Austin visits A’stan with pullout in doubt

Lloyd Austin made his first trip to Afghanistan as defense secretary on Sunday amid questions about how long US troops will remain in the war-torn country.

Austin (right) arrived in Kabul from India and later met with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and other top officials.

Former President Donald Trump negotiated a May 1 pullout with Taliban forces, but President Biden is considering delaying that deadline until November.

“Biden wants out,” a person familiar with the discussions told The Associated Press. “Look, you own this now, Mr. President, and we can’t guarantee you what will happen if we just precipitously pull everyone out,” the person said, adding that the Taliban haven’t lived up to their agreements.

Among Biden’s options to extricate America from its longest war are pulling troops out on or before May 1, keeping the military stationed there indefinitely or for a period the president defines — a sixmonth extension, the report said.

Biden called the May 1 deadline “tough” in an interview last week with ABC News but said any extension won’t be a “lot longer.”

“That was not a very solidly negotiated deal that the president, the former president worked out,” Biden said. “We’re in consultation with our allies as well as the government, and that decision is in process now.”

The president said he is talking to US allies about the troop withdrawal.

There are more than 2,500 US military members in Afghanistan and about 7,000 NATO troops that rely on the US for logistics and security support.