Trump Wants to Pull All US Troops from Afghanistan over Coronavirus
KABUL (MEP) – US President Trump has told advisers that he wants the U.S. to pull its troops from Afghanistan to avoid service members there being exposed to the coronavirus.
U.S. President Donald Trump has pushed his military and national security advisers in recent days to pull all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan amid concerns outbreak, according to CNBC quoting two current and one former senior U.S. officials.
Trump complains almost daily that U.S. troops are still in Afghanistan and are now vulnerable to the pandemic, the officials said.
Trump’s renewed push to withdraw all of them has been spurred by the convergence of his concern that coronavirus poses a force protection issue for thousands of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and his impatience with the halting progress of his peace deal with the Taliban, the officials said.
They said the president’s military advisers have made the case to him that if the U.S. pulls troops out of Afghanistan because of the coronavirus, by that standard the Pentagon would also have to withdraw from places like Italy, which has been hit particularly hard by the pandemic, officials said.
One senior administration official and a defense official said that while the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan because of the coronavirus has been under discussion, a more likely outcome would be to consolidate American forces at bases in one or two parts of the country.
