United States President Joe Biden will leave US troops in Afghanistan past the current May 1 deadline but will withdraw them by September 11, US officials said on Tuesday.
“After a rigorous policy review, President Biden has decided to draw down the remaining troops in Afghanistan and finally end the US war there after 20 years,” a senior administration official told reporters.
The new withdrawal date will coincide with the 20th anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States carried out by al-Qaeda.
Biden, who will lay out his plan during a speech on Wednesday, has been signalling that he would likely miss the May 1 deadline negotiated by the Donald Trump administration and the Taliban as it became clear that withdrawing the remaining 2,500 troops would be difficult and potentially unsafe.
The senior Biden administration official stressed that the pullout would not be subject to further conditions.
As officials disclosed Biden’s pullout plans, the US intelligence community renewed deep concerns on Tuesday about the outlook for the US-backed government in Kabul, which has struggled against a resurgent Taliban.
“Kabul continues to face setbacks on the battlefield, and the Taliban is confident it can achieve military victory.”
It remains unclear how Biden’s move would affect a planned 10-day summit about Afghanistan starting on April 24 in the Turkish city of Istanbul that is due to include the United Nations and Qatar.
The Taliban, which was ousted from power in 2001 by US-led forces, said it would not take part in any talks that would make decisions about Afghanistan until all foreign forces had left the country, including the Turkey the summit.❐
