by Matthew Rusling
WASHINGTON, June 25 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday met with Afghanistan's top leaders, as U.S. troops have been withdrawing from the nation and the security situation there worsens.
Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani and Chairman of the High Council for National Reconciliation Abdullah Abdullah met with Biden at the White House where Biden vowed a "sustained" partnership.
"Our troops may be leaving but support for Afghanistan is not ending in terms of support and maintenance of helping maintain their military as well as economic and political support," Biden said at the beginning of their meeting.
"Afghans are going to have to decide their future," he continued. "Senseless violence has to stop."
The meeting came as the United States continues to pull out troops after around two decades of war in Afghanistan and as the security situation deteriorates.
Washington said it is over halfway toward the goal of pulling out troops by the Sept. 11 deadline -- the date in 2001 that sparked the two-decade U.S. war.
Over 2,400 U.S. troops have been killed in Afghanistan over the past two decades, with 20,000 wounded, according to the U.S. Defense Department.
Meanwhile, estimates show that over 66,000 Afghan troops have been killed, and over 2.7 million people have had to leave their homes.
Since the start of the withdrawal of U.S.-led troops from Afghanistan on May 1, the security situation in the war-torn country has worsened significantly.
The Taliban, according to its spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, has captured more than 70 districts over the past month. In the latest development, it occupied Khash District in the northern Badakhshan province on Wednesday.
The Biden administration is planning to relocate thousands of Afghan interpreters and others, who worked with the U.S. military and feared Taliban reprisals, to safe locations as they wait for their application for entry to the United States to proceed.
Jason Campbell, a policy researcher at U.S. nonprofit global think tank RAND Corporation, told Xinhua that at this stage, with U.S. forces continuing their withdrawal in the coming months, Biden is limited in what he and the United States can do to prevent the security situation from spiraling out of control.
What Biden can do, however, is to provide public reassurance that the United States continues to staunchly support the Afghan government and its security forces, both diplomatically and financially, Campbell said.
Speaking Friday from Paris, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the rising violence in Afghanistan is a danger, and if the Taliban tries to once again take over the country, "we'll see a renewal of a war or possibly worse."
Still, he added that not pulling out U.S. troops would have been a mistake, as the White House believes the Taliban would have once again begun strikes on U.S. troops, causing another escalation.
The Taliban advances have prompted the U.S. intelligence community to conclude that the government of Afghanistan could collapse as soon as six months after the complete withdrawal of the U.S. military from the country, according to a Wall Street Journal report, which cited sources with knowledge of the new assessment.
Campbell, however, said he did not see the Taliban once again taking control of Afghanistan in the near term.
Despite recent progress on the battlefield, there is evidence to suggest that at least some of the Taliban advances are primarily to achieve propaganda victories, and in a number of cases their forces have either retreated or been pushed back by Afghan forces, Campbell said.
"My sense is that the Taliban are attempting to take advantage of the current transition and build as much equity for political negotiations as they can as the U.S. force presence decreases," Campbell said.
