NATO agrees to pull its troops
Following U.S. lead, organization plans on “orderly withdrawal”
Following the news that the United States was pulling all its troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, NATO’S foreign and defense ministers agreed Wednesday to begin withdrawing NATO forces on May 1 and finish “within a few months,” the alliance said in a statement.
The withdrawal will be “orderly, coordinated and deliberate,’’ the statement said, adding: “Any Taliban attacks on allied troops during this withdrawal will be met with a forceful response.”
The allies support efforts for “an Afghan-owned and Afghanled peace process,” the statement said, and called the withdrawal “the start of a new chapter.’’
At the moment, of the 9,600 NATO troops officially in Afghanistan, about 2,500 of them are American, though that number can be as many as 1,000 higher. The second-largest contingent is from Germany, with some 1,300 troops.
In a news conference after the meeting with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the NATO troop withdrawal by Sept. 11 did not mean an end to the U.S. commitment to Afghanistan, which would include aid and advice to the military and to the government. Today, he said, NATO “began to hammer out what ‘out together’ looks like.”
Austin said he fully supported President Joe Biden’s decision to leave, and he thanked NATO allies and U.S. troops for their sacrifices. “Our troops have accomplished the mission for which they were sent to Afghanistan to accomplish, and they have much to be proud of,” Austin said.
Earlier, speaking at NATO headquarters, Blinken insisted that the two-decade military mission in Afghanistan had been a success.
After the attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, “Together we went into Afghanistan to deal with those who attacked us and to make sure that Afghanistan would not again become a haven for terrorists who might attack any of us,” Blinken said.
“We have achieved the goals we set out to achieve,” he added. “Now it’s time to bring our forces home.”
In brief remarks, he limited those goals narrowly to antiterrorism, not mentioning the larger NATO efforts to liberate women, help girls to attend school and shift agriculture away from growing opium poppies.
Some current and former American officials agree that Afghanistan is not expected to emerge as a terrorist threat to the United States in the short term, but they say that the question is more difficult to assess in the long run.
The German defense minister, Annegret Kramp-karrenbauer, referring to NATO, told the German television station ARD on Wednesday: “We always said, ‘We’ll go in together, we’ll leave together.’ I am for an orderly withdrawal and that is why I assume that we will agree to that today.”
NATO allies had been waiting for Biden to decide on a withdrawal deadline and have had consultations with U.S. officials.