U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin speaks to Department of Defense personnel during a visit by U.S. President Joe Biden to the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, Feb. 10, 2021.
Carlos Barria | Reuters
WASHINGTON – Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told Pentagon reporters on Friday that the Biden administration had not yet decided whether the United States would withdraw its troops by the May 1 deadline.
Last February, the United States struck a deal with the Taliban that would usher in a permanent ceasefire and further reduce the U.S. military’s footprint from about 13,000 troops to 8,600 by mid-July last year.
Under the deal, all foreign troops would leave the war-weary country by May 2021. There are currently about 2,500 US troops in the country.
“I urge all sides to take the path to peace. Violence must diminish now,” Austin said in his first press conference with reporters.
“I have told our allies that, whatever the outcome of our review, the United States will not be hasty or disorderly withdrawing from Afghanistan,” he said referring to this week’s virtual NATO rallies.
“There will be no surprises. We will confer, confer and decide and act together,” Austin said of the NATO-led mission.
A day earlier, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance will continue to assess the situation on the ground in Afghanistan. NATO joined the international security efforts in Afghanistan in 2003 and currently has more than 7,000 troops in the country.
“Our goal is to ensure that we have a lasting political agreement that allows us to leave in a way that does not undermine our primary purpose and that is to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven again. [for terrorists], ” Said Stoltenberg.
“The majority of the troops come from European allies and partner countries. We will do whatever it takes to make sure our troops are safe,” he said when asked if the alliance was prepared for violence if the agreement with the Taliban is broken.
Members of the Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team leave to conduct an equipment survey at a Ministry of Works facility in Afghanistan on Aug. 8.
Photo: Photo of the United States Air Force by Staff Sgt. Timothy Chacon | Flickr CC
On Capitol Hill, bipartisan lawmakers on Friday pressured a panel of experts who recommended that the United States not reduce its military presence in Afghanistan.
“Since the US war in Afghanistan began nearly 20 years ago, more than 775,000 of our brave men and women in uniform have been deployed to Afghanistan. More than 2,400 have made the ultimate sacrifice and another 20,000 have been injured,” said Rep. Stephen Lynch. , chair of the Oversight and Reform subcommittee on national security, said in his opening statement.
Nearly 20 years of US involvement in Afghanistan could well be defined by the next three to six months. Probably with profound implications for US national security and the future stability of the region, ”he added.
The panel wrote in a report released earlier this month that US forces needed to keep troops in the war-torn country “to give the peace process enough time to reach an acceptable outcome.”
Read more: Biden must keep US troops in Afghanistan beyond the May deadline, study group says
The recommendations of the Afghanistan Study Group, a bipartisan congressional-mandated panel under the United States Institute of Peace, come as the Biden administration is reviewing its military position in the region.
“At what point is enough, enough for American involvement in this region?” Louisiana Congressman Clay Higgins asked. “If it takes a US military force, why does it need real boots on the floor?”
Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford, who is a co-chair of the Afghanistan Study Group, said US intelligence would deteriorate if the military withdrew from the country.
“ To be effective in doing counter-terrorism, you have to create an ecosystem, if you will, of intelligence and we wouldn’t have the networks available to us from an intelligence perspective, we wouldn’t have the platform available, that’s the systems that would allow us to collect that intelligence, and we wouldn’t be able to strike quickly with the resources needed to destroy terrorists once the intelligence has developed their location, ” said Dunford, a retired four-star general from the Navy, against legislators.
“So, if we were doing it from outside Afghanistan, you just had a geometry problem and a responsiveness problem, you wouldn’t be that effective,” he added.
The wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria have cost US taxpayers more than $ 1.57 trillion since September 11, 2001, according to a report by the Department of Defense. The war in Afghanistan, now America’s longest conflict, began 19 years ago and cost US taxpayers $ 193 billion, according to the Pentagon.