Pentagon: US Withdrawal From Afghanistan Past Halfway Point

The U.S. Central Command (Centcom) announced on Tuesday that it has “completed greater than 50 percent of the entire retrograde process,” sent out about 500 loads of material via cargo aircraft, and handed over some 13,000 pieces of equipment to the Defense Logistics Agency for destruction. The Pentagon said it has also officially handed over six military facilities to the Afghan military.

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U.S. President Joe Biden in April announced all American troops would withdraw from Afghanistan by September 11, the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that Washington used as a pretext to invade and occupy the country despite the fact that no Afghan national was involved in the attacks.

Centcom chief Gen. Frank McKenzie and his staff “are working through what the follow-on contractual arrangements will be made to continue to support” the Afghan National Security Forces, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters later on Tuesday. 

The US invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 under the pretext of the so-called war against terror. Over the last 20 years, Washington has spent more than trillions of dollars waging war on the impoverished country, which has left thousands of Afghan civilians and American soldiers dead.

Under a February 2020 “peace” deal between the Taliban and the Trump administration, Washington vowed to withdraw all 2,500 US troops remaining in Afghanistan. In return, the Taliban pledged to stop attacks on US troops.

However, in recent weeks, the Taliban have said the United States has breached its agreement regarding the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. Mohammed Naeem Wardak, the spokesman for the Taliban's political office in Doha, told Press TV in a recent interview that Washington has failed to abide by its commitments and respect pledges under the 2020 peace deal with the group.

In addition, the Biden administration is facing increasingly urgent calls to evacuate Afghans who helped U.S. forces during the conflict and who are at risk of being hunted down and killed by the Taliban after U.S. troops depart. There have been concerns due to a spike in clashes between the Afghan military and the Taliban in the past month. The country has also been hit with several bombings, including most recently at a girls school near Kabul that killed dozens of people.

Gen. David Petraeus, the former US top spy, who led the US and allied forces in the region for years, said last month in an interview that President Biden's decision to withdraw U.S. troops from the war-torn country by September 11 will neither end the war nor stop American meddling in the country.

"This is not going to end the endless war in Afghanistan," the U.S. veteran said, claiming that the military exit would only end American "involvement in that war militarily." Petraeus expressed fear that the possible resurgence of militant groups  would make Washington "regret the pullout."