Over the weekend, the Taliban issued a statement to the upcoming NATO ministerial meeting urging them not to abandon a planned withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan.
NATO has been expected to keep its troops in Afghanistan, and is trying to push the US to stay as well. The Taliban warns that this will amount to a “continuation of war” after the February 29 peace deal, which mandated the pullout.
While the US had all but finished the pullout, the Biden Administration was said to be preparing to hold off on the final withdrawal. The Taliban has warned that part of the deal was important, and not something that they could scrap and still expect peace.
The Taliban’s warning is a fairly obvious result of trying to stay in Afghanistan. In being open about it, they are likely hoping that NATO debate will not be able to ignore the consequences of keeping the war going.
A couple thousand US and a thousand German troops in a country of 38 million? . . .Not a factor. All they can do is facilitate aerial bombing and that will be impossible in time as the Taliban neutralizes airfields. Wars are won and lost on the ground, not in the air.