US Plan to Wind Down Middle East Presence Causes Uproar

He went on to call President Trump’s plan “humiliating,” predicting it would do more harm than former President Barack Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq.

On Tuesday several Pentagon officials intimated that the president’s original evacuation plans had been significantly watered down. According to several US news outlets, the administration is now preparing to cut the number of troops in Afghanistan by only 2,000, from approximately 4,500 to 2,500. In Iraq, military officials were told to prepare for a withdrawal of 500 soldiers, leaving the remaining forces at 2,500 as well.

The decision comes mere days after the abrupt firing of Defense Secretary Mark Esper in a typical Trump tweet. Esper’s removal, along with that of several other senior defense officials, was considered by many as an attempt by the president to install his loyalists in top Pentagon positions.

Prior to his dismissal, Esper had repeatedly insisted that current conditions in the Middle East did not allow for a reduction in US forces, warning of dire national security implications of such a move.

“Without a doubt, the vacuum left by the US in Iraq would quickly be filled by Iran and its proxies.”

“Any decision of a total withdrawal out of Iraq would be a very grave mistake,” Dr. Jonathan Spyer, an analyst of Syria, Iraq, radical Islamic groups and Kurds and a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, told The Media Line.

“This is obviously strictly theoretical, and there is still a range of possibilities between total withdrawal and keeping things as they are now,” Spyer stressed. “But without a doubt, the vacuum left by the US in Iraq would quickly be filled by Iran and its proxies.”

In Afghanistan, the NATO-backed Kabul government in recent weeks has conducted on and off negotiations over a power-sharing agreement with the insurgent Taliban group, an extremist organization that, prior to the 2001 American invasion, controlled most of the country.

The peace talks, held in Doha, were made possible only after Washington signed a deal with the terrorist group earlier this year, promising to eventually pull all its troops from Afghanistan.

Dr. Merav Mishaeli-Rom of Bar Ilan University, an expert on international crises focusing on Afghanistan, believes that while an eventual departure of foreign forces from the country is essential, a haphazard exit by the US, done for political aims, would lead to unnecessary upheaval.

“The mess that is there right now would be exacerbated by other foreign actors moving in. I don’t think this is the right way to go about it,” she told The Media Line.