Trump indicates leaving small number of troops in Afghanistan

President Donald Trump on Sunday indicated that he might leave a small number of troops and a strong presence of the US intelligence system in the war-torn Afghanistan, amid ongoing talks with the Taliban by his special envoy. Trump last year ordered withdrawal of 7,000 troops from Afghanistan and 2,000 from Syria.

"Yes", Trump told the CBS 'Face the Nation' when asked in an interview that "Is there a scenario where you would keep troops in Afghanistan? A smaller number?" The interview, recorded Friday, was aired on Sunday.

"And I'll leave intelligence there. Real intelligence, by the way. I'll leave intelligence there and if I see nests forming, I'll do something about it. But for us to be spending USD 51 billion, like last year, or if you average the cost it's - I mean you're talking about numbers that nobody's ever heard of before," he said. Responding to a question, Trump said the US should not have been in Afghanistan for 19 years.

"We have been in Afghanistan for 19 years. And by the way, I've been hitting very hard in Afghanistan and now we're negotiating with the Taliban. We'll see what happens, who knows," he said. When asked if he can trust the Taliban and did he actually broker a deal, the US President said, "Look, whether we should have been there in the first place, that's first question".

"We've been there for 19 years, almost, we are fighting very well. We're fighting harder than ever before. And I think that they're tired and, I think everybody's tired. We got to get out of these endless wars and bring our folks back home. Now, that doesn't mean we're not going to be watching with intelligence. We're going to be watching, and watching closely," he said, indicating the new rules of the game in Afghanistan. US spending in Afghanistan, Trump said, is more than most countries spend for everything including education, medical, and everything else, other than a few countries.

He said he asked his former Defense Secretary James Mattis to resign because he was not happy with what he was doing in Afghanistan. "He resigned because I asked him to resign. He resigned because I was very nice to him. But I gave him big budgets and he didn't do well in Afghanistan. I was not happy with the job he was doing in Afghanistan," Trump said in response to a question.

"And if you look at Syria what's happened, I went to Iraq recently, if you look at Syria, what's happened in Syria in the last few weeks, you would see that things are going down that were not going down. That things are happening that are very good. So I was not happy with him, but I wish him well," he said.

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