President Joe Biden will end America’s war in Afghanistan with a phased withdrawal of the remaining U.S. troops there that will conclude by Sept. 11 — the 20th anniversary of the conflict, a senior administration official said Tuesday.
The United States maintains some 2,500 troops and another 1,000 special forces in Afghanistan, working to root out terrorists and train Afghan security forces. NATO and partner forces provide another 7,000 troops and had been waiting for a U.S. decision to plan their own withdrawal or extension. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken are set to meet with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg Wednesday in Brussels to discuss the plans.
Biden’s decision will break a peace agreement signed between the Trump administration and the Taliban that required the full U.S. troop withdrawal by May 1.
“We believe we achieved that objective some years ago … at a level that we can address it without a persistent military footprint in the country,” the senior White House official said Tuesday of the initial U.S. mission in the country to drive out al Qaeda elements there that planned the 9/11 attack.
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“We have … no military solution to the problems plaguing Afghanistan,” the official told reporters on an afternoon call, noting the Biden administration will shift its focus to supporting a diplomatic solution.
“What we will not do is use our troops as bargaining troops in that process,” the official said. The withdrawal will begin before May 1 and end before Sept. 11. Any attacks by the Taliban on U.S. or coalition troops will be met by “a forceful response,” he warned. The plan has already been discussed with NATO partners. “We are not taking our eye off the terrorist threat or signs of al Qaeda’s resurgence.”
Yet, the official also revealed this about the U.S. assessment of its former top extremist foe: “They do not possess an external plotting capability.”
“We need to have the intelligence and military capability positioned in the region. … If the al Qaeda external plotting threat begins to reemerge, we deal with it. We deal with it directly, and we deal with it by holding the Taliban accountable,” the official said. “We think we can do that in a way that we think applies and allocates sufficient resources to that threat while also staying focused on the terrorist threat in multiple other countries where al Qaeda and ISIS capabilities have advanced considerably since we began in 2001.”
In its first threat assessment report in two years, all U.S. intelligence agencies warned that the government in Kabul remains too weak to operate successfully without U.S. and coalition backing.
“We assess that prospects for a peace deal will remain low during the next year. The Taliban is likely to make gains on the battlefield, and the Afghan Government will struggle to hold the Taliban at bay if the coalition withdraws support,” the intel report said.
The Taliban has promised it will attack U.S. and coalition troops in the country if the peace agreement is not adhered to. Despite rising violence in Afghanistan over the past year, and threats to the stability of the Afghan government, the Taliban has largely refrained from directly attacking U.S. and coalition forces in accordance with the agreement. No Americans have been killed since the Doha Accord was inked in February 2020.
A decision on Afghanistan has long been expected, with Biden recently saying it would be hard to meet the May 1 deadline for logistical and other reasons, but he added he could not see American troops there come 2022.
More than 2,600 Americans have lost their lives in Afghanistan since the start of the conflict, just days after al Qaeda flew hijacked planes into the twin towers in New York and the Pentagon. A fourth plane failed to reach its target and crashed in rural Pennsylvania. The Taliban provided al Qaeda with operational support for the attacks, and the U.S. objective in Afghanistan was to remove that support.
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So far, it has not. The Taliban is believed to still harbor support for al Qaeda.
