Biden Sending Troops to Afghanistan to Help Draw Down US Embassy Staff

The Epoch Times

American troops will be deployed to aid the evacuation of some U.S. Embassy personnel in Kabul amid significant Taliban military gains across Afghanistan, a senior U.S. Department of State official confirmed on Thursday.

Around 3,000 U.S. troops, including two Marine infantry battalions and one Army infantry battalion, will be deployed to the Kabul airport to secure the civilian population, said Department of Defense spokesman John Kirby in a news conference. Diplomatic work will still continue at the embassy, said State Department spokesman Ned Price during a separate press briefing.

โ€œThis is a temporary mission with a narrow focus,โ€ Kirby said. โ€œWeโ€™re mindful that the security situation continues to deteriorate in Afghanistan. And as I said before, our troops will as always have the right of self-defense. But this is a narrowly focused mission to help safeguard an orderly reduction of civilians.โ€

The United States, Price said, is โ€œfurther reducing our civilian footprint in Kabul in light of the evolving security situationโ€ and said the Department of Defense will โ€œtemporarily deploy additional personnel to Hamid Karzai International Airport.โ€

Price said the U.S. military will also help with the departure of embassy and State Department staff from Afghanistan โ€œin the coming weeks,โ€ but he emphasized: โ€œThis is not a full evacuation.โ€

โ€œThis is not abandonment. This is not an evacuation. This is not the wholesale withdrawal,โ€ Price also said. โ€˜Itโ€™s a very important distinction between planning and contingency planning,โ€ he said, without providing more details. โ€œWe will continue to have a diplomatic presence on the ground.โ€

However, the move suggests the Biden administration doesnโ€™t have confidence in the Afghan governmentโ€™s capacity to push back the Taliban after the terror group took over swaths of the country, including the third-largest city, in recent days. It comes a few months afterย President Joe Biden ordered a full withdrawal.

The Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001, has no air force or navy and is vastly outnumbered by U.S.-trained Afghan army forces but was able to take provincial capital after provincial capital with alacrity. Anonymous U.S. officials have told media outlets that the Afghan government army has collapsed even faster than previously thought possible.

The U.S. embassy in Kabul, in a fresh warning to American citizens, urged them to leave Afghanistan immediately. Its ability to assist Americans in the country will soon be โ€œextremely limited,โ€ according to the bulletin, due to reduced staffing and security concerns.

Byย Jack Phillips

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