As US troops leaving Afganistan, it seems interesting to know where would they go.
Returning home huge amount of veterans (returning from a lost conflict) can influence inner politics drastically - like was after Vietnam.
Is there any information about it?
The numbers need to be taken into perspective. To cite a 2020 BBC article about withdrawals:
In Iraq, the number of US troops will be cut by 500 to 2,500, while the number of service personnel in Afghanistan will fall from 4,500 to about 2,500.
So at most we are talking 4500 soldiers, hardly anything to influence inner politics. You may have other reasons to ask this question, but the one given doesn't hold water.
Actually, this article, April 2021, puts number at 3500 remaining until their departure.
If I were Biden I'd hate to have to provide political, rather than military, justifications on why they could not just return home.
The other aspect is the location of Afghanistan. It's landlocked and none of the neighbors are all that US-useful (though I thought one of the northern Stans had a US base before). Seeing there is no great way to keep tabs on Afghanistan from its neighbors, tendency will be to pull exiting troops waaaay back.
Politically, the nature of the departing US troops is also very different from Vietnam. This lot is an all-volunteer, professional, army who initially went in to go after the 9/11 perpetrators and peaked at 100K in 2011. While the Vietnam war involved a lot of unwilling draftees being put into an easy-to-criticize war that saw gradual US piecemeal buildup, up to 560K in 1968, right around Tet, punctuated by Westmoreland's frequent "gimme 20K more boys and this war is done".
Apparently, the last major units partially on rotation there are the 101st Airborne and 10th Mountain divisions. 10th is based in NY, with USCENTCOM tasking. 101st is in Kentucky. So, perhaps rather than just "home", those units will return to the US and/or to whatever US bases outside of the US they usually are assigned to.
