The US withdrawal from Afghanistan will be completed earlier than planned.

Back in April, United States President Joe Biden announced that the US would begin the process to withdraw all of its military personnel from Afghanistan, and that the process would be complete by a September 11 deadline. However, as the process has gone rather quickly, Biden announced yesterday that the deadline has been moved up to August 31.

“We are ending the nation’s longest war,” the President said at the White House.

When I announced our drawdown in April, I said we would be out of Afghanistan by September. Our military mission in Afghanistan will in fact conclude on August 31st. And the drawdown is proceeding in a secure and orderly way, prioritizing the safety of our troops as they depart. pic.twitter.com/7U8Fb47gsd

— President Biden (@POTUS) July 9, 2021

According to the most recent estimates from the Pentagon, issued earlier this week, the withdrawal process is approximately 90% complete. With the formal transfer of control of Bagram Airfield over to the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces last week, most of the major operations required in the process have been successfully completed, and with no loss off US military personnel.

.@POTUS: "Our military mission in Afghanistan will conclude on August 31st. The drawdown is proceeding in a secure and orderly way, prioritizing the safety of our troops as they depart." https://t.co/EQoKrJGfYw pic.twitter.com/L1MLEqLOKl

— The Hill (@thehill) July 9, 2021

“Our military commanders advised me that once I made the decision to end the war, we needed to move swiftly to conduct the main elements of the drawdown, and in this context, speed is safety,” Biden said. He added that certain other approaches “would have certainly come with an increased risk of safety to our personnel,” and was proud that no troops have been harmed in the process.

“The United States cannot afford to remain tethered to policies creating a response to a world as it was 20 years ago,” Biden said. “We need to meet the threats where they are today.”