Thu 12 August 2021:
On Thursday, former President Donald Trump criticized his successor, Joe Biden, for not putting conditions on the US exit from Afghanistan, saying that a violent Taliban surge in the war-torn country was “unacceptable.”
Trump said the US pullout, which Biden has set for August 31 and which is already all but complete, would have been “a much different and much more successful withdrawal” if he were still president.
Under Trump, the US reached an agreement with the Taliban in Doha in 2020, that called for the withdrawal of all US troops by May 2021 in exchange for different security guarantees from the Taliban.
When Biden took power earlier this year, he pushed back the deadline for the withdrawal and set no conditions for it.
“If I were now president, the world would find that our withdrawal from Afghanistan would be a conditions-based withdrawal,” Trump claimed in a statement.
“I personally had discussions with top Taliban leaders whereby they understood what they are doing now would not have been acceptable,” he said.
“It would have been a much different and much more successful withdrawal, and the Taliban understood that better than anyone,” he said.
Latest News and Updates on Afghanistan (Click here)
When Biden took office on January 20, Trump’s military reductions continued after he lost the November election, leaving 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, along with 16,000 civilian contractors.
Biden paused further withdrawal for a review of policy, and in April announced that the pullout would go ahead, pushing the deadline back initially to September 11, 2021, before moving it up again to August 31.
File Photo: Former U.S. President Donald Trump during a surprise Thanksgiving Day visit to the troops,Nov. 28, 2019, in Afghanistan.
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