Pentagon Starts Deployment of Additional Units to Afghanistan

Several weeks since President Donald Trump had unveiled the new US strategy for Afghanistan, the US military started the deployment of additional units to the country.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The process of deploying additional military units to Afghanistan is underway, US Department of Defense spokesperson Rob Manning said in a briefing on Friday.

"He [Mattis] has signed deployment orders and units have begun deploying," Manning told reporters.

However, the final number of troops is still being finalized.

The deployment comes less than a month after US President Donald Trump unveiled a new US' Afghanistan strategy in August. The president's plan presupposes, among other provisions, the expansion of the US military authority in the country. The United States, however, will not publicly announce any future military action plans in Afghanistan.

The US war in Afghanistan is the longest war the country has ever been engaged in: there has been a US military presence in the Central Asian country for nearly 16 years. Armed conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have also been “the most expensive wars in US history,” according to Linda Bilmes of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, who estimated in 2013 that $4 to $6 trillion in expenses had been racked up over the course of the conflicts.