US proposes to deploy a staggering 50 thousand troops in Afghanistan

Washington/Kabul: It has come to the fore that the in order to curb the increasing influence of Taliban and the ‘IS’ in Afghanistan, the US army and security advisers have laid out a very ambitious proposal in front of the US President Donald Trump. According to this proposal, to keep Taliban in check and provide stability to the Afghanistan government, a minimum of 50 thousand troops are required to be deployed. This proposition has been approved by the ‘Principles Committee’ of the ‘National Security Council’ and it’s been said that Trump cast his seal on it before the NATO meet.

While nine thousand US troops have currently been deployed in Afghanistan, there are signs of additional 3 to 5 thousand being deployed in the near future. General Nicholson, the commander of the US campaign in Afghanistan, in his proposal before the Senate, had stated the requirement of ‘a few thousand’ more soldiers. However, the US National Security Advisor, H.R. Mcmaster has directly proposed for a war time deployment.

In 2015, according to the then US President Barack Obama‘s decision, the US army had started to retreat from Afghanistan. It was during this period that the influence of Taliban and other terrorist organizations began to grow in Afghanistan, claimed Mcmaster. The ‘Defence Intelligence Agency’ has issued a stern warning that the conflict in Afghanistan between Taliban and the Afghan government is at an impasse and unless there is an external intervention, the conflict may begin to lean in favour of Taliban and other terror groups.

Taliban appears to be consistently gaining success in the attacks it launched in the past few months. The attacks launched in the last few months on the Army base in ‘Mazar-e-Sharif’ and the earlier bomb blast in a military hospital in the capital city of Kaabul, have been drawing attention to themselves. Apart from these, the attempts by Taliban to target the Afghan security forces appear to be clearly successful due to the recent attack in Kunduz.

While expressing grave concerns over these Taliban attacks, the US has begun making aggressive movements for the deployment of additional troops to Afghanistan. In the last month, the US Army had declared to deploy an additional one thousand five hundred soldiers to Afghanistan. Soon after, within a span of a few days, a battalion of three hundred US marines had arrived at the Helmand province.

Following the US, even NATO has shown signs of increasing its deployment of armed forces. NATO Chief (Secretary General of NATO) Jens Stoltenberg’s had given indications regarding the same in a speech after a meeting with the British Prime Minister. Even though Stoltenberg had refrained from specifying any numbers or a time frame, it has come to light that in a discussion with the British Prime Minister, Britain had demanded to send troops to Afghanistan.

The NATO Secretary General had hinted regarding additional deployment of troops by stating that they were scrutinising the proposal to deploy troops in Afghanistan and in the coming weeks, they would take concrete decisions about the extent of the operation and other aspects. However, this operation would not be a means to step into the Afghanistan war, said the General. Currently, NATO has deployed over 13 thousand soldiers in Afghanistan of which six thousand 900 soldiers belong to the US.