As The Inquisitr previously reported, President Donald Trump boasted Monday that he could win the Afghanistan War in a week. But the president said that winning would come with a high death toll and the country would be “wiped off the face of the Earth,” adding that he would rather work with U.S. allies in the region to restore stability and peace.
Now, Aljazeera reports that the government of President Ashraf Ghani released a statement Tuesday asking the United States to clarify Trump’s comments.
“The Afghan nation has not and will never allow any foreign power to determine its fate,” it said.
“While the Afghan government supports the US efforts for ensuring peace in Afghanistan, the government underscores that foreign heads of state cannot determine Afghanistan’s fate in absence of the Afghan leadership.”
Trump made his controversial comment while hosting Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday. According to Trump, Pakistan is helping the U.S. “extricate” itself from Afghanistan — a region the president claims the U.S. now acts as a “policeman” over.
Despite Trump’s controversial comment, Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan, attempted damage control on Twitter , suggesting that Trump spoke about peace outside of his controversial comment.
“There is no reasonable military solution to the war in Afghanistan, and that peace must be achieved through a political settlement,” Khalilzad said prior to his Tuesday meeting in Kabul that focused on ending war and creating peace in Afghanistan, at least in part by ensuring that terrorists don’t threaten the U.S. via the landlocked country.
According to Ghani’s government, Afghanistan is not prepared to drop the issue until clarification is made.
“The government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan will keep the Afghan public posted on the issue,” the statement read.
President Trump claims the United States could “win” war in Afghanistan in a week https://t.co/bac82wfCkH pic.twitter.com/DfK0d56I9F
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) July 23, 2019
Per The New York Times , Ghani has been welcoming of Trump’s South Asia policy — despite the many complex rivalries in the region — and Trump’s comments Monday reportedly come off to Afghanistan as underhanded.
In a statement, former Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai suggested that Trump’s comment is a sign that the U.S. is working secretly with Pakistan to undermine Afghanistan’s sovereignty.
According to Karzai, Trump “is not respecting our lives and human dignity at all.”
As of now, there are more than 20,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan as part of a U.S.-led NATO mission to train and aid Afghan forces. Most of these troops are American, and some of the U.S. forces reportedly engage in “counterterrorism” operations.
Despite the plan to help Afghanistan, last year, a record 3,804 Afghan civilians were killed due to increases in air attacks from U.S.-led forces and a surge in suicide bombings.
