In a clear indication that US President Joe Biden is not interested in sending his troops to central Asia any time soon, his National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has said that the President did not believe in fighting just for sustaining American military boots near Tajikistan or Pakistan or Iran.

“I would say that the President does not believe that the United States should be fighting and dying in a war for the purpose of sustaining American military boots near Tajikistan or Pakistan or Iran,” Sullivan told reporters at a White House news conference on Tuesday, reports PTI.

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In response to a question, Sullivan said that the US did not agree that it is right to ask American soldiers to risk their lives for the purpose of maintaining a presence near Tajikistan.

In April, President Biden had announced that all American troops would be withdrawing from Afghanistan by September 11 this year, thus bringing to end the country’s two-decade long war in Afghanistan.

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That the Taliban would try to seize control of the country was expected but that they would do it so quickly took many by surprise.  The US has already pulled back the majority of its forces and is looking to complete the drawdown by August 31. But, Taliban have already taken control of Kabul with president Ashraf Ghani fleeing the country.

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On whether US weapons had made their way to Taliban, Sullivan agreed that some of the US weapons have landed in the hands of the Taliban and the Afghan National Security Forces have basically dismantled them.

“We don’t have a complete picture, obviously, of where every article of defence materials has gone, but certainly a fair amount of it has fallen into the hands of the Taliban. And obviously, we don’t have a sense that they are going to readily hand it over to us at the airport,” Sullivan said.

“The Afghan Security Forces appear to have, essentially, no longer operate as a coherent entity. They essentially have given way to Taliban physical security control over the major population centres,” he said.

Sullivan also indicated that the US was in talks with allies on a global response to the actions against the Taliban. “Standing here today, I am not going to go into the full panoply of things that we can do, but there are obviously issues related to sanctions, to marshalling international condemnation and isolation, and other steps as well,” he said, PTI adds.