Addressing mediapersons, the White House had in the past week said that US President Joe Biden would not be okay if the Taliban ruled Afghanistan. The US and the Taliban reached an agreement in February 2020 that called for a permanent ceasefire, peace negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government, and a withdrawal of all foreign forces by May 1. There are about 2,500 US troops currently in the country. The Taliban had their ouster at the hands of US-led troops in 2001.
Now, at a crucial time in the Afghanistan war, President Joe Biden is facing a Catch-22 situation: He could withdraw all troops by May, as promised by his predecessor, and risk a resurgence of extremist dangers, or stay and possibly prolong the war in hopes of compelling the Taliban to make peace with a weak and fractured government. The second option may be the most likely, but no decision has been made.
Afghanistan presents one of the new administration's tougher and more urgent decisions. After the 20-year-old war, pulling out now could be seen as giving the Taliban too much leverage and casting a shadow over the sacrifices made by US and coalition troops and Afghan civilians. Biden has not commented in detail on Afghanistan since taking office, but he has a long history with the war. In 2009 as vice president, he lost an internal administration debate at a crucial juncture in the war; he argued for reducing the US military commitment to focus mainly on countering extremist groups, but Barack Obama decided instead to vastly increase troop numbers to 1,00,000.
The Obama strategy failed to force the Taliban to seek peace, and by the time Donald Trump entered the White House in January 2017 Obama had dropped the troop total to about 8,500. Trump increased it by several thousand later that year, and after his administration reached a conditional peace deal with the Taliban in February 2020, he began a withdrawal, including a reduction last month to the current total of 2,500. Biden said during the 2020 campaign that he might keep a counterterrorism force in Afghanistan but also would end the war responsibly to ensure U.S. forces never have to return.
"I would bring American combat troops in Afghanistan home during my first term," he wrote last summer in response to written questions from the Council on Foreign Relations, although the US mission there already shifted some years ago from combat to advising Afghan security forces.
The administration says it is studying the February 2020 so-called Doha deal in which the Taliban agreed to stop attacking US and coalition forces and to start peace talks with the Kabul government, among other things, in exchange for a complete withdrawal of foreign troops by May 1, 2021.
-Inputs from PTI
