When do us troops leave afghanistan

In a statement he made following the completion of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, he added that the US will continue 'relentless efforts' to help Americans, Afghans, others to leave Afghanistan if they choose to. Biden's statement praised the military for carrying out the evacuation of final US troops, diplomats, and nearly all Americans, as well as tens of thousands of Afghan allies who worked for or fought alongside international forces in the war.

The Taliban seized most of the country in a matter of days earlier this month. Thousands of troops had spent a harrowing two weeks protecting a hurried and risky airlift of tens of thousands of Afghans, Americans and others seeking to escape a country once again ruled by Taliban militants.

In announcing the completion of the evacuation and war effort. Frank McKenzie, head of U. Central Command, said the last planes took off from Kabul airport at p. Washington time, or one minute before midnight in Kabul. The airport had become a U. The closing hours of the evacuation were marked by extraordinary drama. A suicide bombing on Aug. Keeping the airport open after foreign forces hand over control is vital not just for Afghanistan to stay connected to the world but also to maintain aid supplies and operations.

The United States has said it does not plan to leave diplomats behind in Afghanistan and will decide on what to do in the future based on the Taliban's actions. But the Biden administration will have to determine how it is able to ensure a humanitarian and economic crisis does not break out in the country. The United Natinos says more than 18 million people - over half Afghanistan's population - require aid and half of all Afghan children under 5 already suffer from acute malnutrition amid the second drought in four years.

Some countries including Britain have said that no nation should bilaterally recognize the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan. The one area of cooperation between the United States and Taliban could be on the threat posed by Islamic State militants. There are questions about how Washington and the Taliban can coordinate and potentially even share information to counter the group.

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Learn more and compare subscriptions content expands above. Full Terms and Conditions apply to all Subscriptions. The United States must hold to its promise that every American citizen, permanent resident, and special immigrant visa SIV applicant who wants to leave Afghanistan can do so.

Until then, this mission is not complete, but rather it is a failed mission. American citizens, legal permanent residents, and SIV applicants are located all over the country, with the largest non-Kabul cohorts located in Herat, Kandahar, Mazar-i-Sharif, and Jalalabad.

Furthermore, some Afghans have already begun traveling north—Uzbekistan should gear up for a flood of refugees. Nongovernmental organizations, the United States, and European allies should help Afghans as they evacuate north by harnessing commercially available imagery to plot safe routes away from Taliban-concentrated areas, navigate the routes, and plan for difficult circumstances like weather events.

It is perhaps time to consider a blue helmet-like role for the international community in Afghanistan. History will also judge our inaction and lack of compassion. How would we wish to be remembered? Even before the US-led NATO invasion in seeking to oust al-Qaeda from its base of operations in Afghanistan, the United States and the international community have tried to split the Taliban and al-Qaeda, to little apparent avail.

Abandoning any pretense of nation-building in Afghanistan, US and Western security interests now focus on two key goals: 1 prevent the country from becoming a safe-haven for al-Qaeda and other terror groups intent on striking the West, and 2 protect human rights and civil liberties from the predilections of the ruling Taliban.

Military intervention will not be a credible point of leverage for the foreseeable future, which means that the United States must resort to a soft-power approach to pursue those goals. The United States has dangled recognition—and the international aid that represents around half of the economy—as a reward for the Taliban governing responsibly. The stick to that carrot is the renewed use of sanctions. Washington must move quickly now that troops are safely gone to assert the full scope of the UN-mandated asset freeze and full reach of US sanctions authorities to give it much-needed leverage over the Taliban and thwart efforts by Beijing and Moscow to play spoiler.

Speed is of the essence if the United States is to preserve any gains from the last twenty years of war. Before August 29, no one agency was in charge on the civilian side. The Department of State issues visas. DHS admits those who pass through the gauntlet of reviews.

This civilian effort was quietly ramped up in mid-July , but it should have been significantly ramped up in February when President Donald Trump agreed with the Taliban to pull US forces out of Afghanistan in fourteen months. Instead, the Trump administration deliberately slowed down SIV processing.

Efforts could have been ramped up when President Joe Biden in April set withdrawal for the end of August. The US government needs now to commit the people and resources necessary to clear the number of SIV and refugee cases by a reasonable but ambitious target—say, 95 percent of the cases by the end of the year. Congress should approve money for overtime and for bringing back retired homeland security, intelligence, and military personnel to clear this backlog.

The United States needs to honor its debt to those Afghans who risked their lives for the United States by reviewing their claims, thoroughly and fairly, before the end of this year. Previously he was the deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism policy at the US Department of Homeland Security. The complacent and haphazard withdrawal from Afghanistan impacts US interests, increases the threat against Americans, and puts our security cooperation relationships at risk.

In turn, US and European national security and economic security will incur new risks beyond transregional terrorism. For NATO to invoke Article 5 for the very first time in history was not just a treaty obligation, it was also a manifestation of trust and an affirmation of the integrity of American security cooperation.

Now, nearly twenty years later, the debacle in Kabul, including the tragic recent deaths of Americans, further stress-tests the integrity of American security cooperation, but concurrently highlights the blunt necessity of staying the course on security cooperation.

Well before August 16, foreign partners were already questioning the reliability of America at a time where the debate in Washington about our global posture along with security assistance and arms-transfers policies appears to be more politicized for domestic posture.

The changes over the past weeks have been dramatic. Taliban militants—who still have close ties to al-Qaeda and other transnational terrorist groups—now control Afghanistan.

The withdrawal of US and other troops has left the country without a government or political system, its population without protection, as well as an ingrained economic and humanitarian crisis. When combined with dire socioeconomic conditions and a gaping power vacuum, the recent Kabul airport attack created conditions that are ripe for insurgency.

US diplomatic efforts must also address the economic and humanitarian crises. With China, Russia, and Iran poised to build closer relationships with the Taliban, it is crucial that Washington start a new phase in its relationship with Afghanistan. But other governments might worry that the United States could pursue actions that demoralize their armed forces—as occurred when the White House struck a deal with the Taliban without the participation of the Kabul government.

But its first responsibility should be to strengthen democracy and human rights at home and to ensure that Afghan refugees are properly welcomed, so that they can become productive citizens.

To American allies in Europe, the Afghanistan debacle came as a shock following the Nord Stream 2-related decision by the Biden administration. Europeans are angry; in both cases, they were left in the dark while the consequences are owned together. The anger is justified—but beware of those who want to use this temporary short-circuit in the transatlantic relationship to push for a decoupling from America.