At the beginning of May, the USA and its NATO partners begin their troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, thus ending their 20-year military operation in the Hindu Kush.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has now surprisingly traveled to Kabul for deliberations on the subject.
In the case of Blinken's unannounced visit, talks with President Ashraf Ghani and US government representatives are on the agenda.
The Afghan television channel ToloNews showed pictures of a meeting Blinking with the chairman of the High Council for National Reconciliation, Abdullah Abdullah.
"I'm here to demonstrate our continued commitment," Blinken said to Abdullah in the video.
"We have a new chapter"
Blinken told President Ghani that the US withdrawal would not weaken strategic relations between the two countries.
The US continued to feel obliged to Afghanistan and its people.
"We have a new chapter, but it's a chapter that we write together."
There are currently around 9,600 NATO soldiers in the country, including 1,100 Bundeswehr soldiers.
According to US President Joe Biden, US soldiers should have left Afghanistan by September 11th at the latest - this is the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the US Department of Defense that triggered the US invasion were in Afghanistan.
At that time, the US Army overthrew the government of the radical Islamic Taliban, which had provided refuge for the terrorist network Al-Qaeda.
Biden said in a televised address on Wednesday that US forces invaded Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks so that it would not be the starting point for attacks against the US again.
"We have achieved this goal," said the US President.
It is now time to "end this endless war".
However, observers fear a new escalation of the Afghan civil war after the withdrawal of Western troops - and a return of the Taliban to power.
The peace negotiations between the government in Kabul and the Islamists have so far made little progress.
On Wednesday the UN mission in the crisis state (Unama) announced that the number of civilian victims in the conflict had increased significantly in the first quarter of this year.
According to the report, there was a nearly 30 percent increase in civilian deaths and injuries compared to the same period last year.
fek / AFP