All US troops will leave Afghanistan by Sept 11 and the withdrawal will start before May 1, a deadline set in the US-Taliban agreement signed last year.
We will begin an orderly drawdown of the remaining forces before May 1 and plan to have all US troops out of the country before the 20th anniversary of 9/11,” the official said. The US still has some 2,500 troops in Afghanistan.
At a hurriedly called virtual conference, the official also said that US President Joe Biden would formally announce the pullout schedule on Wednesday (today).
The proposed schedule is seen as a “mid-way” between meeting the May 1 deadline, set in the agreement US and Taliban negotiators finalised in Doha last February, and completely ignoring it.
