US policy in Afghanistan is said to be:
– “absolute disaster, of epic proportions”
– “the West’s biggest strategic mistake since the turn of the century”
– “shameful”
– “catastrophic”
– “unforgivable”
BRUSSELS, August 18 (Xinhua) – World leaders, political commentators and foreign affairs experts have joined the international chorus condemning US policy in Afghanistan, during which a 20-year military deployment suddenly came to a chaotic end.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on Tuesday that the sudden fall of the Afghan government and the Taliban’s rapid takeover have cast a “long shadow” over the West’s efforts to build a stable and lasting society.
“Scenes of despair at Kabul airport are shameful for the political west,” Steinmeier said in a statement.
“The failure” of the West’s years of efforts in Afghanistan “raises questions about the past and future of our foreign policy and military engagement,” he said.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday that the international deployment in Afghanistan was “disappointing” and called on countries to learn lessons from the failure in Afghanistan.
Also on Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron called for a “responsible and united response” within the UN Security Council on Afghanistan, where the Taliban have regained power and warn of the risk of irregular migration flows to Europe caused by the destabilization of Afghanistan.
In an interview with Parlamentni Listy on Tuesday, the Czech president described the US withdrawal from Afghanistan as cowardice and a dramatic failure by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a warning of intensified distrust within NATO about the legitimacy of US existence as such – called world leader.
“It has been quite catastrophic. It has been a long-term commitment for 20 years to make a better Afghanistan,” Sweden’s former Prime Minister Carl Bildt told Swedish Television on Monday.
Bildt described the US withdrawal as “unforgivable”, questioned it and said he was surprised by “the lack of preparation, the fact that one or the other knew what was going to happen.”
In an interview with the Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws, David Criekemans, professor of international politics at the University of Antwerp in Belgium, accused US President Joe Biden of making a monumental mistake in withdrawing all US military troops from Afghanistan.
“President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw all military forces is simply the West’s biggest strategic mistake since the turn of the century,” he said.
The French national daily Le Monde listed on Monday “the painful questions after the mistakes in Afghanistan”.
“US President Joe Biden, by ordering a military withdrawal from Afghanistan before the 20th anniversary on 9/11, stopped a double fault. On the one hand, the West had no reason to deploy in Afghanistan in 2002, the year after the victory for the anti-Taliban forces. “one does not militarily occupy a country where there is no longer any enemy to fight,” it wrote.
“On the other hand, their presence served as a magnet for the Taliban to resume fighting, fueling an Afghan civil war that did not exist in late 2001,” Le Monde said as he analyzed the West’s mistakes.
“Now that the Taliban have conquered Kabul and will exercise power, there are only painful issues left,” it said.
The newspaper Le Figaro quoted members of Congress who criticized Biden for his failure to plan the withdrawal, now a humiliating failure played out in front of cameras around the world.
“This is an absolute disaster, of epic proportions;” “Joe Biden has blood on his hands;” “The very fact that we did not even succeed in securing the civilian area at Kabul airport speaks volumes about our moral and operational shortcomings,” said members of Congress.
Peter Neumann, a German political scientist at King’s College London, told state broadcaster ARD on Tuesday that the Taliban were often presented as a terrorist organization but neglected as a Pashto militant deeply rooted in the local religious and social establishment, whose support has always been there.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said there was a need for “an honest, clear-cut assessment of NATO’s own involvement in Afghanistan”, adding that the collapse was “rapid and sudden”.
“Despite our large investments and sacrifices over two decades, the collapse was rapid and sudden. There are many lessons to be learned,” says Stoltenberg.
Source: sn.dk