during this process, the views of the joint cheechs of staff, all of us, the centcom commander, general mckenzie, the u.s. commander, general miller, and myself all given serious consideration of the administration, we provided a broad range of options. l and our assessment of their potential outcome. the cost, benefit, risk to force, risk to mission were evaluated. on 14 april, the president announced his decision and the u.s. military received a change of mission to retrograde all u.s. military forces, maintain a small contingency force of 600 to 700 to protect the embassy in kabul until the department of state could coordinate security support and assist turkey to maintain the karzai international airport and transition the u.s. military to an over the horizon security force assistance.
an over the horizon security force assistance. it is clear, it is obvious the war in afghanistan did not end on the terms we wanted with the taliban now in power in kabul. although the it was the largest air evacuation in history he vaf waiting 124,000 people it came at an incredible cost of 11 marines, one soldier and navy corpsmen. those 13 gave their lives so people they never met will have an opportunity to live in freedom. and we must remember that the taliban was and remains a terrorist organization and they still have not broken ties with al qaeda. i have no illusions who we are dealing with. it remains to be seen whether or not the taliban can consolidate power or if the country will further fracture into civil war. but we must continue to protect the united states of america
0 there s no doubt in my mind that our efforts prevented an attack on the homeland from afghanistan which was our core original mission. and everyone who served in that war should be proud. your service mattered. beginning in 2011, we steadily drew down our troop numbers, consolidated and closed bases and retrograded equipment from afghanistan. at the peak in 2011, we had 97,000 u.s. troops alongside 41,000 nato troops in afghanistan. ten years later, when the ambassador signed the doha agreement lton 29 february 2020 the united states had 12,600 troops with 8,000 nato and 10,500 contractors. this has been a ten-year multi-administration drawdown, not a 19-month or 19-day one. under the doha agreement, the u.s. would begin to withdraw forces contingent upon taliban meeting certain conditions, which would lead to a political agreement between the taliban and the government of afghanistan. there were seven conditions applicable to the taliban and eight conditions applicable to the united