The Washington Post reported that White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan had offered US President Joe Biden his resignation due to the turmoil caused by the hasty withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, but the president did not accept his request.
The newspaper reported on Tuesday, citing Sullivan's aides, that Biden insisted he stay in his position.
The withdrawal from Afghanistan broke the "primary cohesion" of the Biden administration's national security team and created a rift between Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
The withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan in August 2021 claimed the lives of at least 13 American soldiers and led to the collapse of the Afghan government.
“You can’t end a war like Afghanistan where you’ve built dependencies without it being complicated and challenging,” the US national security adviser told the newspaper. “The choice was: go or stay forever, and it wasn’t an easy choice.”
Sullivan added that the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan allowed the United States “to deal with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in a way that probably wouldn’t have been possible if we had stayed”.
‘Pentagon's Resistance To Biden’
According to the Washington Post, the Pentagon resisted Biden's call to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan and demanded that "a force of 2,500 remain in Kabul”.
The Washington Post author, citing two close advisers in the US government, wrote that Sullivan initially shared the Pentagon's concerns. However, he decided to "loyally" support Biden's plan for a full withdrawal.
Wall Street Journal reporter Alex Ward says no one has offered to resign over the issue of withdrawing from Afghanistan.
The White House and the US National Security Council have not yet commented on the report.
The hasty US withdrawal from Afghanistan has sparked much debate within the US. The US House of Representatives Foreign Relations Committee has repeatedly called senior US officials responsible for the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan to testify, most recently with Antony Blinken.
