WASHINGTON — President Biden on Thursday ordered a large deployment of troops to help evacuate US embassy staff from Kabul amid rapid Taliban gains in Afghanistan.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said that 3,000 US troops are going to reinforce the more than 600 US troops already working at or near the embassy. He said US officials didn’t want to “wait until it’s too late.”
“This is a US decision by the commander in chief to reduce civilian personnel and to have US military personnel flow in to help with that reduction,” Kirby said.
Another 3,500 US troops will deploy to Kuwait as a “reserve force” and 1,000 more will go to Qatar to help process visa applications from Afghan civilians who helped the US, Kirby said.
US officials believe the Taliban could retake Kabul within months of Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline for removing most US troops from the country
Kirby cited “the Taliban’s advances” and said “we believe this is the prudent thing to do given the rapidly deteriorating security situation in and around Kabul.”
But former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a Fox News interview that the embassy was already starting to reduce staff last year and that he’s concerned that the deployment shows “a bit of panic.”
“Big strategy depends on planning and execution,” Pompeo said. “I hope that they’ve got the right number of folks and they can get them there quickly. I hope that we can protect Americans in the way that the Trump administration had every intention of doing as we drew down our forces there.”
Pompeo said Trump made clear to Taliban leaders that any harm to Americans would come at a steep cost — even warning a lead negotiator of consequences “to your village.”
“I was also in the room when President Trump made very clear to Mullah Baradar, the senior Taliban negotiator, that if you threatened an American, if you scared an American and certainly if you hurt an American, that we would bring all American power to bear to make sure that we went to your village, to your house. We were very clear about the things we were prepared to do to protect American lives,” Pompeo said.
Biden took office in January with only 2,500 US troops in Afghanistan, meaning the new deployment will actually increase the number of American troops in the country in order to facilitate the pullout.
The US troops also will help evacuate Afghans who worked for the US military and are seeking to leave the country.
Kirby said Turkey’s military will continue to lead security at Kabul’s international airport, but that US troops will reinforce them “to make sure we have enough on hand to adapt to any contingencies.”
The military spokesman said “the Defense Department has not spoken to the Taliban about this,” but that “we’ve made it very clear… that as in all cases, our commanders will have the right of self defense and any attack upon our forces will be met with a swift and appropriate response.”
State Department spokesman Ned Price said at a press briefing that “we are further reducing our civilian footprint in Kabul… to a core diplomatic presence in the coming weeks.”
Price would not specify how many people will be evacuated, but The Wall Street Journal reports that thousands among the 5,000 of US personnel at the embassy and nearby international airport will leave.
US troops are flying into the country to help with the evacuation after the Taliban rapidly seized 12 of the country’s 34 provincial capitals.
“These incoming forces, these incoming assets will be based at the airport for one reason and for one reason only, and that is to help effect the reduction in our civilian footprint,” Price said.
Price said that “this shouldn’t be read as any sort of message to the Taliban” that the US sees the Islamic fundamentalist group’s victory as inevitable.
“This is not abandonment. This is not an evacuation. This is not a wholesale withdrawal. What this is is a reduction in the size of our civilian footprint,” Price said. “This is a drawdown of civilian Americans who will, in many cases, be able to perform their important functions elsewhere.”
Biden has insisted that there won’t be a humiliating capitulation of Kabul that results in an iconic moment of American defeat akin to the 1975 fall of Saigon in South Vietnam, when Americans were hastily airlifted from the roof of the US embassy.
“The Taliban is not the North Vietnamese army. They’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability,” Biden said last month.
But the Taliban has made steady progress with victories in a string of cities. On Thursday the group overran Herat and Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second and third-largest cities, and seized Ghazni, a city 90 miles southwest of Kabul.
Biden has stood by his decision to end the 20-year US intervention in Afghanistan, which Trump put in motion, arguing that the Afghan military is larger and better-armed by the Taliban. Biden said Tuesday that “they’ve got to fight for themselves, fight for their nation.”
