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President Joe Biden defended his decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, despite Taliban’s swift takeover Countries, saying that the mission of the United States “should never be about nation-building.”
In his first comment since Taliban controlled In Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, Biden said on Monday that with the rapid advancement of the Taliban, the downfall of the Afghan government “is indeed much faster than we expected.”
However, Biden said in a televised speech: “I firmly support my decision.”
“If anything, the developments of the past week have reinforced that it is the right decision to end US military intervention in Afghanistan. The US military cannot and should not fight and die in a war where the Afghan military is unwilling to fight for themselves. “
After Biden made a comment Chaotic scene At the Kabul airport, as the Taliban advanced rapidly, thousands of Afghans gathered there, desperately trying to leave the country.
Sunday group Take over the Presidential Palace of Afghanistan A few hours after the Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled, in Kabul and various parts of the city, he later stated that the move was intended to prevent further bloodshed, but was criticized by the Afghans as “Unpatriotic and sad“.
Desperate escape attempt
Videos shared on social media A group of people ran side by side with the US military jet as it was about to take off from the Capital Airport on Monday. Another segment seems to show that after the plane took off, at least two people fell from the sky.
U.S. officials said they remain committed to evacuation of Afghans, including those who have been granted special immigration visas to help the country’s military during a multi-year mission in Afghanistan.
But refugee advocates urge the Biden administration to act quickly because there is growing concern that Afghans who work with the United States may become Taliban-led government.
The group’s Fast forward in Afghanistan In recent weeks, it occupied 26 of the country’s 34 capital cities before entering Kabul.
The United States and other countries have been eager to send diplomats out of the capital, but a U.S. defense official told Reuters that the United States temporarily suspended all evacuation flights to clear airport personnel.
On August 16, Afghan passengers waited to leave Kabul Airport, the second day after the Taliban occupied the city [Wakil Kohsar/AFP]The Biden administration has been criticized for its “hurried withdrawal”, and some of them-especially Republican lawmakers- Draw parallel lines The Vietnam War ended in 1975 and the United States withdrew from Saigon.
“President Biden’s decision allows us to move towards a worse sequel to the humiliation and fall of Saigon in 1975,” Republican Supreme Senator Mitch McConnell said in a statement last week.
U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Brinken Reject this comparison, Insisting that the US mission in Afghanistan was successful. “Remember, this is not Saigon,” Brinken told CNN on Sunday. “We took a mission to Afghanistan 20 years ago, and that mission was to deal with those who attacked us on 9/11-we successfully completed this mission.”
Afghanistan withdrawal
Biden July Early deadline Withdraw troops from Afghanistan and promised that all troops will be withdrawn from Afghanistan by the end of August. But the U.S. has Forced to strengthen the deployment of troops For the evacuation work, there are now about 6,000 soldiers guarding the evacuation.
Al Jazeera’s Patty Culhane reported from the Pentagon in Washington, DC on Monday that the US military has taken over command of Afghanistan’s airspace.
“But they can’t let any aircraft in and out until they let people leave the runway and tarmac,” she reported, adding that the United States is trying to get another 500 soldiers in to help evacuate, but this cannot happen unless the airport is clean.
Culhane said that the United States has indicated that it plans to evacuate 22,000 Afghans and their families on special immigrant visas — a process that is expected to take several days, with approximately 5,000 people being evacuated every day — but this has not yet begun.
“There is another big problem; the embassy told those who are being hunted by the Taliban to cooperate with the United States to take refuge in situ…but if they cannot pass the Taliban checkpoint, they are unlikely to reach the airport.”
‘Never talk about country building’
In his speech, Biden emphasized that withdrawing troops from Afghanistan was one of his presidential campaign promises, and expressed his opposition to the Pentagon’s proposal to increase troops to the country when he served as President Obama’s deputy in 2009.
“This is not in our national security interests,” he said of the United States’ endless involvement in what he called the civil war in Afghanistan.
“Our mission in Afghanistan should never be about nation-building. We should never create a unified, centralized democracy. Our only important national interest in Afghanistan today remains what it has always been-preventing terrorist attacks in Afghanistan. [the] Native American. “
But criticism continues in the US capital. John Brennan, who served as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency under Obama, said that although he did not know what intelligence assessments were sent to the White House about how quickly things might be solved, “obviously they already knew.”
“This is because Afghans are very dependent on the US support system,” Brennan said in an interview with MSNBC on Monday. “Obviously, this is underestimated by the government.”
Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, associate professor of public and international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, told Al Jazeera that although she generally agreed with Biden’s Afghanistan policy, she was “shocked” by his speech.
“Here is a refusal to recognize the scope of the humanitarian crisis that is currently forming in Kabul and across the country,” she said.
“He said the responsibility stopped on him, but blamed others. Others are indeed to be blamed here, but so is the United States. I just think that this speech is very inhumane in terms of the thinking of the Afghan people.”
Murtazhashvili said that many people at the airport work for the United States, worrying that they will become targets of the Taliban, but Biden does not admit this.
“People who hold onto American planes for their lives are terrified of their lives because they are part of our mission — they are part of the American family. For their inhumane discussions — he seems to be so disdainful of the Afghan people ,I can not understand.”
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