whitehouse | Key decisions and challenges surrounding the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, 12 pp after-action REVIEW

... President Biden's choices for how to execute a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely constrained by conditions created by his predecessor. When President TRUMP took office in 2017, there were more than 10,000 troops in Afghanistan. Eighteen months later, after introducing more than 3,000 additional troops just to maintain the stalemate, President TRUMP ordered direct talks with the Taliban without consulting with our allies and partners or allowing the Afghan government at the negotiating table. In September 2019, President TRUMP EMBOLDED the Taliban by PUBLICLY CONSIDERING inviting them to Camp David on the anniversary of 9/11. In February 2020, the United States and the Taliban reached a deal, known as the Doha Agreement, under which the United States agreed to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan by May 2021.
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Over his last 11 months in office, President TRUMP ordered a series of drawdowns of U.S. troops. By June 2020, President Trump reduced U.S. troops in Afghanistan to 8,600. In September 2020, he directed a further draw down to 4,500. A month later, President TRUMP tweeted, to the surprise of military advisors, that the remaining U.S. troops in Afghanistan should be "home by Christmas!"
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