A top US commander of military forces in Afghanistan has indicated that ‘local action’ has begun as part of the planned withdrawal of foreign troops from the country, just two weeks after US President Joe Biden announced all US forces would leave by September 11.
Yesterday, US Army General Scott Miller announced that foreign military bases would be gradually handed over to Afghan forces as plans to leave continues.
‘All our forces are now preparing to retrograde. Officially the notification date will be the 1st of May, but at the same time as we start taking local actions, we have already begun that,‘ said Miller, who has been in Charge of commanding US forces and the NATO Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan since 2018.
‘As we retrograde to zero US forces, we will turn over the (military) bases primarily to the (Afghan) Ministry of Defense and other Afghan forces,’ he told reporters in the capital, Kabul.
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US president Biden, had earlier framed his plan to withdraw some 2,500 remaining US troops from Afghanistan by September 11, the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in New York City and Washington, DC, around a need to end the US’s longest war.
‘I am now the fourth American president to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistan,” Biden said on April 14. “I will not pass this responsibility to a fifth.’
The US president nevertheless pushed back a May 1 deadline for the US troop withdrawal that was reached by his predecessor, Donald Trump, and the Taliban during negotiations last year.
After Biden’s announcement, the Taliban reiterated its call for all foreign forces to leave Afghanistan by May 1, the date stipulated in the group’s so-called Doha agreement with the Trump administration.
‘The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan seeks the withdrawal of all foreign forces from our homeland on the date specified in the Doha Agreement,’ Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid wrote on Twitter.
‘If the agreement is breached and foreign forces fail to exit the country on the specified date, problems will certainly be compounded and those who failed to comply with the agreement will be held responsible,’ Mujahid added.
AFRICA TODAY NEWS, NEW YORK