Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – The U.S.’ decision to pull out troops and contractors from Afghanistan under an agreement it signed with Taliban officials and implemented by the Biden administration was the biggest contributing factor to the fall of Afghanistan’s military. A U.S. watchdog concluded that this move had been the most important.

According to the assessment of SIGAR or the Special Inspector General For Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), withdrawal from Afghanistan “destroyed” Afghan morale, as the military was heavily dependent on U.S. support. The report was published late Tuesday.

“SIGAR found that the single most important factor in the ANDSF’s (Afghan National Defense and Security Forces) collapse in August 2021 was the U.S. decision to withdraw military forces and contractors from Afghanistan through signing the U.S.-Taliban agreement in February 2020 under the Trump administration, followed by President Biden’s withdrawal announcement in April 2021,” the report said.

The United States reached a settlement with the Islamist Taliban under the leadership of Donald Trump’s Republican predecessor, Joe Biden. This agreement allowed the United States to pull out all American troops.

The report said that after the agreement was signed, U.S. military assistance to Afghan forces fell. This included an increase in U.S. air strikes in 2020, following a record-breaking level the year before.

John Sopko (Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Rehabilitation) stated that the ANDSF was left without any key advantages in keeping Taliban at bay by the reduction of airstrikes following the U.S.–Taliban agreement.

In August, the Taliban overthrew the Western-backed government in Afghanistan. The last U.S. troops were forced to withdraw.

Biden had stated that the war on Afghanistan must be ended after twenty years of combative fighting which had resulted in American deaths, depleted resources, and diverted attention from more strategic priorities.

To oversee reconstruction activities and other activities in Afghanistan during war, the U.S. Congress established the SIGAR office.

Sopko explained that “many Afghans felt the U.S. – Taliban agreement was an act in bad faith and a signal to the enemy that it was handing Afghanistan over to the enemy as its rushed to withdraw the country.”