June 23, 2021
The Pentagon spokesman John Kirby stated that the US military could slow down its withdrawal from Afghanistan due to the gains made by the Taliban insurgents, on Monday.
Kirby clarified that President Joe Biden’s deadline of a full withdrawal by September remains in place, but added that the pace could be adjusted based on the situation on ground.
“The situation in Afghanistan changes as the Taliban continue to conduct these attacks and to raid district centers as well as the violence, which is still too high,” was Kirby’s statement according to international media reports.
“If there needs to be changes made to the pace, or to the scope and scale of the retrograde, on any given day or in any given week, we want to maintain the flexibility to do that,” he said. We’re constantly taking a look at this, every single day: what’s the situation on the ground, what capabilities do we have, what additional resources do we need to move out of Afghanistan and at what pace.” “All of these decisions are literally being made in real time,” he added.
Pentagon officials shared last week that the withdrawal, ordered by Biden in April after almost two decades of fighting al-Qaeda and helping government forces battle the Taliban, is now half completed.
At the time of Biden’s order around 2,500 US troops and 16,000 contractors, mostly US citizens, were in the country. The Pentagon has already turned over several of its key bases to government security forces, and has removed hundreds of cargo plane-loads of equipment.
Kirby expressed that the US forces will continue to support Afghan troops in fighting the Taliban, but the nature of support will be decided on the basis of the real-time security situation in the country.
© Center for Research and Security Studies (CRSS) and Afghan Studies Center (ASC), Islamabad.
