With a May deadline looming for the United States to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, the Biden administration is turning up the pressure on President Ashraf Ghani to reach a peace deal with the Taliban.
In a blunt letter to Ghani, obtained by Foreign Policy, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for his “urgent leadership” in the coming weeks. Blinken outlined a number of steps the United States planned to take to “move matters more fundamentally and quickly” toward a political settlement with the Taliban and a cease-fire, giving the first concrete glimpse into President Joe Biden’s strategy to extricate the United States from its longest war in history.
