Obama Approves More Aggressive Taliban Fight

The White House said Friday that President Obama’s decision to expand airstrikes against the Taliban in Afghanistan doesn’t mean he will order more USA troops to remain in the country beyond the end of his presidency.

The decision would expand the military’s authority to conduct air strikes against the Taliban when necessary, significantly boosting Afghan forces who now have limited close air-support capacities.

US forces have been in an advisory role in Afghanistan since the start of 2015 and were only authorized to hit Taliban targets for defensive reasons, or to protect Afghan troops. Noting that to this point, U.S. forces and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation partners have, in some situations, been accompanying Afghan special operators, Earnest said this authority would allow the American forces to accompany conventional Afghan forces in certain situations, but when they’re accompanying them, they continue remain focused on the advice-and-assist mission that they’ve been carrying out now for nearly two years.

For example, the U.S. military was previously allowed to take action against the Taliban “in extremis” – moments when their assistance was needed to prevent a significant Afghan military setback.

Earnest said that should the drawdown plan progress as planned, the White House is confident that the 5,500 troops could carry out expanded authorities as necessary and act more “judiciously” because of them.

The U.S. and China have been brokering peace talks between the official Afghan government under Ashraf Ghani and the Taliban. More than 5,000 Afghan troops died past year alone, prompting Obama to indefinitely postpone the withdrawal of US troops.

“This added flexibility.is fully supported by the Afghan government and will help the Afghans at an important moment for the country”, the official said.

But even after last month’s U.S. drone strike that killed Taliban leader Akhtar Mohammad Mansour in Pakistan, U.S. and Afghan officials are bracing for a fierce fighting season this summer.

“What we have seen … from the Afghan security forces is a remarkable willingness to fight for their country”, Earnest said. The expanded USA role comes less than a month after a US drone strike in Pakistan killed Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour. He also put USA warplanes in the skies over Libya in 2011 in the name of preventing a slaughter of civilians, only to see chaos ensue, and now small teams of US special operations forces have been involved in activities there.

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“We anticipate the Taliban will continue an agenda of violence”, he said during a visit to Japan.

At the peak of the United States deployment in Afghanistan, around 100,000 American soldiers were stationed across the country in March 2011.

“This is one of the steps that the USA is encouraging Pakistan to do for the improvement of its relations with India”, a state department spokesman said on Thursday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the decision would also allow greater use of American air power. Obama said that action sent “a clear signal to the Taliban and others that we’re going to protect our people” because Mansour and the Taliban had been “specifically targeting USA personnel and troops inside of Afghanistan”. Still, he said, USA troops won’t be fighting on the front lines against the Taliban, and will stay in an advisory role.

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More than 2,000 U.S. personnel have died in the ensuing war. He did not mention it, but an illustration of the problem with being reactive is the Taliban’s takeover of the northern city of Kunduz last September, which was reversed only after US special operations forces intervened.

The campaign to neutralize the Taliban has suffered multiple setbacks in the twilight of Obama’s presidency and Afghanistan’s fledgling security forces have struggled in the face of bloody Taliban assaults.