US spies warn Biden over Afghanistan pullout

A rushed US exit from Afghanistan without finalized peace terms between Taliban insurgents and the Kabul government could end bitterly, American intelligence agencies have warned.

The New York Times on Saturday reported that US President Joe Biden has been told that the Taliban could overrun most of the war-ravaged country within a couple of years and would potentially allow al-Qaida to regroup.

The intelligence assessment was originally compiled last year for the Trump administration.

Some 7,000 international troops, including 3,500 US soldiers, remain in Afghanistan — 20 years after the US-led invasion — with the Taliban warning it will resume attacks if the foreign troops do not depart by May 1.

That deadline was part of a Trump-Taliban agreement signed in Doha, Qatar last year.

However, talks are still dragging on between envoys of the Sunni Muslim insurgents and the Kabul government of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

Taliban made peace promises

Last year, the Taliban vowed that if all US and international forces were withdrawn by May it would enter into such intra-Afghan peace talks and cut ties with al-Qaida.

At his first White House news conference on Thursday, Biden said it would be hard to comply with that deadline, although he "could not picture" US troops still being present next year.

"We will leave. The question is when we leave," said Biden.

The New York Times said Biden's officials were "jockeying" to influence the new president and his defense secretary, Lloyd Austin.

Austin, visiting Kabul last weekend, said only that America wanted a "responsible end'' to Afghanistan's decadeslong warfare.

And at the United Nations earlier this week, US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield warned that gains for Afghan women, girls and health care would not be sacrificed.

"We will not give an inch on this point," she told the Security Council, echoing a key point in the US intelligence report.

Briefing the US Senate, General Richard Clarke, the head of US Special Operations Command, said capabilities provided to Afghan government forces were "critical to their success."

Taliban: No pullout = more attacks

On Friday, the Taliban said a troop presence beyond May 1 would amount to a "violation" and it would be "compelled to… continue its Jihad and armed struggle against foreign forces to liberate its country."

Last Wednesday, an early election proposed by President Ghani's Kabul government was rejected by Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, who said any decision on Afghanistan's future must be reached at the ongoing talks.

Going to election would be "scandalous," said Mujahid. "We will never support it."

In recent months Taliban attacks on foreign troops in Afghanistan have largely ceased, although assaults on Afghan security forces and personnel have continued.

Also targeted in recent months have been civil society members, including students, feminists and journalists, with the government and Taliban blaming each other for the violence, often involving small magnetic "sticky" bombs attached to cars.

'Skeptical of Doha talks'

Resistance by Afghan warlords against Soviet occupation in the 1980s led to the Taliban ruling Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001, when al-Qaida used hijacked passenger airliners to attack the US on September 11, prompting a massive US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

In Paris earlier this week, Ahmad Massoud, 31, the son of a late ethnic Tajik Afghan commander, said he was "very skeptical of the talks in Doha." He welcomed parallel attempts, though, by regional powers to break the deadlock, with Moscow hosting Afghan factions recently and Turkey planning peace talks in April.

"I welcome any sort of regional power entering the peace process of Afghanistan," Massoud told the French news agency AFP. "One aspect is regional rivalries."

His French-educated father, Ahmad Shah Massoud, was killed by al-Qaida two days before the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

The World Bank has said two-thirds of Afghanistan's 35 million people live on roughly $1.90 (€1.60) and unemployment is around 30%.

ipj/mm (dpa, AP, AFP, Reuters)