Fort Bragg troops head to Middle East to aid evacuations from Afghanistan
As many as 4,000 troops from Fayetteville’s Fort Bragg are deploying to the Middle East to potentially assist with American evacuations in Afghanistan.
An infantry brigade combat team from Fort Bragg should arrive in Kuwait within the next week, a Department of Defense spokesman said Thursday.
About 3,000 U.S. personnel — two Marine battalions and one U.S. Army battalion — will go to the airport in Kabul to assist with evacuations from the country of civilian personnel and Afghans who have aided the U.S. in the war effort. The U.S. already had about 650 troops in Kabul.
The additional troops from Fort Bragg “will be postured and prepared, if needed, to provide additional security at the airport,” John Kirby said.
The troops are part of the Immediate Response Forces, which consist of paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division, according to The Fayetteville Observer.
The U.S. is withdrawing from Afghanistan after 20 years of fighting, and the Taliban has been gaining ground and seizing territory as the U.S. departs. The Taliban has control over more than half the cities in Afghanistan and is expected to attack Kabul, the nation’s capital, according to reports from the region.
Former President Donald Trump set a May 1 deadline from withdrawal, but President Joe Biden extended it to Sept. 11 — the 20th anniversary of the deadly terrorist attacks on the nation that were plotted in Afghanistan.
The Department of Defense stressed the additional troops are a short-term response.
“This is a very temporary mission for a very specific purpose. That’s a big difference than saying you’re deploying for eight, nine, 12 months forces to stabilize and secure Afghanistan, which we’ve been doing for the last 20 years,” Kirby said.
Critical of Biden
North Carolina Republican U.S. Rep. Richard Hudson, whose district includes Fort Bragg, warned earlier this year that the deadline to withdraw troops “threatens stability in the region.”
“In April, I warned of the fallout from President Biden’s decision to set an arbitrary deadline to withdraw from Afghanistan. The fallout we are currently seeing was predictable, but I now join with our nation in praying for our troops from Fort Bragg deploying to the region,” Hudson wrote on Twitter on Friday.
Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican and member of the Armed Services Committee, said American generals said Afghan forces “were not prepared for an American withdrawal and the inevitable Taliban assault.”
“President Biden set an entirely arbitrary deadline. And now, with every passing day, more towns and cities fall to the Taliban, the brutal regime that provided aid and comfort to the terrorists who cowardly attacked us on 9/11,” Tillis said in a statement.
Biden said earlier this week during a press conference that he did not regret his decision to remove troops from Afghanistan.
“We spent over a trillion dollars over 20 years,” Biden said. “We trained and equipped with modern equipment over 300,000 Afghan forces, and Afghan leaders have to come together. We lost thousands, death and injury, thousands of American personnel. They’ve got to fight for themselves, fight for their nation.”
Other Republicans, including Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have been critical of Biden.
“If President Biden truly has no regrets about his decision to withdraw, then he is disconnected from reality when it comes to Afghanistan,” Graham wrote on Twitter.
A vast majority of Americans supported the decision to remove troops from Afghanistan, according to an early July poll from The Hill. More than 70% either strongly (31%) or somewhat (42%) supported the withdrawal, while 20% were somewhat opposed and 7% were strongly opposed.
An April survey from Data for Progress found a similar split with Democrats (81%), independents and third-party voters (76%) and Republicans (54%) all supporting withdrawal.