A week ago Friday, soon after Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis quit his position, in opposition to a decision by Donald Trump to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria, the Wall Street Journal reported, sourcing anonymous U.S. officials, that Trump had also issued an order to withdraw about half of U.S. forces from Afghanistan.
A day after a contested decision to pull American military forces from Syria, officials said Thursday that President Trump has ordered the start of a reduction of American forces in Afghanistan.
More than 7,000 American troops will begin to return home from Afghanistan in the coming weeks, a U.S. official said. The move will come as the first stage of a phased drawdown and the start of a conclusion to the 17-year war that officials say could take at least many months.
Trump Orders Big Troop Reduction in Afghanistan, Gordon Lubold and Jessica Donati, Wall Street Journal
The New York Times and the Washington Post, also sourcing anonymous officials, reported on the order soon after, with a high consistency of detail.
More recently, in an analysis piece yesterday morning, Pamela Constable at the Washington Post quoted U.N. Special Representative Tadamichi Yamamoto, that the chances for peace in Afghanistan are stronger now, than at any time in the past 17 years. This was to introduce the theme that the order for a U.S. withdraw, among other events, has halted forward momentum towards peace to a crawl. In her piece, she discusses the U.S. withdraw plan, as fact.
Today, it is a very different story. The forward momentum has all but stopped, the news has all been bad, and the country’s political future seems more uncertain than ever.
Afghan officials, stunned by President Trump’s plan to call back thousands of U.S. troops, have retreated into silence and frantic maneuvering to shore up the government.
Afghan momentum on peace, election slows to a crawl, Pamela Constable, Washington Post
There is no order from Donald Trump, for a withdraw of U.S. forces from Afghanistan.
Very soon after the initial news reporting of an order, other news media outlets had used more hedged and uncertain language.
Last Sunday, American military commanders, in on-the-record statements, said they had received no order for withdraw. Here is Tolo News, quoting General Scott Miller. If there had been an order for a withdraw of US forces in Afghanistan, the commander of US forces in Afghanistan would be a rather likely person to have heard of it.
The US and NATO Forces Commander in Afghanistan Gen. Scott Miller in a meeting with Nangarhar governor on Sunday assured that they will continue to support the Afghan forces even if they get an order about troop withdrawal – an issue which Miller says is rumors by “newspapers”.
“I have seen the same rumors I have from the newspapers but all I would assure you is first of all I have no orders, so nothing changed,” he said in the meeting.
Miller 'Has No Orders’ On Troop Reduction In Afghanistan, Tolo News
Yesterday, Shannon Pettypiece and Bill Faries, at Bloomberg, quoted a spokesperson by name, that there is no order for withdraw.
Donald Trump hasn’t ordered the Pentagon to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, a White House spokesman said, contradicting reports last week that he’s directed the military to pull 7,000 soldiers out of a conflict he’s long criticized.
“The president has not made a determination to drawdown U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and he has not directed the Department of Defense to begin the process of withdrawing U.S. personnel from Afghanistan,” Garrett Marquis, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said in an emailed statement on Friday.
Trump Hasn't Ordered Afghan Troop Withdrawal, White House Says, Shannon Pettypiece and Bill Faries, Bloomberg
This raises a thorny issue in how we get news, which is so often from anonymous officials, who have agendas in what they say to reporters. When news is reported in this way, we cannot verify or check the truth of what is reported.
If we simply discounted anonymous reporting, for being unverifiable, however, Daily Kos discussion of the Trump administration would nearly entirely shut down. We are active participants in a system relying on and spreading around unverifiable news.
We can, at times, take up blog posting, and commenting, and speculating, and opinionating, and factoid presenting, and arguing, about some nontruth, while the truth is still getting its boots on.
I find it a bit disquieting when it happens.
Mujib Mashal, now with the New York Times, had a story in Harpers, which I think is an excellent and informative piece of writing, about his search for a local Taliban official, Qari Ahmadullah, in Ghazni province.
Perhaps, he tells us, at his uncle’s house, he had once brought water for Qari Ahmadullah’s men:
I first heard of Qari Ahmadullah at the age of ten, two years after the Taliban took Kabul, in 1996. An uncle of mine knew Ahmadullah’s bodyguards, who were also his relatives, and sometimes entertained them at his house. Perhaps I brought them water to rinse their hands before dinner, as is customary for the youngest family member to do, and became aware of Ahmadullah that way.
Pamela Constable’s writing about Afghanistan, for the Washington Post, starts in the Taliban era, in 1998. She has, for example, an August 1998 story about Osama bin Laden.
Jessica Donati, with the Wall Street Journal, tells the story of arriving to a party scene among many westerners in Kabul, which was quickly shattered by the 2014 bombing of the Taverna restaurant, deeply changing the atmosphere. Along with the reporting, by her and Ehsanullah Amiri, of the May 2017 truck bombing of an intersection in Kabul, which killed some 150 persons, we can see a photo in a tweet of how her bedroom held up.
Some newspapers are covering the war in Afghanistan, I think, far above the level of reader interest. The work of reporters there is strongly underappreciated and under-read.
In a post expressing some inherent skepticism, about what we read in the newspapers, I’d just like to also express and emphasize, how much more highly valued I think the best newspaper reporting on Afghanistan should be.