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President Joe Biden has defended his decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan despite the rapid takeover of the country by the Taliban, saying the US mission “was never meant to be about nation building.” .
In his first comments since the Taliban took control of the Afghan capital, Kabul, Biden said on Monday that the collapse of the Afghan government amid the rapid advance of the Taliban “has unfolded faster than expected.”
“I strongly support my decision,” Biden said in his televised address, however.
“On the contrary, the developments of the past week reinforce the fact that ending the US military engagement in Afghanistan was now the right decision. American troops cannot and must not fight in a war and die in a war that Afghan forces are unwilling to wage for themselves. “
Biden’s comments come after chaotic scenes at Kabul airport, where thousands of Afghans gathered in a desperate attempt to leave the country amid the rapid advance of the Taliban.
The group took over the Afghan presidential palace in Kabul on Sunday, as well as parts of the city, just hours after President Ashraf Ghani fled, a move he later said was aimed at preventing further bloodshed, but has been criticized by Afghans as “unpatriotic and sad”. .
Desperate attempts to escape
Videos shared on social media on Monday showed groups of people running alongside a US military plane as it prepared to leave the capital’s airport. Another clip appeared to show at least two people falling from the sky after the plane took off.
U.S. officials said they remain committed to evacuating Afghans, including those who assisted the country’s military during its multi-year mission in the country and have been approved for special immigration visas.
But refugee advocates have urged the Biden administration to act quickly as concerns grow that Afghans who have worked with the United States could be targets of violence under a Taliban-led government.
The group’s rapid advance through Afghanistan in recent weeks allowed it to capture 26 of the country’s 34 provincial capitals before entering Kabul.
The United States and other foreign countries have rushed to send diplomatic personnel out of the capital, but a U.S. defense official told Reuters news agency that the United States has temporarily halted all flights evacuation to evacuate people from the aerodrome.
Afghan passengers wait to leave Kabul airport on August 16, a day after the city was captured by the Taliban [Wakil Kohsar/AFP]The Biden administration has been criticized for a “hasty withdrawal” of troops, with some – including Republican lawmakers in particular – drawing parallels with the US exit from Saigon in 1975 at the end of the Vietnam War.
“President Biden’s decisions send us rushing into an even worse sequel to the humiliating fall of Saigon in 1975,” Senior Republican Senator Mitch McConnell said in a statement last week.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken rejected this comparison, insisting that the US mission in Afghanistan was a success. “Remember, this is not Saigon,” Blinken told CNN on Sunday. “We went to Afghanistan 20 years ago with a mission, and that mission was to deal with the people who attacked us on September 11 – and we succeeded in that mission.”
Afghan evacuations
Biden advanced the deadline for the withdrawal of US troops from the country to July, pledging that all forces would be out of Afghanistan by the end of August. But the United States was forced to strengthen the deployment of its troops for the withdrawal effort, with around 6,000 troops now guarding the evacuation.
Patty Culhane of Al Jazeera, reporting from the Pentagon in Washington on Monday, said the US military had taken command of Afghan airspace.
“But they can’t get planes in or out until they get people off the runways and the tarmac,” she said, adding that the United States was trying to bring 500 other soldiers to help with the evacuation, but that can’t happen. unless the aerodrome is clear.
The United States has announced plans to evacuate 22,000 Afghans on special immigrant visas and their families – a process expected to take several days, with around 5,000 people being evacuated daily – but that doesn’t hasn’t started yet, Culhane said.
“There is another big concern; the embassy tells people who worked with the United States and who are now being chased by the Taliban to take shelter there…. “
‘Never on nation building’
In his speech, Biden stressed that the withdrawal from Afghanistan was one of his presidential campaign promises and said he opposed the Pentagon’s recommendation for an increase in US troops in the country in 2009, when he was President Barack Obama’s deputy.
“It is not in the interest of our national security,” he said of America’s endless involvement in what he called an Afghan civil war.
“Our mission in Afghanistan was never meant to be about nation building. It was never meant to be to create a unified, centralized democracy. Our only vital national interest in Afghanistan today remains what it has always been: to prevent a terrorist attack against [the] American homeland.
But the criticisms continue in the American capital. John Brennan, who acted as director of the CIA under Obama, said that while he didn’t know what intelligence assessments were sent to the White House in terms of how quickly things might unfold, ” clearly they did ”.
“And it was because of the enormous dependence the Afghans had on the American support system,” Brennan said in an interview with MSNBC on Monday. “And clearly, that was underestimated by the administration.”
Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, associate professor of public and international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, told Al Jazeera that – although she broadly agrees with Biden’s policy on Afghanistan – she was “shocked” by his speech.
“There has been a refusal here to recognize the scale of the humanitarian crisis taking shape in Kabul now and across the country,” she said.
“He says the responsibility ends with him but blamed everyone. It may be true that other people deserve to be blamed here, but so too does the United States. I just thought the speech was pretty inhuman in terms of thinking about the Afghan people. “
Murtazashvili said many people at the airport worked for the United States and feared being targeted by the Taliban, but Biden did not acknowledge him.
“The people who hang on to American planes for their lives fear for their lives because they were part of our mission – they were part of an American family. And for such an inhuman discussion about them – he just seems to have such contempt for the Afghan people and I can’t understand him. “
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