Afghanistan has ‘unprecedented’ opportunity for peace — US general

The top commander for US and NATO forces in Afghanistan says that warring parties now have an “unprecedented” opportunity for peace, and insisted President Donald Trump’s strategy for the beleaguered country is working.

General John Nicholson, the outgoing commander of NATO’s Resolute Support mission, speaks to Pentagon reporters a year after Trump unveiled his Afghanistan strategy, which increased the US troop presence and now includes a renewed push to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table.

“We have an unprecedented opportunity, or window of opportunity, for peace right now,” Nicholson says.

Despite a wave of violence that has rocked Afghanistan and its capital Kabul in recent weeks, killing scores of civilians and Afghan security forces, Nicholson said he was seeing signs of hope.

“There’s been progress on the peace process,” he says, pointing to a short ceasefire in June, the first since the US-led invasion in 2001 that toppled the Taliban regime.

— AFP