Senior US official former Marine quits Afghanistan

Children in war-torn Afghanistan.

WASHINGTON -- Matthew Hoh, the senior state department official in Afghanistan's Zabul province, said in a resignation letter just released that he had "lost understanding of, and confidence in, the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan".

Hoh, a former Marine Corps captain who fought in Iraq, also turned down a senior staff-level job at the US embassy in Kabul after he gave in his resignation.

He was then called to Washington to meet Richard Holbrooke, the US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"We took his letter very seriously, because he was a good officer," Holbrooke said.

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- adapted from Al Jazeera