The Biden advice Afghanistan's Ghani reportedly didn't take

Ashraf Ghani, Joe Biden.
(Image credit: Pete Marovich-Pool/Getty Images)

Although President Biden and his Afghan counterpart, Ashraf Ghani, had a positive public meeting about the United States' withdrawal from Afghanistan at the White House earlier this year, the tension was higher behind the scenes, The New York Times reports.

Biden reportedly regarded Ghani, who fled Afghanistan for the United Arab Emirates ahead of the Taliban's takeover of the capital, as "stubborn and arrogant." But nevertheless, he agreed to Ghani's requests to provide Afghan forces with air support and keep the U.S. exit "low key" so it would not look as if Washington didn't "have faith" in Ghani's government. Ghani also requested that the U.S. be "conservative" in granting exit visas to interpreters and other Afghans who aided the U.S. military, an official familiar with the conversation told the Times.

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.