“President Biden will withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan over the coming months, people familiar with the plans said, completing the military exit by the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that first drew the United States into its longest war,” the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
According to the report, Biden is expected to announce his decision on Wednesday.
“This is the immediate, practical reality that our policy review discovered,” the person familiar with the deliberations said. “If we break the May 1st deadline negotiated by the previous administration with no clear plan to exit, we will be back at war with the Taliban, and that was not something President Biden believed was in the national interest.”
In early March, Blinken made a diplomatic effort to bring the Taliban and the Afghan government together to end the war with an interim power-sharing arrangement. He warned Ghani in a letter that time was growing short and said that the May 1 option was still on the table. However, since taking office, Biden has repeatedly mentioned the logistical difficulty of meeting the May 1 deadline for logistical reasons, and his administration has said the Trump-brokered agreement was under review.
Under the US-Taliban peace agreement signed on February 2020, all US forces stationed in Afghanistan must leave the country by May 1. But sources close to the Taliban have said that the Biden administration has asked the Taliban to agree on the presence of the US forces for another three or six months.
This comes as an UN-led conference on Afghanistan is expected to be held in Turkey on April 24.
