Barack Obama Lied When He Declared End of US War in Afghanistan in 2014, Book Says

In December 2014, then-US President Barack Obama announced that the Afghan war, which started in 2001 as a response to 9/11 terrorist attacks, had ended. He promised that all US troops would be pulled out of the country, but it took another seven years to kick-start the final step of the withdrawal.

According to a new book dedicated to the Afghan war, President Barack Obama lied about US participation in the conflict when he said it had ended, as to “conjure up an illusion” and make Americans think that US forces would stay out of the conflict.

As the author, Craig Whitlock, wrote in his book “The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War”, expected to be released by the end of this year, Obama had made the announcement because the American public had become tired of the protracted conflict.

"In fact, the war was nowhere near a conclusion, ‘responsible’ or otherwise, and U.S. troops would fight and die in combat in Afghanistan for many years to come," the book excerpt reads, as cited by The Washington Post. "The baldfaced claims to the contrary ranked among the most egregious deceptions and lies that US leaders spread during two decades of warfare."

According to Whitlock, despite the US military commanders stressing then that the mission would be "limited to “’noncombat’ roles as trainers and advisers” for Afghan forces, the “Pentagon carved out numerous exceptions that, in practice, made the distinctions almost meaningless".

"In the skies, US fighters, bombers, helicopters and drones continued to fly air combat missions against Taliban forces. In 2015 and 2016, the US military launched missiles and bombs on 2,284 occasions, a decline from previous years but still an average of more than three times a day," the book reads.

The author wrote that the US troops continued to sustain losses, and the military hadn’t seen the difference as Afghanistan remained “a combat zone”.

“They all carried weapons. They all earned combat pay. They were awarded combat decorations. More would die," Whitlock pointed out.

By Obama’s December 2014 announcement, troop levels had been reduced in half to 16,100 and later to 9,800. The president then pledged that after his departure from the office in 2017, 5,500 US forces would stay in the country to focus on training of Afghan government’s own security forces.

In this picture taken on August 1, 2021, Afghan National Army commando forces walk along a road amid ongoing fighting between Taliban and Afghan security forces in the Enjil district of Herat province

© AFP 2023 / HOSHANG HASHIMI

Nevertheless, the US maintained its military presence for most of 2016 and Obama’s administration failed to achieve further reduction. The number of US forces stationed there even increased to 14,000. In February 2020, Obama's successor, Donald Trump, agreed with the Taliban* on a US pullout, and the current administration of Joe Biden initiated the withdrawal on the 1st of May of this year. President Biden pledged that the US military would leave the country by the end of August.

The Taliban, meanwhile, has intensified its military offensive against Afghan government forces, already establishing control in more than half of country’s territories. The terrorist organisation has recently announced that it captured Kandahar, the second biggest city after capital Kabul.

* a terrorist organisation banned in Russia and other countries