The Taliban could largely retake Afghanistan within two or three years if American troops leave without the warring sides reaching a power-sharing deal, intelligence agencies have told US President Joe Biden.
A rushed US exit from Afghanistan without finalized peace terms between Taliban insurgents and the Kabul government could end bitterly, American intelligence agencies have warned.
The New York Times on Saturday reported that US President Joe Biden has been told that the Taliban could overrun most of the war-ravaged country within a couple of years and would potentially allow al-Qaida to regroup.
The intelligence assessment was originally compiled last year for the Trump administration.
Some 7,000 international troops, including 3,500 US soldiers, remain in Afghanistan — 20 years after the US-led invasion — with the Taliban warning it will resume attacks if the foreign troops do not depart by May 1.
That deadline was part of a Trump-Taliban agreement signed in Doha, Qatar last year.
However, talks are still dragging on between envoys of the Sunni Muslim insurgents and the Kabul government of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.
Taliban made peace promises
Last year, the Taliban vowed that if all US and international forces were withdrawn by May it would enter into such intra-Afghan peace talks and cut ties with al-Qaida.
At his first White House news conference on Thursday, Biden said it would be hard to comply with that deadline, although he “could not picture” US troops still being present next year.
“We will leave. The question is when we leave,” said Biden.
The New York Times said Biden’s officials were “jockeying” to influence the new president and his defense secretary, Lloyd Austin.
Austin, visiting Kabul last weekend, said only that America wanted a “responsible end” to Afghanistan’s decadeslong warfare.
And at the United Nations earlier this week, US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield warned that gains for Afghan woman, girls and health care would not be sacrificed.
“We will not give an inch on this point,” she told the Security Council, echoing a key point in the US intelligence report.
Briefing the US Senate, General Richard Clarke, the head of US Special Operations Command, said capabilities provided to Afghan government forces were “critical to their success.”
