{"id":762,"date":"2017-09-05T16:05:13","date_gmt":"2017-09-05T16:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/?p=762"},"modified":"2017-09-05T16:06:16","modified_gmt":"2017-09-05T16:06:16","slug":"mqms-khawaja-izharul-hassan-survives-gun-attack-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/2017\/09\/05\/mqms-khawaja-izharul-hassan-survives-gun-attack-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Mattis signs orders to send more troops to Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Aljazeera<\/p>\n<p>US Secretary of Defense James Mattis says he has signed orders to send additional soldiers to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/country\/afghanistan.html\" target=\"_self\">Afghanistan<\/a>, without specifying the size of the force.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Yes, I have signed orders but it is not complete. In other words, I have signed some of the (orders for) troops that will go and we are identifying the specific ones,&#8221; Mattis told reporters on Thursday, adding that the\u00a0members of Congress would be briefed before details are made public.<!--more--><\/p>\n<div>\n<table class=\"in-article-item video\" border=\"0\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>\n<div class=\"meta\">Taliban claims new deadly bombing after Trump unveiled strategy<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<p>Mattis declined to comment on how many more soldiers were included in the deployment orders.<\/p>\n<p>However, US officials told Reuters news agency that President\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/people\/donald-trump.html\" target=\"_self\">Donald Trump<\/a>\u00a0had given Mattis the authority to send about 4,000 additional troops to Afghanistan.<\/p>\n<p>Other officials, speaking to The Associated Press news agency, said the US will send about 3,900 more troops to the country.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It is more advisers, it is more enablers, fire support, for example,&#8221; Mattis said, adding that no additional troops had moved in yet.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s going to take a couple days,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<h2>Higher number of troops<\/h2>\n<p>Mattis&#8217; comments came a day after the Pentagon\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2017\/08\/reveals-higher-number-troops-afghanistan-170831050000418.html\" target=\"_self\">disclosed<\/a>\u00a0that US troop strength in Afghanistan had reached 11,000 soldiers &#8211; thousands more than it had previously stated.<\/p>\n<p>The undetermined increase in soldier figures will be in addition to the existing 11,000.<\/p>\n<p>After a months-long review of his Afghanistan policy, Trump committed the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/country\/united-states.html\" target=\"_self\">United States<\/a>\u00a0last week to an open-ended conflict in the country and promised a stepped-up campaign against Afghan\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/organisations\/taliban.html\" target=\"_self\">Taliban<\/a>\u00a0fighters.<\/p>\n<p>The security situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated for the US and Afghan government over the past few years.<\/p>\n<p>The Afghan government was assessed by the US military to control or influence almost 60 percent of Afghanistan\u2019s 407 districts as of February 20, a nearly 11 percentage-point decrease from the same time in 2016, according to data released by the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Aljazeera US Secretary of Defense James Mattis says he has signed orders to send additional soldiers to\u00a0Afghanistan, without specifying the size of the force. &#8220;Yes, I have signed orders but it is not complete. In other words, I have signed some of the (orders for) troops that will go and we are identifying the specific ones,&#8221; Mattis told reporters on&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/2017\/09\/05\/mqms-khawaja-izharul-hassan-survives-gun-attack-2\/\">Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=762"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":770,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762\/revisions\/770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}