it was born,” he said.
 
He added that the NATO's Resolute Support mission is essential to our shared goal of ensuring that Afghanistan develops the capability to contribute to regional stability and prevail over terrorist threats, including al-Qaeda and Daesh.
 
This comes after the US Department of Defense (DOD) said in a new report on Tuesday that the US has almost 26,000 troops deployed in total in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
 
The US has 15,298 troops in Afghanistan, 8,892 in Iraq and 1,720 in Syria, according to the report.
 
The numbers were released to the public last week as part of the DOD's quarterly count of active duty, reserve, guard and civilian personnel assigned by country by the Defense Manpower Data Center.
 
However, the report has not included special operations forces or temporary personnel rotating into or out of the country in that official figure, so the actual number could be even higher.
 
The US Defense Secretary James Mattis pledged to bring more transparency to the actual number of forces on the ground as he assumed leadership of the Pentagon earlier this year under President Donald Trump.
 
DOD's previous official response to queries about the number of forces had been to provide the "force management level" - a cap set by the previous administration under former President Barack Obama. Using that figure, the Pentagon had only previously said there were 5,262 troops in Iraq.