15 October 2015
15:53 - Obama has decided to increase the number of troops that will remain in Afghanistan, but according to Abdulrahim Polat it is not a solution to the main problem
Today President Barack Obama announced his new decision related to the number of U.S. troops that would be in Afghanistan after 2016.

The number of U.S. and other NATO allied troops was more than 100,000 in Afghanistan before 2010, and this number was sharply reduced to 10,000 in recent years. This was well-known to everyone, because USA and NATO officials announced this at the time. Additionally, it was well known that President Barack Obama planned to reduce the number of US troops in Afghanistan to 1000 after 2016.

There is no doubt that the U.S. and the West in general believed that they actually defeated Islamist terrorism in Afghanistan and it would come to a complete end in the near future. So they planned to slowly and completely withdraw from Afghanistan.

But today President Barack Obama announced that he has changed his mind concerning the number of U.S. troops remaining in Afghanistan after 2016 and said that it will be not less than 5500. The troops will be located in the US military base at Bagram, near Kabul, and in the cities of Jalalabad and Kandahar.

Without a doubt, this decision was because of sharp increased of activity Taliban in Afghanistan after unexpected appearance of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

But at the same time, U.S. leaders have started to pay real attention to the statements of the leader of "Birlik" Abdulrahim Poat about the impossibility to defeat Islamic terrorism at the root if the religion of Islam does not recognize the principle of secularism. As known, Abdulrahim Polat in early 2015 wrote a letter to President Barack Obama about it. And recently in a speech at the UN General Assembly, U.S. President Barack Obama first unveiled what Abdulrahim Polat wrote and said: “It is impossible to defeat Islamic terrorism only by force.”

Even more important is that Barack Obama at UN speech announced words of Abdurakhim Polat “The roots of islamic terrorism are in the religion of Islam itself, so it's not going to end Islamic terrorism until Islam does not recognize the principle of secularism” in a slightly different form. He said: "Muslims must explain to everyone themselves that “Islam" and "Islamic terrorism" is not the same ones."

Because President Barack Obama is not a Muslim, there is the possibility that some Islamists or other Muslims may accuse him in interfering to religion of Islam. Therefore, taking this into account it seems that Obama stated the words of Abdurakhim Polat in more abstract form.

However, Abdulrahim Polat says that making fundamental reforms of the religion of Islam itself and to accept principles of secularism by Islam will not be easy and this would require a long time. The only way to accelerate it is to involve all, including West, in this difficult matter. That's exactly what Abdurahim Polat mentioned as the goal and main offer in the letter to President Barak Obama. No one can stand against it because of significant numbers of Muslims in Western countries already.