President Joe Biden yesterday called the evacuation from Afghanistan an extraordinary success in his first public remarks since the United States withdrew its military from the country on Monday, ending a 20-year war.
He said the choice for the United States in Afghanistan was either to withdraw from the country or escalate the conflict.
“That was the choice: between leaving or escalating. I was not going to extend this forever war, and I was not extending a forever exit,” Biden said.
Biden defended his decision to pull troops out of Afghanistan, saying it was in the US national interest.
“We no longer had a clear purpose in an open-ended mission in Afghanistan,” he said a day after the final withdrawal.
“This is the right decision. A wise decision. And the best decision for America,” he said.
Biden pledged to help scores of US citizens who remain in Afghanistan to leave, a day after the evacuation mission from Kabul airport ended.
“For those remaining Americans, there is no deadline. We remain committed to get them out if they want to come out,” Biden said.
Meanwhile, Nargis Nehan, a former member of Afghan president Ashraf Ghani’s cabinet who days ago fled Afghanistan for Norway, condemned the US handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“The US have been in Afghanistan for 20 years, staying one more year longer wouldn’t have made any difference for them, at least financially as well as politically,” Nehan told AFP from Oslo where she is staying in quarantine after arriving last week.
Nehan, who previously served as acting Minister of Mines and Petroleum, said the withdrawal was “mismanaged” and “irresponsible” and with a delayed exit evacuations could have been handled in an organised manner and enabled a real agreement between the government and the Taliban.
“President Joe Biden could have said that by end of September 2022 I want zero troops in Afghanistan. But until that time I want to make sure that we have a political settlement between the government and the Taliban and that we have also evacuated all our employees and local partners,” Nehan said.
