Tobin Harshaw, Columnist

Trump's Afghan Troop Withdrawal Is a Gift to the Taliban

A Q&A with Austin L. Wright, an expert on insurgent movements, on how the White House has been outflanked.

November 28, 2020 at 1:00 PM UTC

Tobin Harshaw is a Bloomberg Opinion senior editor and columnist on national security and military affairs. Previously, he was deputy editor at the op-ed page of the New York Times and the newspaper’s letters editor.

They have a plan.
Photographer: Patrick Semansky/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

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The U.S. and its allies have been at war against the Afghan Taliban for nearly two decades, and still understand the enemy so poorly that they can’t decide if “Taliban” is singular or plural. Either way, the insurgent group is riding high, ratcheting up violent attacks even as it strings along the Kabul government and Washington in negotiating a truce.

Now President Donald Trump, on his way out the door, can’t leave bad enough alone. His administration’s announcement that it intends to withdraw 2,500 of the 4,500 U.S. forces still in the country follows a long pattern, begun under President Barack Obama, of not just getting Americans out of harm’s way but also telling the Taliban exactly how and when it will be done.