The Pentagon’s top official made an unannounced visit to Afghanistan Monday to meet with US commanders and Afghan leaders amid a push for peace with the Taliban. Pat Shanahan, the recently installed acting secretary of defense, said he has no orders to reduce the US troop presence, although officials say that’s at the top of the Taliban’s list of demands in exploratory peace negotiations.
Shanahan, in his first trip in his new role, said he’s encouraged that President Trump’s administration is exploring all possibilities for ending a 17-year war, the longest in American history.
But he stressed that peace terms are for the Afghans to decide.
Thus far, the Taliban have refused to negotiate with the government of President Ashraf Ghani, calling it illegitimate. Washington is trying to break that impasse.
“The Afghans have to decide what Afghanistan looks like. It’s not about the US, it’s about Afghanistan,” Shanahan told reporters traveling with him from Washington.
The pace of any US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan has been a major point of discussion given the strength the Taliban still wields and the group’s well established history of hosting terror groups.
The TaIiban claimed last week that the Trump administration had agreed to pull half of the US forces in Afghanistan out of the country in just a couple months. The US denies that any timeline for a withdrawal has been agreed yet with the Taliban.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the administration’s special envoy for Afghan peace talks, said Friday that although talks are in an early stage, he hopes a deal can be made by July. That’s when Afghanistan is scheduled to hold a presidential election.