Biden will withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, 2021

The decision, which Biden is expected to announce on Wednesday, will keep thousands of U.S. forces in the country beyond the May 1 exit deadline that the Trump administration negotiated last year with the Taliban, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters Tuesday under rules of anonymity set by the White House.

While the Taliban has vowed to renew attacks on U.S. and NATO personnel if foreign troops are not out by the deadline, they made no initial statement in response to the announcement, and it is not clear if the militants will follow through with the earlier threats given Biden's plan for a phased withdrawal between now and September.

Officially, there are 2,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, although the number fluctuates and is currently about 1,000 more than that. There are also up to an additional 7,000 foreign forces in the coalition there, the majority of them NATO troops.

Biden's decision comes after an administration review of U.S. options in Afghanistan, where U.S.-midwived peace talks have failed to advance as hoped and the Taliban remains a potent force despite two decades of effort by the United States to defeat the militants and establish stable, democratic governance. The war has cost trillions of dollars in addition to the lives of more than 2,000 U.S. service members and at least 100,000 Afghan civilians.

"This is the immediate, practical reality that our policy review discovered," said one person familiar with the closed-door deliberations who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss policy planning. "If we break the May 1st deadline negotiated by the previous administration with no clear plan to exit, we will be back at war with the Taliban, and that was not something President Biden believed was in the national interest."

The goal is to move to "zero" troops by September, the senior administration official said. "This is not conditions-based. The president has judged that a conditions-based approach...is a recipe for staying in Afghanistan forever. He has reached the conclusion that the United States will complete its drawdown, and will remove its forces from Afghanistan before September 11."

The decision highlights the trade-offs the Biden administration is willing to make to shift the U.S. global focus away from the counterinsurgency campaigns that dominated the post-9/11 world to current priorities, including increasing military competition with China.

In addition to major domestic challenges, "the reality is that the United States has big strategic interests in the world," the person familiar with the deliberations said, "like nonproliferation, like an increasingly aggressive and assertive Russia, like North Korea and Iran, whose nuclear programs pose a threat to the United States," as well as China. "The main threats to the American homeland are actually from other places: from Africa, from parts of the Middle East - Syria and Yemen."

"Afghanistan just does not rise to the level of those other threats at this point," the person said. "That does not mean we're turning away from Afghanistan. We are going to remain committed to the government, remain committed diplomatically. But in terms of where we will be investing force posture, our blood and treasure, we believe that other priorities merit that investment."

Immediate reaction in Washington was divided. In a statement on the Senate floor, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called it "reckless" and "a grave mistake. It is retreat in the face of an enemy that has not yet been vanquished and abdication of American leadership."

McConnell pointed to a 2019 amendment - passed by a supermajority of senators when Trump called for full withdrawal from Syria - that requires the administration to "certify that conditions have been met for the enduring defeat of al-Qaida and [the Islamic State] before initiating any significant withdrawal of United States forces from Syria or Afghanistan."

"Can President Biden certify that right now?" McConnell asked.

But while McConnell cited "broad political support" for an ongoing military presence in Afghanistan, other lawmakers called it the right decision. "There are no good, easy decisions here," said House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith, D-Wash. "Given the options, I think this is the best choice."

"We cannot impose a solution on Afghanistan," Smith said in an interview. "I don't doubt for a second there is going to continue to be violence and turbulence," but the main transnational terrorist threat is now elsewhere. "We can only be in so many places. We have to make choices, and those choices are not easy. It's not as if we didn't put in the time in Afghanistan," he said.

Some officials have warned that a U.S. exit will lead to the collapse of the Kabul government while jeopardizing gains made over the past two decades in health, education and women's rights.

Biden administration officials say the United States intends to remain closely involved in the peace process and will continue to provide humanitarian aid and assistance to the Afghan government and security forces, which remains almost totally dependent on foreign support.

"What we will not do is use our troops as bargaining chips," the senior official said.

"We went to Afghanistan to deliver justice to those who attacked us on Sept. 11. ... We believe we achieved that objective some years ago," the senior official said, and now judge the threat to the United States "to be at a level that we can address it without a persistent military footprint."

Biden, who argued unsuccessfully during the Obama administration for a small, counterterrorism-focused presence, had already hinted that the United States would remain for only a limited time beyond the May 1 deadline.

Late last month, he said he did not expect U.S. troops to be deployed there next year. "We will leave," he said at a White House news conference. "But the question is when we leave."

Administration officials were in the process of notifying officials in NATO nations as well as Afghan officials and the Taliban on Tuesday. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, in a statement from his office, said he would have no statement until an upcoming phone call with Biden "to officially share details of the new withdrawal plan."

The senior official also said the Taliban had been informed of the decision, reminded of its commitments under the Trump agreement, and warned against attacking departing U.S. forces. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said that the militants would make an official response "when the U.S. formally announces" its plans, presumably by Biden on Wednesday.

The official said that the U.S. withdrawal would be fully coordinated with NATO and other coalition partners. Citing NATO's "in together, out together" mantra, the senior official said "we will take the time we need to execute that, and no more time than that." The official said withdrawal would begin before May 1, and might well be completed before September.

Many NATO governments have said they have no desire or ability to remain without the logistical, security and other support the U.S. forces provide.

Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin are in Brussels Tuesday and Wednesday informing their NATO counterparts. Germany has the second largest force in Afghanistan, numbering more than 1,000. Officials there have cautioned that they would need months to organize an orderly departure.

In early March, Blinken launched a last-ditch diplomatic effort to bring the Taliban and the Afghan government together to end the war with an interim power-sharing arrangement. He warned Ghani in a sharply-worded letter that time was growing short.

The hope was to accelerate a negotiating process begun under President Donald Trump in 2019, when White House envoy Zalmay Khalilzad started talks with militant leaders in Doha, the capital of Qatar. That led to a February 2020 agreement signed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo under which the United States pledged to withdraw its forces by May 1, 2021, in exchange for Taliban severance of all ties with al-Qaida, and agreement to begin negotiations with the Afghan government toward a cease-fire and peace accord.

While the inter-Afghan talks began in September, they have made little progress. At the same time, the Taliban has increased its attacks on Afghan troops and expanded its territorial control. As the new administration launched its review, the Pentagon and the United Nations reported that the militants had not complied with their commitments under the Trump agreement.

Many Afghan experts have concluded that the Taliban are moving closer to a military victory, but that they may be reluctant to take over as a pariah government, which could result in a loss of international support and aid for the country.

Biden's choice was a stark one. With U.S. public opinion and Congress divided, staying could lead to political difficulties at home and renewed Taliban attacks on U.S. forces. At the same time, an abrupt American departure could undermine any achievements made in the past two decades, reduce the possibility of a peace deal and lead to a Taliban takeover.

John Sopko, the independent special inspector for Afghanistan reconstruction, warned Congress last month that U.S. withdrawal without a peace agreement in place would be "a disaster," and mean government collapse. Others have warned of civil war, as regional warlords have amassed and armed their own forces.

Blinken's warning to Ghani, along with the interim government proposal, seemed to have little effect. He called for a conference of Taliban and Afghan leaders to take place in Turkey this month, and a U.N.-convened meeting of regional governments, including Iran, along with the United States, to push diplomacy.

Although Turkey announced Tuesday the Afghan meeting would go ahead on April 24, Mohammad Naeem, spokesman for the Taliban political office, said Tuesday that no decision on attendance had been made. No U.N. meeting has been confirmed. Khalilzad's shuttle diplomacy among the Afghans and with regional leaders have yet to bring the two sides together in agreement.

The person familiar with the administration's deliberations rejected the suggestion that these apparent failures precipitated Biden's decision. The United States, the person said, would continue its diplomatic efforts to bring peace. But time had proven that the presence of U.S. troops, even at much higher levels, was not effective leverage at moving the parties beyond where they have been willing to go, he said.

Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., a former CIA analyst and senior security official in administrations of both parties, said Congress would need a full accounting of plans to secure U.S. diplomats in Afghanistan and ensure that global extremists from al-Qaida and the Islamic State are unable to gain renewed strength.

The senior official said that any potential for resurgence of al-Qaida in Afghanistan, where U.S. intelligence currently assesses its presence as relatively small, "will be met with vigilance.

Drawing the "lesson from Iraq," where the Islamic State turning into a major fighting force after the bulk of U.S. troops left, "we have to have the intelligence and military capabilities positioned in the region and the attention of our national security apparatus sufficiently focused to insure" that if al-Qaida "begins to emerge" the United States "will deal with it," the senior official said.

While officials said Biden would end the military mission entirely, they acknowledged that a still-undetermined number of troops would remain to secure the U.S. embassy in Kabul, where diplomats would be vulnerable if security deteriorates in the Afghan capital.

In 2014, the then-commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan described a plan to use a residual force of 1,000 troops to secure the embassy as part of an earlier blueprint for pulling out American troops.

During his campaign, Biden said his preference was to leave a counterterrorism force of about 1,500 troops in Afghanistan even as other forces withdrew. That now appears to be off the table.

But it's unclear how the administration may use civilian contractors and intelligence officials now working alongside military personnel to retain a capacity to discern and respond to extremist threats. The U.S. government has routinely assigned military personnel under CIA or other intelligence agency authority in overseas missions, allowing them to conduct certain activities without technically counting as part of a military footprint. The senior official declined to comment on the issue.

Retired Gen. Colin Powell, former secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs, said the decision to leave was overdue.

"I wouldn't say enough is enough," said Powell, who was in charge of George W. Bush's State Department during the 9/11 attacks and the beginning of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. "I'd say we've done all we can do … What are those troops being told they're there for? It's time to bring it to an end."

The Soviet Union, which occupied Afghanistan for a decade until it abruptly withdrew in 1989, "did it the same way," Powell said. "They got tired, and they marched out and back home. How long did anybody remember that?"