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US President Joe Biden has defended his decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan – a move that has led Taliban militants to return to power.
Staying longer was not an option, Biden said in a speech to the nation, a day after the end of a 20-year US presence in Afghanistan.
He congratulated the troops for organizing an airlift of more than 120,000 people wanting to flee the Taliban regime.
Islamist activists celebrated what they call a victory.
US-led troops entered Afghanistan in 2001, ousting the Taliban in the aftermath of the devastating 9/11 attacks blamed on al-Qaeda – a militant jihadist group then based in the Asian country.
Mr Biden has been widely criticized – at home and by his allies – for the abrupt manner of the US withdrawal, which led to the unexpected collapse of the Afghan security forces that US troops had trained and funded for years.
Taliban militants were able to regain control of the whole country in 11 days and finally entered the capital, Kabul, on August 15.
President Biden deployed nearly 6,000 troops to take control of the airport to coordinate the evacuation of US and Allied foreign nationals and local Afghans who worked for them.
Thousands of people converged at Kabul International Airport in hopes of being able to board one of the evacuation flights.
In Tuesday’s speech, Biden praised the troops for the massive evacuation and vowed to continue efforts to get out the Americans who were still in Afghanistan and wanted to return – around 200 people in total.
But the American leader has firmly defended his intention to withdraw.
“I wasn’t going to prolong this war forever, and I wasn’t going to extend an outing forever,” Biden said, adding, “The war in Afghanistan is now over.”
He said the United States does not need troops on the ground to defend itself.
Joe Biden attempted to “turn the page” on a month of chaos and death in Afghanistan and, more broadly, 20 years of ultimately futile American attempts at occupation and nation-building.
At times he seemed on the defensive, noting that the Americans had been warned 19 times to leave Afghanistan before the US military withdrawal in August. He accused the Afghan leaders, allies on which the United States depended, of “corruption and embezzlement”. And he blamed the Trump administration for negotiating what he called an inadequate withdrawal deal with the Taliban.
He said the United States has no vital interest in Afghanistan and has tried to reframe American foreign policy by relying less on military deployments and more on diplomacy and international cooperation to deal with adversaries like China. and Russia.
Opinion polls show Americans still support the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, although many are unhappy with the way Biden oversaw the exit. White House officials say they hope, over time, the nation will be grateful for what the president has accomplished and forget the details of how it ended.
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