(MENAFN- Trend News Agency) The administration of former US President Donald Trump drafted
no clear plan for withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and is
therefore responsible for mistakes committed by his successor Joe
Biden in 2021, the White House said in a report, published on
Thursday, trend reports citing tass .
The administration will hand over a classified version of the
document to the US Congress.
"President Biden's choices for how to execute a withdrawal from
Afghanistan were severely constrained by conditions created by his
predecessor," the document says.
According to the report, when Trump took office in 2017, there
were more than 10,000 US troops in Afghanistan. By the end of his
presidential term, their number was reduced to 2,500.
"During the transition from the Trump Administration to the
Biden Administration, the outgoing Administration provided no plans
for how to conduct the final withdrawal or to evacuate Americans
and Afghan allies," the document says. "Indeed, there were no such
plans in place when President Biden came into office, even with the
agreed upon full withdrawal just over three months away."
"As a result, when President Biden took office on January 20,
2021, the Taliban were in the strongest military position that they
had been in since 2001, controlling or contesting nearly half of
the country. At the same time, the United States had only 2,500
troops on the ground, the lowest number of troops in Afghanistan
since 2001," the report continues.
It refers to intelligence reports indicating that Taliban would
have resumed its attacks on US and its allies if troops had not
been withdrawn by May 2021.
In the White House's opinion, further presence of US troops in
Afghanistan would not change the situation in any way, so their
withdrawal was imminent.
"Ultimately, after more than twenty years, more than $2 trillion
dollars, and standing up an Afghan army of 300,000 soldiers, the
speed and ease with which the Taliban took control of Afghanistan
suggests that there was no scenario - except a permanent and
significantly expanded US military presence - that would have
changed the trajectory," the report says.
Comments
No comment