Biden decision on U.S. troops in Afghanistan may be imminent

President Biden is facing growing pressure to lay his cards on the table in Afghanistan, as disagreements mount with the U.S.-backed government in Kabul and uncertainty swirls around whether or not the White House will proceed with a May 1 deadline set by the Trump administration for a full U.S. troop pullout.

With NATO foreign ministers holding a summit in Brussels this week, speculation is surging that Mr.  Biden will reveal soon whether some 3,000-plus U.S. forces will remain past May 1. It’s unlikely the move will quell rising violence in Afghanistan or push forward stalled power-sharing talks between the U.S.-backed Kabul government and the Taliban insurgency.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani is openly pushing his own proposal calling for new Afghan presidential elections to be held within six months, as a counter-offer to a revised U.S. proposal to keep American and allied troops in place for a few more months while a multilateral peace accord is hammered out.

The Reuters news agency, citing a senior Afghan official Tuesday, said Mr. Ghani has shared the proposal with U.S. Special Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, who has spent years trying to unify divided camps in the Kabul government and get them into talks with the Taliban.

A Trump administration deal with the Taliban in February 2020 led to major prisoner swaps and a sharp drawdown of U.S. forces. But U.S.-backed peace talks in Qatar have made little progress and Taliban militants are warning that the deal could fall through entirely if Washington does not honor the May 1 withdrawal date.

The Trump administration deal called on the Taliban to engage in peace talks, to stop attacking U.S. forces,  and to stop working with outside terror groups such as Islamic State and al Qaeda. It was al Qaeda’s ability to plan the September 11 attacks a Taliban-supplied sanctuary inside Afghanistan that led the U.S. invasion of the country two decades ago.

The Ghani government’s top security official said Tuesday that he believes that Taliban has not severed its ties with al Qaeda and that the militant group’s negotiating team is not making a good faith effort in the Qatar talks.

“While our team made it to Doha,” said Afghan National Security Advisor Hamdullah Mohib, “the Taliban were nowhere to be seen.”

“For a few days, literally nobody had any idea of there whereabouts,” Mr. Mohib told a virtual discussion hosted Tuesday by the Hudson Institute in Washington. “It turns out they were taking tours of Taliban suicide academies in Pakistan and visiting their injured fighters in Karachi, then they flew to Moscow and Tehran.”

“When they returned to Doha, … instead of talking about peace, they were talking preconditions to negotiations,” he said.

The Biden administration, facing a tight deadline shortly after taking office, has tried to engage with NATO allies, who watched Mr. Trump’s precipitous drawdown with alarm.

In addition to the American troops, around 10,000 personnel from 36 NATO countries and other allies and partner countries are in Afghanistan. NATO leaders have called on the Biden administration to clarify if and when the Americans intend to leave, an issue that has already surfaced in this week’s ministerial summit..

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, ahead of a meeting with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, told reporters in Brussels on Tuesday that the U.S. under Mr. Biden “wants to rebuild our partnerships, first and foremost with our NATO allies.”

However, Mr. Blinken made no specific comment on the future of the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan. A State Department spokesperson insisted in Washington Tuesday that “we haven’t made any decisions” about altering the May 1 deadline.

Mr. Biden may have some political leeway, even as he gets pressure from the Democratic left to pull out. Alabama Rep. Mike Rogers, the ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee,  told reporters this week he’s “fine” with having the current 2,500 troops there “for an extended period.”

Mr. Rogers added he recently received a classified briefing on the situation and predicted troops will likely stay beyond the May 1 deadline.

Others argue the U.S. should have gotten out of Afghanistan a long time ago.

“Our troops are effectively in Afghanistan today to provide security for Kabul, not for Americans,” retired Army Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis said in a statement circulated Tuesday by the libertarian-leaning Defense Priorities think tank. “Prolonging U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan’s civil war … won’t win the U.S. anything.”