President Joe Biden boosted the U.S. troop deployment to Afghanistan to ensure an “orderly and safe drawdown” as Taliban fighters expand their control of major cities and advance toward Kabul.
Biden’s authorization on Saturday adds about 1,000 U.S. personnel to the deployment of 3,000 Marines and soldiers announced this week and 1,000 troops already at the airport and the embassy in the Afghan capital, according to a defense official.
The goal is “to make sure we can have an orderly and safe drawdown of U.S. personnel and other allied personnel and an orderly and safe evacuation of Afghans who helped our troops during our mission and those at special risk from the Taliban advance,” the president said in a statement.
The fall of a series of major cities across Afghanistan in recent days has fueled bipartisan criticism in Washington of Biden’s plan surrounding the U.S. military drawdown by the end of August. U.S. officials have privately acknowledged shock at the swift pace of the Taliban’s advance.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said in a televised speech earlier Saturday that regrouping the country’s military, which has opted not to put up a fight in some cities and towns, was a top priority. He warned that Afghanistan is in serious danger of instability.
Ghani said he was in talks with world leaders as well as local politicians, but provided few details. He vowed not to abandon what he called the “achievements” of the past 20 years.
‘Political settlement’
Biden said he has asked Secretary of State Antony Blinken to support Ghani and other Afghan leaders “as they seek to prevent further bloodshed and pursue a political settlement.” Taliban representatives have been warned that any actions putting U.S. personnel at risk “will be met with a swift and strong U.S. military response.”
Taliban fighters have captured key provincial capitals across much of Afghanistan with dizzying speed in less than three weeks. The onslaught continued on Saturday, both close to Kabul and in remote regions bordering Pakistan.
Most foreign troops have already left and the remainder are set to exit by Aug. 31, as Biden follows through on former President Donald Trump’s promise to wind down America’s longest war.
The U.S., Canada, Germany, the U.K. and other countries have been preparing to pull their diplomats out as the security situation worsens. U.S. embassy staff in Kabul have been told to destroy sensitive material.
An estimated 19 of Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals are believed to have been captured by the Taliban over the last week, including Kandahar and Herat. More than half of the country’s rural hinterland is now under Taliban control and the fighting has reached the city of Maidan Shahr, about 25 miles southwest of Kabul.
Biden, who is spending the weekend at Camp David, again defended his decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan after 20 years.
“One more year, or five more years, of U.S. military presence would not have made a difference if the Afghan military cannot or will not hold its own country,” he said. “And an endless American presence in the middle of another country’s civil conflict was not acceptable to me.”
