African governments and refugee activists hope a ground-breaking refugee forum will deliver much-needed funding and voice to a region whose challenges are often eclipsed by more headline-grabbing crises.

Two decades ago, John Bolinga fled his hometown of Goma, in Democratic Republic of Congo’s restive northeast.

“Rebels came and attacked our home so my father was shot dead. So I had to run to Uganda,” Bolinga said.

He started out destitute, but eventually launched his own NGO in Kampala, which today helps women and children who like himself, were uprooted by violence.

He is sharing his story in Geneva, where countries are meeting for a first-ever global refugee forum. Here and elsewhere, Bolinga says, giving refugees a voice and active role in decisions that affect their lives is critical.

“The challenge is if refugees feel they’re not welcomed,” Bolinaa said, “and also the root causes which is making refugees to flee their countries is not tackled, there is going to be a crisis.”

Africa is a leading exporter of refugees. They count among the millions making perilous journeys across the Sahara and Mediterranean for a better life in Europe … which often isn’t realized. But Africa also shelters more than one-quarter of the world’s displaced people.

Critics note that some African countries severely restrict refugees’ opportunities. Still these nations are opening doors that others slam shut.

“African governments continue to carry the extra responsibility on behalf of all of us, in hosting refugees in keeping borders open,” Ambassador Mohamed Abdi Affey said.

The official is Horn of Africa special envoy for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which is hosting this forum.

“While we appreciate more spotlight and attention to other refugee cases like Syria and Yemen, Affey said. “… the ones in the Horn of Africa particularly, the ones who have been with us for 30 years, risk being forgotten.”

Those demands join broader calls here for wealthy nations and the private sector to do more for poorer countries that together host more than 80%  of the world’s refugees.

It’s coming from countries like Ethiopia, which hosts roughly one million refugees from 26 nations. Fisseha Meseret Kindie is director of humanitarian assistance and development at Ethiopia’s Agency for Refugees and Returnees.

“We are in shortage of finance, we cannot help them. And shortage of money,” Kindie said. “And we need the support from the international community at large.”

Some feel the page may be turning here in Geneva. Cameroon representative Tirlamo Norbert Wirnkar from Cameroon, which hosts more than 400,000 refugees, is optimistic this meeting will make a difference.

“We are really hopeful that pledges are going to be made on both sides — by the international community and host countries,” Wirnkar said.

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The number of journalists killed globally in 2019 is the lowest in over a decade as some war zones became less deadly, say two of the world’s leading free-press advocacy groups.

New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Paris-headquartered Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which is known by its French initials, released separate reports that identified the same trend on Tuesday.

Each of the annual reports, however, based findings on distinct research methodologies, resulting in some hard data discrepancies.

CPJ says at least 25 journalists were killed in the line of duty in 2019, the lowest figure since 2002 when 21 journalists lost their lives in the field. RSF reported 49 killed, the lowest number since 36 were killed in 2003.

Both organizations emphasized that although journalist war zone fatalities have declined, the number of journalists killed in countries at peace remains consistent with years prior, and that the decrease is no cause for complacency.

CPJ: Syria, Mexico are deadliest

CPJ logs killings only in direct reprisal for reporting combat-related crossfire, “or while carrying out a dangerous assignment such as covering a protest that turns violent.” Syria and Mexico are the deadliest for journalists in 2019, its report said.

“Deaths in Syria, where at least 134 journalists have been killed in the war, have declined since a high of 31 in 2012,” the CPJ report states.

“Even more striking, the subset of journalists singled out for murder, at least 10, is the smallest in CPJ’s annual records, which date to 1992,” the organization says, adding that half of those “singled out” for murder were killed in Mexico.

CPJ also reports that the decline comes amid “unprecedented global attention on the issue of impunity in journalist murders,” highlighting the October 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the October 2017 murder of Maltese investigative reporter Daphne Caruana Galizia.

“One place where efforts to combat impunity seemingly have had no effect is Mexico,” the report said.

“The decline in the number of journalists killed is welcome after years of escalating violence, and reinforces our determination to fight impunity and do all we can to keep journalists safe,” said Joel Simon, CPJ’s executive director.

The report also says the Oct. 11 death of Turkish Kurdish journalist Vedat Erdemci, who died in a Turkish airstrike on the northeastern Syrian city of Ras al-Ain, represents the only foreign journalist killed in the line of duty this year.

CPJ’s report, which says military officials were the “most frequently suspected killers of journalists this year,” reflects the number of journalists killed between Jan. 1 and Dec. 13, 2019.

RSF: Fewer killed, more behind bars

RSF’s “Worldwide Roundup of Journalists Killed, Detained, or Held Hostage” summarizes abusive treatment and deadly violence against “professional journalists, non-professional journalists and media workers.”

Like CPJ, RSF says journalism remains a “dangerous profession,” with 49 journalists killed this year, 389 currently imprisoned and 57 others being held hostage.

RSF’s data indicate that although most journalists were killed covering conflicts in Syria (10), Afghanistan (5), and Yemen (2) — compared with 34 last year — targeted assassinations in “at peace” nations such as Mexico (5) were alarmingly high.

“Latin America, with a total of 14 reporters killed across the continent, has become as deadly as the Middle East,” the report says.

“More and more journalists are being assassinated for their work in democratic countries, which is a real challenge to democracy,” said RSF director Christophe Deloire.

While fewer journalists are dying, more are ending up behind bars, RSF said. The 389 detained in 2019 represent a 12% increase since last year.

Nearly half of reporters imprisoned in state custody are in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and China, which alone “holds a third of the journalists locked up in the world,” the report says.

Turkey currently has 25 journalists in prison.

Meanwhile, 57 journalists are being held hostage across the globe, mostly in Syria (30), Yemen (15), Iraq (11), and Ukraine (1).

RSF’s report reflects the number of journalists killed between Jan. 1 and Dec. 1, 2019.

Information from AFP is included in this report.
 

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Turkish military operations which began in October in northern Syria have left over 200,000 thousand Syrians displaced in northern Iraq. The refugees left all their belongings behind so people around the world have stepped up to help.  VOA’s Hateen Mahmood  reports on a group of Kurdish volunteers in Nashville, Tennessee doing what they can.

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Rallies against a new Indian citizenship law based on religion continued for a fifth consecutive day Monday amid clashes between students and the police. The protests that started Thursday in the northeastern state of Assam last Thursday have spread through university campuses and have left at least six people dead so far. The controversial law allows non-Muslims from three majority Muslim nations to obtain Indian citizenship. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has defended the law, saying it protects non-Muslims from persecution. But critics say the Hindu nationalist government is pushing a partisan agenda and undermining the country’s status as a secular republic.  VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.

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With the U.S. House of Representatives expected to vote to impeach President Donald Trump this week, the White House is shifting focus to the Republican-led Senate, where the president will face trial as early as January. Patsy Widakuswara has this story on how Trump and his allies are planning to mount a fast and aggressive defense, with the goal of turning the tables on opposition Democrats.

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The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear a case that would allow cities to make it a crime to sleep on the streets.

The court let stand a ruling by a ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, which struck down a couple of local laws in Boise, Idaho that made it a crime for homeless people to sleep on the streets when no alternative shelter is available.

The Ninth Circuit includes various western states that have a problem of astronomical real estate prices resulting in growing homelessness. Several major cities have tried to curb homelessness by passing strict local legislation.

Boise had appealed the ruling arguing it would allow homelessness to proliferate leading to public health issues.

“As long as there is no option of sleeping indoors, the government cannot criminalize indigent, homeless people for sleeping outdoors, on public property, on the false premise they had a choice in the matter,” the appeals court said in its ruling.

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Amnesty International said Monday that at least 304 people were killed in last month’s anti-government protests in Iran, a significantly higher number than what the rights group had reported previously.

The protests, which lasted about four days in several cities and towns in Iran in November, were sparked by a sharp rise in gasoline prices. During the violence and in the days that followed, Iranian authorities blocked access to the internet.

Amnesty said that Iranian security forces opened fire on unarmed protesters, killing scores. Iranian authorities subsequently arrested thousands of protesters as well as journalists, human rights defenders and students in a sweeping crackdown to prevent them from speaking up about the protests, the London-based watchdog said.

Tehran has yet to release any statistics about the scale of the unrest, though two weeks ago the government acknowledged that the security forces shot and killed protesters. Iranian state media referred to some of those shot and killed as “rioters”.

Amnesty said earlier this month that at least 208 were killed in the Nov. 15-18 protests. It did not provide an explanation for the new and higher death toll, reiterating that it had spoken to dozens of people inside the country and had compiled credible reports.

The majority of the deaths recorded by Amnesty were the result of gunshots to the head, heart and other vital organs. Among those killed, according to Amnesty, was a 15-year-old boy in the city of Shiraz who was shot as he passed by a protest on his way from school.

The rights group had noted how during the protests, Iran shut down internet access, blocking those inside the country from sharing videos and limiting knowledge about the full scale of the turmoil.

The protests were rooted in widespread economic discontent that has gripped the country since President Trump imposed crushing sanctions after withdrawing America from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers.

Iran’s national currency, the rial, has sharply plunged from the time of the 2015 nuclear accord while daily staples have risen in price.

Despite the hike in prices, gasoline in Iran remains among the cheapest in the world.

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Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated his support for Hong Kong’s embattled leader on Monday even as he declared that the former British colony has faced its “grimmest and most complex year” since its return to China.

Xi praised Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam for holding fast to the principle of “one country, two systems,” and for courage and commitment during an “extraordinary period” for Hong Kong, where Lam has faced harsh criticism for how she has handled months of fiery anti-government protests.

Lam briefed Xi and Premier Li Keqiang during her first visit to Beijing since pro-democracy candidates swept local Hong Kong elections last month in a clear rebuke of her administration.

Hong Kong has been “haunted by this social unrest,” Lam said at an evening news briefing, adding that the Chinese leaders called the situation “unprecedented.”

“Given the severity of the situation and the difficulties that we are facing, I can say that the leaders are fully appreciative of the efforts needed,” she said. “I am heartened because we know that our work to stop the violence hasn’t ended. We are not out of this crisis yet.”

Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” framework that promises the city more democratic rights than are allowed on the mainland. In recent years, however, the arrests of booksellers and activists have stoked fears of a growing encroachment by the ruling Communist Party.

The mass demonstrations began in June in response to proposed legislation that would have allowed Hong Kong residents to be tried for crimes in mainland China.

While Lam has since withdrawn the bill, protesters have continued calling for broader democratic reforms and an independent inquiry into accusations of police brutality.

On Monday, Lam again rejected calls for the investigation, a key demand of the movement. A police watchdog council that’s probing complaints should be “given space and time” to complete its report to the government by early next year, she said.

A group of international experts quit the council last week over concerns that the watchdog lacks capacity and independence. The council has no powers to ask for documents or summon witnesses.

The government is also seeking candidates for an independent review committee that will study the issues underlying the crisis, Lam said. Some people fear they would be targeted by anti-government protesters if they join the committee.

A lull in clashes between police and protesters ended Sunday. Police said protesters threw bricks and that officers responded with tear gas. Protesters also set fires, blocked roads and smashed traffic lights with hammers.

Video footage showed truncheon-wielding riot officers squirting pepper spray directly at a photographer in a group of journalists and ganging up to beat and manhandle him. Police alleged that the photographer was verbally abusive and obstructed officers and said he was arrested. His employer, Hong Kong online news site Mad Dog Daily, said he acted legally and heeded police instructions.

Police said they arrested 31 people Sunday and 99 over the past week, taking the total number arrested since June to beyond 6,100. They also said that officers fired 27 tear gas rounds on Sunday.

Protesters said they don’t expect Beijing leaders to ditch Lam in the foreseeable future, because that would be an embarrassment for them and hand too large a victory to the protest movement.

“If they did change, let her step down, then that means that it’s a loss in the battle,” protester Fong Lee, a social worker, said at a rally in Hong Kong on Sunday. “The Communist Party wouldn’t do that.”

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Lebanese security forces fired tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons Sunday to disperse hundreds of protesters for a second straight day, ending what started as a peaceful rally in defiance of the toughest crackdown on anti-government demonstrations in two months.
The violence comes on the eve of a meeting between the president and parliamentary blocs in which resigned Prime Minister Saad Hariri is widely expected to be renamed to the post. The tension also reflects deepening divisions in the country that is grappling with a severe liquidity and foreign currency crunch.

Hariri resigned Oct. 29 amid nationwide protests that have accused the entire political elite of corruption and mismanagement amid Lebanon’s worst economic crisis in decades. The protesters say they won’t accept Hariri as prime minister, demanding an independent head of government not affiliated with existing parties.

“Saad, Saad, Saad, don’t dream of it anymore,” protesters chanted Sunday.

After weeks of bickering, the political parties failed to put forward independent names, most of them insisting on keeping their political share in the government.

The protests Sunday were largely peaceful, but some demonstrators lobbed water bottles and firecrackers at security forces guarding parliament. After a couple of hours, security forces chased the the protesters away, using batons and tear gas. The protesters dispersed in central Beirut. At one point, someone set fire to two tents set up by protesters in Martyrs’ Square, the epicenter for the anti-government protests for 60 days.
After hours of clashes, the army deployed around central Beirut, putting an end to the pitched street battles. The Lebanese Civil Defense said it transferred 20 injured to hospitals while it treated over 70 protesters on site. A news photographer was among the injured.

The army first deployed to separate protesters and rival supporters of political groups, according to reports on al-Jadeed. The local TV station filmed soldiers forcing protesters to retreat from central Beirut’s squares.

Tension has surfaced between protesters and supporters of the Shiite groups Hezbollah and Amal, after the later rejected criticism of their leaders. Meanwhile, the protesters were angered by what they said was the security forces’ harsh crackdown on their rallies while treading lightly when dealing with supporters of the powerful political groups.

Divisions also surfaced among the protesters who rallied in central Beirut. Some promoted confrontation with security forces to express anger at the crackdown and the government’s “business as usual” approach. Many protesters came prepared with helmets and tear gas, and they used plant pots and bins to throw up a barricade in the street.

“We have reclaim our country from this occupation,” one angry protester told LBC TV, referring to what he called a corrupt government in place for decades. Another told Al-Jadeed that on Sunday the protesters started the friction “as a reaction to unjust crackdown” the day before.

Thousands had gathered peacefully earlier Sunday dispersed by evening.

Security forces chased protesters in central Beirut, firing tear gas and rubber bullets. Some protesters hid in the commercial area surrounding the parliament and others in masks pelted officers with stones.

Demonstrators had chanted against the security crackdown. One raised a poster saying the tear gas won’t keep them away. “We are crying already,” it added, in a jab at the deep economic crisis Lebanese are facing.

The streets leading to parliament were filled with men, women and even children. Some huddled in smaller groups while others were lifted on shoulders chanting in megaphones.

“I came back today to pressure the parliament to make the right choice tomorrow and choose a prime minister from outside the political parties. If they don’t choose someone acceptable, we will be back to the streets again and again,”said Chakib Abillamah, a businessman who was demonstrating Saturday when violence broke out.

Another protester, Huda Kerbagi, said she expected violent protests for some more days, warning that violence will beget violence, particularly in a diverse society like Lebanon. “In other revolutions you have one bloc against one bloc and in this country we have many blocs.”

One protester from southern Lebanon, who gave his name as Ali, said he came to the Beirut protest to change the rulers because “none of them feels their offenses or have any conscience. Not one of them offered an apology.”

Saturday night into Sunday saw one of the most violent crackdowns on protesters since nationwide anti-government demonstrations began two months ago. The overnight confrontations in Beirut left more than 130 people injured, according to the Red Cross and the Lebanese Civil Defense. The Red Cross said none of the injured were in serious condition and most of them were treated on the spot.

Attackers in northern Lebanon also set fire to the offices of two major political parties early Sunday, the state-run National News Agency said.

In one attack, assailants broke the windows and set fire to the local office of Hariri’s political party in the town of Kharibet al-Jundi in the northern Akkar district. Photos circulated on social media of shattered glass and the aftermath of the fire.

In a separate attack also in Akkar, assailants stormed the local office of the largest party in parliament, affiliated with President Michel Aoun and headed by Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil. The party said the contents of the office in the town of Jedidat al-Juma had been smashed and burned.

Interior Minister Raya al-Hassan on Sunday ordered an investigation into the Beirut overnight clashes, which she said injured both protesters and security forces. She said she watched the confrontations “with concern, sadness and shock.”

Al-Hassan blamed “infiltrators” for instigating violence and called on the demonstrators to be wary of those who want to exploit their protests for political reasons. She didn’t elaborate.

The head of the Internal Security Forces, Maj. Gen. Imad Osman, turned up at the protest rally Sunday. He told reporters on the scene that the right to protest was guaranteed by the law. “But calm down, no need for violence,” he said, appealing to protesters.

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Chinese state television pulled the scheduled live broadcast of a football (soccer) game following one of the players’ comments online criticizing the government’s treatment of its Muslim Uighur minority.

China’s CCTV was scheduled to broadcast the football game between Arsenal and Manchester United, but instead decided to show a taped game between Tottenham Hotspur and the Wolverhampton Wanderers.

Arsenal footballer Mesut Ozil posted on Twitter Friday comments condemning China’s crackdown on Muslim minorities in the Western region, while also criticizing other Muslim countries for not speaking up against abuses.

“Korans are being burnt… Mosques are being shut down… Muslim schools are being banned… Religious scholars are being killed one by one… Brothers are forcefully being sent to camps,” Ozil wrote in Turkish on his Twitter account Friday.

#HayırlıCumalarDoğuTürkistan 🙏🏼 pic.twitter.com/dJgeK4KSIk

— Mesut Özil (@MesutOzil1088) December 13, 2019

The U.S., the United Nations and various human rights groups have accused China of detaining an estimated one million ethnic Muslims in so-called “re-education camps” in the remote Western province of Xinjiang in an attempt to force them to renounce their religion and heritage.

Chia’s state-run Global Times said on its Twitter account Sunday that CCTV made the decision to pull the game after Ozil’s comments had “disappointed fans and football governing authorities”.

Arsenal posted on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform, that the the content Ozil shared was “entirely Ozil’s personal opinion”. The team has not posted a response on Twitter or released and official statement.

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Hours before the official result was complete for Britain’s general election, U.S. Democrats on the other side of the Atlantic were taking to social-media sites to draw quick conclusions on what Labour’s catastrophic defeat might mean for them and the electoral challenge they face with the 2020 White House contest.

Forewarned by an exit poll, which suggested Britain’s storied Labour Party was heading for its worst election rebuff since 1935, one of the first Democrats to hit the send button was Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national security advisor to Barack Obama.

He tweeted: “There are a lot of factors that went into this massive defeat, but progressives have to learn from them to do better on both sides of the Atlantic.”

But that begs the crucial question: what lessons?

On the British side of the Atlantic, Labour politicians can’t agree about what went wrong for them in what’s likely to be seen as the most consequential British election for a quarter-of-a-century, with some, including defeated party leader Jeremy Corbyn, insisting that the radical socialist policies he advocated, including the nationalization of a swathe of the British economy, were individually popular and that the blame should go on Brexit.

A key Corbyn ally, Len McCluskey, the leader of the powerful Unite trade union, said the policies in the party’s manifesto were “very popular,” but “we very evidently didn’t win the argument over Brexit” and the party’s policy of holding a second referendum on European Union membership. McCluskey said the party’s “biggest mistake” was “perhaps underestimating the desire for people who had voted Leave to leave the European Union.”

But many Labour moderates believe Brexit-favoring working-class voters who deserted the party in droves would have overlooked the issue of Europe, if Labour had had a more popular and centrist leader and a manifesto shorn of leftwing dogma. In a post-election opinion poll, only 17 percent of Labour defectors cited Brexit as the reason for their switch to the Conservatives.

“Jeremy Corbyn was destined to lead the Labour Party to a catastrophic defeat,” according to Jason Cowley, the editor of the New Statesman magazine, Britain’s leading leftwing weekly. “If he believed that the British would vote for the most radical socialist manifesto in our history, he was sadly deluded. The party has learned nothing from past defeats: the more it moves to the left, the more people are alienated,” he added in a post-mortem assessment for Britain’s The Times newspaper.

Cowley says Labour has lost touch with Britain’s working-class and the party’s defeat Thursday is a parable of what can go wrong when a party rejects pragmatism for “ideological purity.”

Some Democrats in the U.S.  worry that might be the case with their own party and say the British election should be seen as window on the 2020 presidential race.

Former U.S. vice president Joe Biden, the current front-runner to win the Democratic nomination to take on Trump, has said that the British election should be taken as a warning against Democrats moving too far to the radical left ahead of the 2020 White House race.

Speaking to supporters in San Francisco, Biden argued that the radicalism of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn ultimately contributed to Boris Johnson’s landslide victory last week.

Others on the moderate wing of the Democratic Party, too, fear that Labour’s defeat may foreshadow trouble for their bid to vanquish Trump, especially if the Democrats pick a progressive nominee like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren as their champion in the 2020 presidential election.

Political trends on one side of the Atlantic have often presaged trends on the other, although often with time lags because of misaligned elections. Both countries were moderately conservative in the 1950s and Republican and Conservative governments accepted the welfare systems established by their predecessors in office and ideological rivals, Franklin Roosevelt and Britain’s Clement Attlee.

In the 1960s both countries trended left, although were divided over the Vietnam War. In the 1980s, free-market conservatives — Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan — reshaped their nations’ politics.

And in the 1990s “Third Way” Democrats, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, marched almost in lockstep to refashion their parties as market-friendly, seeking to blend center-right economics with center-left social policies. The 2016 Brexit referendum was seen by many, including Donald Trump’s then strategist Steve Bannon and Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s chief of staff, as foreshadowing Trump’s upset a few months later of Hillary Clinton, who saw her candidacy rebuffed in the fading towns of the “rust belt” states much like Corbyn was rejected in the post-industrial north of England.

Nationalist conservatives rule the roost now in Washington and London, prioritizing the nation state over multilateralism and favoring tough immigration restrictions. The skirmishing by Democrats over the British election result is enmeshing with the fight over who should get the party’s presidential nomination.

Democrats favoring a progressive candidate maintain there are no real lessons to draw from Johnson’s election win, echoing Corbyn supporters on the other side of the Atlantic by arguing Labour lost the election because of Brexit. “This UK election was ultimately an election about Brexit, and Brexit won. There’s no clean analogue to that in the U.S,” says Kate Aronoff, a senior fellow at Data for Progress, a progressive U.S. think tank.

“The UK election was undeniably bad for Labour, but it doesn’t at all vindicate centrists saying the U.S. should make one of them the Democratic nominee. Left policies are popular,” she tweeted.

Aronoff, like other U.S. progressives maintain that the kind of centrist politics espoused by establishment Democrats also got rebuffed by British voters in an election that dashed the hopes of Britain’s centrist Liberal Democrats, who presented themselves as a respectable alternative between the Conservatives and Labour. Their leader Jo Swinson even failed to get reelected as a lawmaker.

Some commentators who’ve chronicled the rise of populist nationalism say neither moderates nor progressives have the grasped the full scale of the realignment of Western politics that’s underway. The UK vote wasn’t just any election, says Matthew Goodwin, an academic at Britain’s Kent University and co-author of the book “National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy.” “The old left versus right economic divide continues to make way for a new cultural divide.”

He says Brexit was just one factor prompting working-class voters to trade left for right, with other driving issues coming down to promises of immigration reform and prioritizing national independence. Conservative nationalists have hit on a winning formula by leaning left on economics, with promises of increased government spending, and right on culture when it comes to identity politics and pledges to get tough on crime.

Goodwin believes it is easier for the right to move left on economics than it is for the left to move right on questions of national identity which are worrying socially conservative working-class voters.

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Officials in Afghanistan confirmed Sunday the United States plans to withdraw thousands of troops from the country, insisting the move stemmed from a mutual understanding between the two allied nations.

Sources in Kabul went on to tell VOA the drawdown process is expected to start in three months, though no official confirmation was available immediately about the timeline.

On Saturday, U.S. media reported that President Donald Trump’s administration intends to announce as early as later this week plans to reduce the number of American forces in Afghanistan by around 4,000.

A spokesman for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani insisted the troop reduction plan is not tied to the ongoing peace negotiations between Washington and the Taliban insurgency aimed at ending the 18-year-old war.

“The matter regarding the withdrawal of 4,000 troops had already been agreed upon in principle between the governments of Afghanistan and the United States,” Dawa Khan Meenapal told VOA. He shared no further details.

Currently around 13,000 U.S. troops are deployed to Afghanistan who are conducting counterterrorism missions in addition to advising and training Afghan security forces battling the Taliban.

Trump had told an American broadcaster (Fox News Radio) in a recent interview he might reduce the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan to around 8,600.

The withdrawal of foreign forces has been at the center of a peace deal the U.S. has been trying to negotiate with the Taliban for over a year to end America’s longest war.

Trump had suspended the dialogue process in September citing the killing of an American soldier in a series of Taliban attacks in Kabul.

The two adversaries returned to the negotiating table in Qatar a week ago but Washington paused the talks again on Thursday in retaliation to a Taliban raid on the largest U.S.-run military base of Bagram, north of Kabul. The attack killed two Afghan civilians and injured scores of others.

U.S. and Taliban negotiators after months of meetings had concluded a draft agreement that outlined Taliban’s counterterrorism guarantees in exchange for a phased withdrawal of American and allied forces. The document would also require the insurgent group to reduce violence and enter into intra-Afghan negotiations to seek a permanent end to decades of hostilities in Afghanistan.

Critics have cautioned against an abrupt withdrawal of foreign forces, fearing it will embolden the insurgents.

“The conditions for withdrawal should be achieved so that Afghan security and defense forces are able to fill the vacuum, otherwise it can have a negative impact on the (battlefield) situation,” sayid Nadir Khan Katawazai, a member of the Afghan parliament.

But former Afghan military general, Atiqullah Amarkhel, insisted as long as Afghan forces continued to receive financial assistance to sustain their operational costs, the reduction in foreign troops will not have any impact because neither U.S. nor NATO troops are taking part in battlefield activities.

Reports of the U.S. withdrawal come just days after the Washington Post released hundreds of documents showing U.S. officials and military commanders had been lying about the progress of the war. The revelation has encouraged the Taliban to intensify its propaganda against the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan and justify the violence.

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