United States announces troop reductions in Iraq and Afghanistan

As the end of the Republican Administration approaches, Donald Trump intends to fulfill the last promises he made during his four years in the White House. Among them was “to successfully and responsibly end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and bring our brave soldiers home.”

On Tuesday, Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller made it official. Miller said during a press conference at the Pentagon that the U.S. Army will halve the number of troops it has in Afghanistan over the next two months and cut back, albeit more modestly, in Iraq. 

 “To the many patriots who had made the ultimate sacrifice and their comrades who carried forward their legacy," Miller recalled. Despite the initiative to withdraw the soldiers, Miller, a retired Special Forces officer who previously served as Trump's anti-terrorism adviser, made it clear that his country will be ready to respond if conditions deteriorate.

Miller was recently appointed as Acting Secretary of Defense after the President fired Mark Esper from the position on November 9. He indicated that the army will comply with Trump's orders in both countries before January 15, with the number of troops reduced from around 5,000 to 2,500 in Afghanistan and from around 3,000 to 2,500 in Iraq. 

Earlier, Esper submitted a classified memorandum to the White House saying that conditions on the ground in Afghanistan did not justify such troop reductions.  For the former defence secretary, the increase in Taliban violence, security concerns for the remaining US troops, possible damage to alliances and the possibility that the reduction in troops would undermine negotiations with the Taliban to secure an agreement with the Afghan government did not allow the withdrawal proposed by President Trump to be carried out. 

 In the run-up to the elections, Trump's tweet saying that all US troops in Afghanistan should be "home for Christmas" set off all the alarms among senior US officials who had been working on a more gradual withdrawal.

The existing plan, linked to precarious negotiations with the Taliban to sign a peace agreement with the Afghan government, had not produced the progress the US officials wanted, according to the Washington Post. While the Pentagon was in the process of reducing the number of troops to less than 5,000 by November, negotiations appeared to be at a standstill and the Taliban continued to launch attacks all over the country. 

During the press conference at the Pentagon, Miller did not mention the differences between his strategy for withdrawing troops and that of his predecessor, which was to do so more gradually. 

Miller said he was celebrating the decision, stressing the price that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken on the families of soldiers, including 6,900 service members who have died, 52,000 wounded and others who bear "visible and invisible scars". 

As early as October, national security adviser Roberto C. O'Brien announced that the Republican administration planned to remove 2,500 service members from Afghanistan this year, which was not shared by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General Mark A. Milley, who described this move announced by O'Brien as "speculation".  

 O'Brien said at the time that “President Trump expects everyone to return home safely and in full by May.”

A few minutes after the announcements coming from Washington, four Katyusha rockets landed in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, Iraq. This site is home to a large number of embassies and government buildings, as well as the capital's airport. 

 “Four rockets fell on the Green Zone in Baghdad, and it was found that they were launched from the Al-Amin Al-Thaniyah neighborhood, the Alf Dar district in New Baghdad," reported the Iraqi Security Information Cell. 

The "global war on terror" began after the September 11, 2001 attack on the United States. Today it has left 37 million people displaced around the world, the largest conflict exile since the beginning of the 20th century with the exception of World War II. 

The passenger plane attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, the Pentagon and the downing of Flight 93 in Pennsylvania on September 11 triggered a series of wars to catch those responsible.  

 These struggles led to the end of Taliban hegemony in Afghanistan, but the initial objectives of the war were gradually blurred over time, especially with the false justification for invading Iraq in 2003.

With his arrival in the presidency in 2009, Barack Obama maintained the global war on terrorism, stepped up the drone attacks in Yemen and Somalia and intensified deployment in Afghanistan, which he ended by transferring control of security to the Kabul government in 2014. 

 Donald Trump took another step in the process of demilitarising the area. Last February the United States and the Taliban reached an agreement to sign a peace treaty and put an end to a 19-year conflict. The agreement envisaged the total military withdrawal of US troops in three years. 

 According to the US State and Defence Departments and the US Agency for International Development, over 775,000 US troops have been deployed to Afghanistan since 2001 and over 2,300 have died. The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, UNAMA, estimates that 32,000 civilians have been killed and some 60,000 injured since non-military casualties began to be systematically recorded in 2009.