WASHINGTON—The U.S. is temporarily deploying thousands of troops to the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan to evacuate diplomatic personnel from the embassy in Kabul, cutting the size of the diplomatic presence as the Taliban advance toward the Afghan capital, officials said Thursday.
The evacuation will be undertaken by as many as 8,000 fresh troops in the region, who will augment the 1,000 already on the ground in Afghanistan. It comes in response to the rapidly deteriorating security situation, and the recognition that the Taliban’s sweep of a number of provincial capitals is at present irreversible and threatens the seat of the internationally recognized Afghan government.
The decision to reduce the size of the embassy to an essential core and send U.S. troops to the region to do it amounts to a remarkable turnaround for the Biden administration, which has publicly expressed confidence in Afghan security forces even as those forces melted away and the…