Pulling troops out
Biden to withdraw all combat troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11.
President Joe Biden will withdraw U.S. combat troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, declaring an end to the nation’s longest war and overruling warnings from his military advisers that the departure could prompt a resurgence of the same terrorist threats that sent hundreds of thousands of troops into combat over the past 20 years.
In rejecting the Pentagon’s push to remain until Afghan security forces can assert themselves against the Taliban, Biden forcibly stamped his views on a policy he has long debated but never controlled. Now, after years of arguing against an extended American military presence in Afghanistan, the president is doing things his way, with the deadline set for the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks.
A senior Biden administration official said the president had come to believe that a “conditions-based approach” would mean that U.S. troops would never leave the country. The announcement is expected Wednesday.
Biden’s decision would pull all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan 20 years after President George W. Bush ordered an invasion after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York City and the Pentagon, with the goal of punishing Osama bin Laden and his followers in al- Qaida, who were sheltered in Afghanistan by their Taliban hosts.
The war was launched with widespread international support — but it became the same long, bloody, unpopular slog that forced the British to withdraw from Afghanistan in the 19th century and the Soviet Union to retreat in the 20th.
Nearly 2,400 U.S. troops have died in Afghanistan in a conflict that has cost about $2 trillion.
Biden’s Democratic supporters in Congress praised the withdrawal, even as Republicans said it would risk American security.
“The U.S. went into Afghanistan in 2001 to defeat those who attacked the U.S. on 9/11,” Sen. Tim Kaine, D -Va., said in a statement. “It is now time to bring our troops home, maintain humanitarian and diplomatic support for a partner nation, and refocus American national security on the most pressing challenges we face.”
Jon Soltz, an Iraq War veteran and chairman of the progressive veterans group Votevets, said that “words cannot adequately express how huge this is for troops and military families, who have weathered deployment after deployment, with no end in sight, for the better part of two decades.”
But Biden’s decision drew fire from Republicans.
“This is a reckless and dangerous decision,” said Sen. James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee. “Arbitrary deadlines would likely put our troops in danger, jeopardize all the progress we’ve made, and lead to civil war in Afghanistan — and create a breeding ground for international terrorists.”
President Donald Trump had set a withdrawal deadline for May 1, but he was known for announcing, and reversing, a number of significant foreign policy decisions, and Pentagon officials continued to press for a delay. Biden, who has long been skeptical of the Afghan deployment, spent his first three months in office assessing that timeline.
The Afghan central government is unable to halt Taliban advances, and American officials offer a grim assessment of prospects for peace in the country. Still, American intelligence agencies say they do not believe al- Qaida or other terrorist groups pose an immediate threat to strike the U.S. from Afghanistan. That assessment has been critical to the Biden administration as it decided to withdraw most of the remaining forces from the country.
A senior administration official said the troop withdrawal would begin before May 1 and conclude before the symbolic date of Sept. 11. Any attacks on withdrawing NATO troops, the official said, would be met with a forceful response.
Taliban leaders have long pledged that any breach of the deadline means that their forces will again attack U.S. and coalition troops. Under a withdrawal deal negotiated during the Trump administration, the Taliban mostly stopped those attacks — but in past weeks, they have rocketed U.S. bases in Afghanistan’s south and east.
In public statements Tuesday, Taliban leaders focused not on Biden’s decision for a full withdrawal — leaving behind a weak central government that has proved incapable of halting insurgent advances around the country — but rather on the fact that the administration was going to miss the May 1 deadline. “We are not agreeing with delay after May 1,” Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, said on local television. “Any delay after May 1 is not acceptable for us.”
Biden administration officials said that the United States would reposition U.S. troops in the region to keep an eye on Afghanistan and on the Taliban, and would hold the Taliban to a commitment that there would not be a re-emergence of a terrorist threat on American or Western interests from Afghanistan. But it was unclear what that meant or how far those repositioned forces would go to protect, for example, the fragile Afghan government or Afghan national security forces.
Biden administration officials said that some troops would remain in the country to protect the American diplomatic presence in Afghanistan, a standard practice.
It is unclear how the administration will fulfill its pledge to prevent al- Qaida from establishing a larger presence in the country — and possibly use it once again as a haven to launch attacks against the United States — if the Taliban do not honor their promise to sever ties with the terrorist organization.