The U.S. forces started the withdrawal from Afghanistan in July of 2020 because of the Doha agreement. Which is an agreement that the Trump administration and the Taliban had both signed to bring peace to Afghanistan. Part of the agreement was to reduce the amount of U.S. troops, so they reduced it from 13,000 to 8,000. They had also agreed to completely withdraw from Afghanistan by May 1st of 2021 if the Taliban had kept to the agreement.
The U.S. Troops leaving Afghanistan. Photos courtesy of Creative Commons
At the start of the Biden Administration there were about 2,500 U.S. troops still in Afghanistan and in April President Joe Biden decided to delay the withdrawal of May 1st and changed the date to completely withdraw by September 11th of 2021. Then on July 8th Biden announced a change on the withdrawal to an earlier date which was August 31st. By the beginning of August 2021 there were about 650 troops that were still deployed in Afghanistan that were protecting the Kabul airport and embassy.
On the 12th of August the Biden administration announced that there will be 3,000 U.S. troops that will be deployed in Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul to secure the evacuation of the embassy personnel, U.S nationals and SIV applicants. When mass evacuations began on August 14th and went on throughout the next couple of days there were a total of 7,000 more troops deployed due to the fall of the capital of Kabul to the Taliban on August 15th.
Two weeks after the fall of the capital there were approximately 116,700 Afghans and foreigners that were evacuated from Kabul. On August 26th there was a suicide bombing in Hamid Karzai international airport in Kabul. That caused the deaths of thirteen U.S troops and about ninety Afghanistan civilians and there were also eighteen US soldiers that were injured. The last military plane that left Kabul international airport was on August 30th at 11:59 PM they left one minute before August 31st which was the day they were supposed to completely evacuate from Afghanistan.
