The United States has ordered non-essential staff to leave its Kabul embassy, citing increased threats as Washington prepares to end its 20-year war in Afghanistan.
The order came two weeks after President Joe Biden announced that US troops, currently about 2,500, would leave the country by September.
Meanwhile, Zalmay Khalilzad, Washington\u2019s special envoy to Afghanistan, warned in a Senate hearing that US aid could be slashed if a Taliban-dominated government did not respect human rights.
The State Department said in a travel advisory that it had \u201cordered the departure from US embassy Kabul of US government employees whose functions can be performed elsewhere\u201d.
Ross Wilson, the acting US ambassador in Kabul, said the State Department took the decision \u201cin light of increasing violence and threat reports in Kabul\u201d.
He said the order affected an unspecified \u201crelatively small number\u201d of employees and that the embassy would remain operational.
\u201cPersonnel who are urgently needed to address issues related to the pullout of US forces and the vital work we are doing in support of the Afghan people will be able to remain in place,\u201d Wilson wrote on Twitter.
General Kenneth McKenzie, head of the US Central Command, said on Tuesday the administration remains committed to keeping a functioning embassy in Kabul.
\u201cIt is our intention to maintain an embassy in Afghanistan going forward. But we\u2019ll have a very, very minimal military presence there \u2013 that which is strictly necessary to defend the embassy,\u201d he said in remarks to the American Enterprise Institute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Taliban wants to \u2018end their pariah status\u2019 The United States has ordered non-essential staff to leave its Kabul embassy…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":12023,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[129],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
<\/strong>Earlier this month Biden said he would withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by September 11, the 20th anniversary of the attacks that led the US to invade and topple the Taliban regime which had harboured al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Biden concluded that US forces had achieved their objectives and could do little more, but US officials have made no secret of their fears that violence will intensify as the Taliban perceives that they achieved victory.
The State Department advisory, which also renewed warnings for Americans not to visit, said that \u201cterrorist and insurgent groups continue planning and executing attacks in Afghanistan\u201d.
In a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Khalilzad, who has overseen negotiations with the Taliban rebels over the past several years, said the US could leverage its hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the country to pressure them to respect human rights, especially for women.
\u201cThe Talib say they are interested in not being a pariah,\u201d he told the panel.
\u201cWe have said that if they do want US assistance, if they want international acceptance, they want to end their pariah status \u2026 those things will be all affected by how they treat their own citizens \u2013 first and foremost, women of Afghanistan, children and minorities.\u201d
\u201cI have personally made it very clear that the issue of human rights, particularly women\u2019s rights, is second to terrorism in terms of the hierarchy of US policy importance,\u201d he said.
He added that if the Taliban seizes power militarily from the government in Kabul, they will have little international support.
\u201cThey will face isolation, regional opposition, sanctions, and international opprobrium,\u201d he said.
\u201cThere is remarkable consensus within the region and the international community against a military takeover by the Taliban.\u201d
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