WASHINGTON: The White House said on Saturday that President Donald Trump had not yet ordered the Pentagon to pull out troops from Afghanistan, contradicting reports last week that he is withdrawing half of the 14,000 US troops deployed there.

Garrett Marquis, a White House and US National Security Council spokesman, said in an email to Bloomberg news agency that the question of withdrawal remained undecided.

“The president has not made a determination to drawdown US military presence in Afghanistan,” he wrote. “And he has not directed the Department of Defence to begin the process of withdrawing US personnel from Afghanistan.”

Last week, US officials told journalists that Mr Trump had made up his mind to withdraw 7,000 troops from Afghanistan by the summer. “That decision has been made. There will be a significant withdrawal,” one of them told the AFP news agency.

White House spokesman’s statement tries to assuage concerns caused by earlier announcement about drawdown

When another news agency, Reuters, contacted Mr Marquis for confirmation, he said he would not comment “on future strategic developments”.

His Saturday’s statement — that the president had not ordered a withdrawal yet — tries to assuage the concerns that the earlier statement had caused.

Although the Afghan government played down the consequences of a US withdrawal, others in Afghanistan warned that it could cause the collapse of the US-backed regime in Kabul. The Afghan government insisted that its security forces were strong enough to fight Taliban and other insurgents, with or without American support.

But even India, a strong Kabul ally, doubted their ability to do so and Indian experts urged New Delhi to persuade Washington not to pull out.

They also asked the Indian government to build ties with the Taliban to counter a possible increase in Pakistan’s influence in Kabul.

The anticipated withdrawal of troops was also criticised by Republican and Democratic lawmakers in the US Congress who thought that it would be a disaster for Afghanistan and would also encourage terrorism elsewhere in the region.

Pakistan, however, welcomed it as a positive development and the Taliban responded by demanding a complete withdrawal of all foreign troops from Afghanistan.

In Kabul, Gen Scott Miller, the US commander of international forces in Afghanistan, confirmed Marquis’s latest statement, saying that he too had not received any orders to change troop levels in the country.

Since Mr Trump has long railed against the 17-year-old Afghan war and last week also announced a complete withdrawal from Syria, US media outlets warn that he may again change his mind, and start pushing for a partial pullout from Afghanistan.

Last week, US Defence Secretary James Mattis resigned from his post after he failed to convince President Trump to postpone his plans for pulling out troops.

Secretary Mattis wrote in his resignation letter that Mr Trump should choose a replacement “whose views are better aligned with yours”.

Published in Dawn, December 30th, 2018