US President Donald Trump on Tuesday in his State of the Union address confirmed his desire to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and put an end to America’s longest running war.

"In Afghanistan, the determination and valor of our warfighters has allowed us to make tremendous progress, and peace talks are now underway.  I am not looking to kill hundreds of thousands of people in Afghanistan, many of them totally innocent.  It is also not our function to serve other nations as law enforcement agencies.  These are warfighters that we have — the best in the world — and they either want to fight to win or not fight at all.  We are working to finally end America’s longest war and bring our troops back home," he said.

The US began separate peace talks with representatives of the Taliban movement to end hostilities in the fall of 2018, which would allow the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. The government in Kabul did not take part in them and was only notified of the results. Following nine rounds of meetings, US Special Representative for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad in September 2019 confirmed the fact that the Taliban had reached a fundamental peace deal, which, inter alia, would remove over 5,000 US troops from the country.

However, Trump then announced the cancellation of a secretly prepared meeting with his Afghan counterpart and Taliban leaders at his Camp David residence, after which the talks were suspended. On February 1, Khalilzad arrived in Kabul, where he met with Taliban representatives. According to  Ashraf Ghani's administration, there has been no significant progress.