Biden meets with leaders of Afghanistan as concerns loom over U.S. troop withdrawal

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden met Friday at the White House with Afghanistan’s president and the leader of the country’s peace process, urging unity between the former political foes as U.S. forces withdraw from the country amid fears that its government could fall to a resurgent Taliban within months.

The meeting with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, the chairman of Afghanistan’s High Council for National Reconciliation, came a day after the Biden administration said it would evacuate tens of thousands of Afghans who face retaliation for aiding the U.S. government’s two-decade war in the Central Asian country.

“Our troops may be leaving, but support for Afghanistan is not ending,” Biden said Friday.

Biden announced in April U.S. troops would leave Afghanistan by Sept. 11, a symbolic deadline that falls 20 years after the attacks launched from the country by al-Qaida terrorists sheltered by the Taliban, an Islamist militant group that ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until it was toppled by a U.S.-led invasion in late 2001.

Despite a withdrawal agreement the Trump administration struck with the Taliban in February 2020, the Biden administration announced Thursday it would keep about 650 troops in the country to protect the U.S. diplomatic presence.

The Taliban has steadily gained ground in recent months, and The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that a U.S. intelligence assessment concluded the Afghan government could fall to the militant group within six months of the U.S. withdrawal.

“President Biden’s decision has been historic,” Ghani said while sitting next to Biden in the Oval Office. “It has made everybody recalculate and reconsider. We are here to respect it and support it.”