US election 2020: Ahead of polls, Trump plans to withdraw US troops from Iraq, Afghanistan
US troops in Iraq
The US President Donald Trump will soon be announcing the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.
An official has said that an official announcement for Iraq is expected by the end of Wednesday, and the news for Afghanistan will follow soon after.
The decision has been taken after Trump met with theIraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi in August and decided to pull back troops from Iraq. However, Trump had not issued a timeline for the same to the Iraqi Prime Minister.
The meeting's main agenda and the reason behind this pull back of the American troops was an increase in the attacks aimed at American targets by pro-Iranian fighters. The Iraqi government was also facing pressure domestically to ask the American troops to leave the country.
The US military withdrew from Iraq in late 2011, leaving a small mission attached to the US embassy. However, an additional unit was deployed a few years later to provide aid to the Iraqi forces in their war against Islamic State
In Afghanistan, the US currently has 8,600 soldiers in accordance with a bilateral agreement signed in February between Washington and the Taliban.
As per the initial plans drawn in August this year, Trump plans to bring down the number of US troops in Afgahnistan to less than 5,000. The decision is being seen as a huge help in promoting the inter-Afghan peace talks.
Trump had earlier, in an interview, suggested that he plans to bring down the number of American troops to nearly 4,000 in time for the US Presidential elections scheduled on November 03, in which Trump will be running against Joe Biden.
Under the US-Taliban deal, all foreign troops must leave the country by the spring of 2021, in exchange for security commitments from the militants.
(With inputs from agencies)