highly symbolic date. Joe Biden’s government announced on Tuesday April 13 that all US troops would leave Afghanistan “unconditionally” by September 11, the day of the 20th.e anniversary of the 2001 attacks in the United States, despite fears of a comeback by the Taliban. The American president had warned that it would be “difficult” to meet the deadline of 1is May scheduled for withdrawal in an agreement made by his predecessor Donald Trump with the insurgents.
By postponing the deadline by more than four months, he provoked the ire of the latter. “Until all foreign forces have completed their withdrawal from our country, we will not participate in any conference supposed to make decisions on Afghanistan,” tweeted Taliban spokesman in Qatar, Mohammad Naeem, as the Turkey had just announced the holding of “high level” peace talks from April 24 to May 4 in Istanbul.
A country still undermined by violence
“We will begin an orderly withdrawal of the remaining forces before the 1is May and plan to have all US troops out of the country by the 20e anniversary of September 11, “had previously declared an American official, assuring that this departure would be” coordinated “and simultaneous with that of the other NATO forces. “We have told the Taliban, without the slightest ambiguity, that we will respond forcefully to any attack on American soldiers while we make an orderly and safe withdrawal,” added the official. Afghan rebels recently threatened to retaliate with force if the deadline of 1is May.
Despite the 2020 US-Taliban agreement, violence remains very high on the ground between insurgents and Afghan forces. In a letter to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Antony Blinken recently warned that an American withdrawal could lead to “rapid territorial gains” from the Taliban. And American intelligence estimated, in a report published Tuesday, that the Afghan government would “struggle to resist” if the international coalition withdraws.The United States intervened in Afghanistan in the wake of the attacks on the New York Twin Towers and the Pentagon. They ousted the Taliban from power in Kabul, accused of having hosted the jihadist group Al-Qaeda responsible for the attacks, but then got bogged down.
America’s longest war
At the height of their presence, some 100,000 American troops were deployed in the country in 2010-2011. Former President Barack Obama had reduced these numbers to 8,400 men, then his successor Donald Trump continued the withdrawal: there are only 2,500 American soldiers left in Afghanistan. To end the longest war of the United States, which killed more than 2,000 American soldiers, the Trump administration had in fact concluded in February 2020 in Doha, in Qatar, a historic agreement with the Taliban. It provided for the withdrawal of all American and foreign forces before 1is next May, provided that the insurgents in the future prevent any terrorist group from operating from the Afghan territories they control.
The Taliban were also due to enter into unprecedented direct peace negotiations with the government in Kabul. These talks, which have stalled since their opening in September, were to be relaunched by the Istanbul conference. But an absence of the Taliban would translate into a new impasse.The American official nevertheless warned that the withdrawal decided by Joe Biden, who is to speak Wednesday from the White House on this emblematic issue, would be “unconditional”. “The president felt that a conditional approach, as has been the case over the past two decades, was the recipe for staying in Afghanistan for life,” he said.
“Put an end to endless wars”
Like Donald Trump, and in unison with American opinion increasingly weary of murderous and costly interventions halfway around the world, Joe Biden has pledged to “end America’s endless wars” . But he had raised, during the campaign for the presidential election in November, the possibility of maintaining a small counter-terrorist contingent in Afghanistan. Finally, it is no longer in question. Counterterrorism forces will be redeployed out of the country and the only US military presence there after 9/11 will be dedicated to the protection of US diplomats, said the official, who detailed the president’s position to reporters. He nevertheless promised that the US government would use “all diplomatic means” at its disposal to “preserve” advances in the rights of Afghan women. A return of the Taliban to power has raised the specter of the time when, from 1996 to 2001, they imposed their fundamentalist vision of religion by prohibiting women from studying and working.
The American political class was divided over the announcement of the withdrawal. Most Democrats as well as several Trumpist tenors have welcomed the long-awaited return of the soldiers “home”. But others, on both sides, deplored a “premature” departure. “Withdrawing US forces from Afghanistan in a hurry is a big mistake. This amounts to beating a retreat in the face of an enemy who has not been defeated, and it is an abdication of the American leadership, ”denounced the leader of the Republicans in the Senate, Mitch McConnell.
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