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Trump Battles a Sense of Inertia in Afghanistan

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08.28.2018 at 04:27am

Trump Battles a Sense of Inertia in Afghanistan by Rebecca Kheel – The Hill

A year after reversing course on a key campaign pledge and announcing that U.S. troops would stay in Afghanistan with a tweaked strategy, President Trump is faced with a war that has seen little progress since.

Pentagon officials insist the strategy adopted by the Trump administration last summer is working, pointing to a three-day ceasefire earlier this year and back channel talks with elements of the Taliban.

But insurgents continue to be able to stage high-profile attacks, territorial control has remained largely unchanged and civilian deaths are hitting all-time highs 17 years into what has sometimes been called the “forever war” or “forgotten war.”

“I think it’s been a difficult slog with mixed prioritization from the top national security leadership, frankly, including Congress,” Andy Keiser, a principal at the lobbying firm Navigators Global who worked on the Trump transition team’s national security section, said of the past year.

“The strategy was to move the needle on the battlefield so that when we got to negotiation we were in a strong position, and that result has been mixed.”

Trump announced his strategy for the war in Afghanistan on Aug. 21, 2017, following months of deliberation with his national security team. The president said that he would stick with the national security establishment’s wisdom and not withdraw from the country, something he had campaigned on…

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