WASHINGTON: Afghanistan High Commission for National Reconciliation Chair Abdullah Abdullah (left), President of Afghanistan Ashraf Ghani (center) and US President Joe Biden sit during a meeting at the White House in Washington, DC. - AFP

WASHINGTON/ AFGHANISTAN: US President Joe Biden promised Afghan leader Ashraf Ghani strong support during a White House meeting Friday but made clear he was not planning to slow the US withdrawal after nearly two decades of fighting. Less than three months before his deadline for the removal of all troops, Biden told Ghani that Afghans had to determine their own fate even as they face a mounting offensive by Taleban insurgents.

"The partnership between the United States and Afghanistan is not ending," Biden said in the Oval Office. "Our troops may be leaving, but support for Afghanistan is not ending." Even so, Biden told the Afghan president, "Afghans are going to have to decide their future, what they want." "The senseless violence, it has to stop. It's going to be very difficult."

Deal with Taleban pushed

Ghani was in Washington along with Abdullah Abdullah, who oversees Kabul's peace negotiations with the Taleban, amid rising uncertainty over the group's recent gains and the possibility of their return to power. The extremists subjected the population to a brutal version of Islam when they ruled from 1996-2001. Sitting next to Biden, Ghani acknowledged that Biden was not going to change course from his April announcement ordering the end to America's longest war. "President Biden's decision has been historic, it has made everybody recalculate and reconsider," Ghani said.

"We are here to respect it and support it." But he also said not to count his government out, amid reports that an internal US intelligence assessment says the Taleban could possibly take over Kabul within six months of the US departure. Ghani said Afghan government forces retook six districts, in the north and south, on Friday, reversing recent Taleban gains. "You will see that with determination, with unity and with the partnership, we will overcome all odds."

Ghani met with top members of Congress, the CIA, and US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on his two-day visit to Washington. With the US military's on-the-ground support for Afghan security forces about to disappear completely, Washington is expecting him to reach a negotiated settlement on power sharing with the Taleban before it is too late.

"The Department of Defense is deeply invested in the security and stability of Afghanistan and in the pursuit of a negotiated settlement that ends the war," Austin told Ghani and Abdullah at the Pentagon. The top Democrat in Congress, Nancy Pelosi, also indicated that there was no turning back. Meeting Ghani, she stressed future humanitarian assistance to the country "as we enter a new phase of that relationship."

No abandonment

The US pullout, of some 2,500 troops and 16,000 civilian contractors in the country earlier this year, could be mostly completed next month. The situation was being compared to the US withdrawal from Vietnam in 1973, which saw the South Vietnamese government that Washington had backed fall to North Vietnamese troops within two years. "The false narrative of abandonment is just false," Ghani said before his meeting with Austin.

He added that predictions like that of the intelligence report on a possible Taleban takeover "have all turned out false." Biden is expected to reaffirm billions of dollars in US aid for the country, and make arrangements for US civilian contractors-essential to keep the Afghan air force flying-to remain there. The administration is also working on a plan to evacuate some 18,000 Afghan interpreters and others who worked for US forces and who are under personal threat from the Taleban.

Thousands displaced

About 5,000 Afghan families have fled their homes in Kunduz after days of fighting between the Taliban and government forces, officials said yesterday, with the insurgents continuing to surround the key northern city. The Taleban briefly seized the city twice in recent years but have now captured the surrounding districts and a nearby border crossing with Tajikistan.

"About 5,000 families have been displaced by the fighting," Ghulam Sakhi Rasouli, director of the Kunduz Refugees and Repatriation Department, told AFP. He said up to 2,000 of those families had fled to Kabul and other provinces. Many people took refuge in a school in the city and had been provided with food and other relief items, Kunduz provincial council member Ghulam Rabbani Rabbani said.

Video footage taken by AFP showed dozens of people, many of them women and children, sitting inside tents set up in a school compound. "We are six families living together here for three days... you can see my children are sitting on the ground," Juma Khan, who fled with his family, told AFP. "We have still not received any help. A team came today to survey some families but after a few minutes they left," said Akhtar Mohammad, who has also taken refuge in the school. Another 8,000 families have been displaced across the province of Kunduz following a month of sporadic clashes between the insurgents and government forces, Rasouli added.

He said authorities were unable to provide relief items to all the displaced families across the province. Kunduz city's public health director Ehsanullah Fazli said that since the fighting erupted more than a week ago, 29 civilians have been killed and 225 wounded. Fighting has raged across Kunduz province for days, with the Taliban and Afghan forces engaged in bloody battles.

On Tuesday the insurgents captured Shir Khan Bandar, Afghanistan's main border crossing with Tajikistan, in one of their most significant gains in recent months. Since early May, the Taliban have launched several major offensives targeting government forces across the rugged countryside and say they have seized nearly 90 of the country's more than 400 districts. Many of their claims are disputed by the government and difficult to independently verify.

Violence surged after the US military began the withdrawal of its last remaining 2,500 troops from the country to meet the September 11 deadline announced by President Joe Biden to end America's longest war. Peace talks between the two warring sides remain deadlocked in Qatar. - AFP