Biden to Ghani in final phone call in July: 'You clearly have the best military'

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

President Biden still seemed hopeful about the Afghan military's ability to hold off the Taliban offensive during his final call with former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in July, a transcript obtained by Reuters suggests.

While the two leaders were discussing their respective plans for Afghanistan amid the final stages of the United States' withdrawal from the country, Ghani, who eventually fled Afghanistan before the insurgents took Kabul, warned that government forces were "facing a full-scale invasion, composed of Taliban, full Pakistani planning and logistical support, and at leas 10,00-15,000 international terrorists, predominantly Pakistanis thrown into this." (Pakistan denied Ghani's claims).

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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.