Afghans should not misconstrue America’s sudden and contentious withdrawal from parts of Syria as a precursor to a similar move in Afghanistan, US Defence Secretary Mark Esper said on Monday.
The Pentagon chief also hinted that some sort of residual US force might remain in Syria to protect oil fields, but stressed no decision had been taken. The United States last week announced the withdrawal of 1,000 American troops from northeast Syria, days after Turkey launched an offensive against the previously US-backed Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which Ankara considers a terrorist group. The move provoked outrage from observers and even members of US President Donald Trump’s Republican Party, who saw the sudden withdrawal as a betrayal of the same Kurdish fighters the US had been training and arming for years to fight the militant Islamic State (IS) group Speaking at Nato’s Resolute Support mission headquarters in Kabul, Esper said America maintains a “longstanding commitment” to Afghanistan, which it invaded in 2001 to oust the Taliban, and noted US policy direction for the country is completely different. Underscoring America’s will to stay in Afghanistan, Esper said it still faces a “virulent terrorist threat that originated in the form of Al Qaeda and now in the Taliban and ISIS-K and other groups”. “All these things should reassure our Afghan allies and others that they should not misinterpret our actions in the recent week or so with regard to Syria and contrast that with Afghanistan,” he said. The US and the Taliban were last month on the brink of signing a deal that would have seen some American forces begin to withdraw from Afghanistan in return for various insurgent security commitments.
But negotiations collapsed at the last minute when Trump declared talks “dead” following Taliban attacks including one that killed a US soldier.
Guarding Syria oil fields
On Syria, Esper said the withdrawal of US forces would take “weeks not days”, and raised the possibility that some troops would stay for now in towns near oil fields as a way of preventing the IS and other groups seizing them.
Source: https://www.dawn.com/news
Monday, April 20, 2026
