US official warns Congress on troop withdrawal from Afghanistan

Removing US troops without a peace deal would be ‘a disaster’, says John Sopko, as new talks set to begin in Moscow.

A top United States official working on Afghanistan has warned Congress that a withdrawal of US troops from the country without a peace agreement between the Afghan government and the Taliban would be “a disaster”. John Sopko, the US Department of Defense’s special inspector for Afghanistan reconstruction, told a House of Representatives committee on Tuesday that without US military and financial support, the Afghan government in Kabul could face collapse. “The Afghan government would probably lose the capability of flying any of its aircraft within a few months and, to be quite blunt, would probably face collapse,” he said.