President Biden set an end-of-August deadline for fully withdrawing U.S. combat forces from Afghanistan. But the decision to send 3,000 U.S. troops to help evacuate the U.S. Embassy in Kabul calls into question whether Biden can meet that deadline.
The last-minute decision to re-insert thousands of U.S. troops into Afghanistan reflects the dire state of security and calls into question whether President Joe Biden will meet his Aug. 31 deadline for fully withdrawing combat forces.
Biden had given the Pentagon until Aug. 31 to complete the withdrawal of the 2,500 to 3,000 troops that were in Afghanistan when he announced in April that he was ending U.S. involvement in the war. That number has dropped to just under 1,000, and all but about 650 are scheduled to be gone by the end of the month; the 650 are to remain to help protect the U.S. diplomatic presence, including with aircraft and defensive weapons at the Kabul airport.
Kirby declined on Friday to discuss any assessment of whether the Taliban are likely soon to converge on Kabul, but the urgent movement of extra U.S. troops into Afghanistan to assist the embassy drawdown is clear evidence of Washington’s worry that after the rapid fall of major cities this week with relatively little Afghan government resistance, Kabul is endangered.
“The message that sent to Afghans is: ‘The city of Kabul is going to fall so fast that we can’t organize an orderly withdrawal from the embassy,’” Biddle said. This suggests to Afghans that the Americans see little future for the government and that “this place could be toast within hours.”
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