A Taliban leader told the BBC 'we have won' after Biden announced the US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan

Sinéad Baker
Updated ·1 min read
Taliban BBC
Haji Hekmat, center, a Taliban shadow mayor in Balkh, in an interview with the BBC. BBC
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  • A Taliban leader said the coming US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan gave the group victory.

  • "We have won the war and America has lost," the shadow mayor in the district of Balkh told the BBC.

  • Biden plans to take US troops out of the country by September 11.

  • See more stories on Insider's business page.

A Taliban leader said the US withdrawing troops from Afghanistan meant the extremist group had won.

Haji Hekmat, the Taliban's shadow mayor in Afghanistan's northern Balkh district, told the BBC: "We have won the war and America has lost."

"We are ready for anything," he continued. "We are totally prepared for peace, and we are fully prepared for jihad."

President Joe Biden this week announced plans to pull all US troops out of Afghanistan by the symbolically important date of September 11.

The US intelligence community warned in a Tuesday report that the Afghan government "will struggle to hold the Taliban at bay if the coalition withdraws support."

The Taliban said on Wednesday that it wanted all foreign military personnel out of Afghanistan by the end of April under a Trump-era agreement. "If the agreement is breached and foreign forces fail to exit our country on the specified date, problems will certainly be compounded," it added.

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