In the run-up to November’s US election, a sub-plot of the Trump campaign will be his claimed success at “bringing our boys back”. And indeed there will have been substantial troop withdrawals from Afghanistan as well as a more modest drawdown in Iraq, although that will still involve a reduction from 5,200 to 3,500.
Some of the Iraqi changes are redeployments to neighbouring states but there has certainly been an overall decrease in Afghanistan, even if few figures are available about the thousands of private security personnel operating under various government contracts.
Although it will attract little attention in the strident and unstable weeks before the election, an awkward report to the UN Security Council coincides with Trump’s talk of success. According to a report in Military Times, the UN counter-terrorism chief Vladimir Voronkov told the Security Council that more than 10,000 ISIS paramilitaries remain active in Syria and Iraq “in small cells between the countries”, with others across the Sahel zone of Africa.
