President Joe Biden discarded advice to maintain a military presence in Afghanistan unless the Taliban complied with the Doha Agreement, former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad told a House panel on Feb. 15.
“He decided not to make withdrawal of the final 2,500 [combat troops] conditional on a political agreement or leaving a counter-terrorism force behind,” Mr. Khalilzad, among the February 2020 pact’s chief negotiators, testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.