Taliban shouldn't allow Afghanistan to become hub of global terrorists: NATO chief
Jens Stoltenberg said the Afghan political leadership failed to stand up to the Taliban
BRUSSELS (Web Desk) - NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called on the Taliban on Tuesday to facilitate the departure of all those who want to leave Afghanistan, and said the Western defence alliance has agreed to send additional evacuation planes to Kabul.
He said that the member countries will send additional evacuation planes to Afghanistan’s capital city of Kabul.
Jens Stoltenberg said that the Taliban should not allow Afghanistan to become a center of global terrorists.
The NATO Secretary General went on to say that the Afghan leadership and forces fail to fight Taliban. "Ultimately, the Afghan political leadership failed to stand up to the Taliban and to achieve the peaceful solution that Afghans desperately wanted," he said.
"This failure of the Afghan leadership led to the tragedy we are witnessing today."
Biden defends US pullout
Earlier today, US President Joe Biden had defended the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, even in the face of the Taliban s stunning victory, which prompted panic in Kabul with thousands mobbing the airport in a desperate attempt to flee.
In his address at the White House -- his first public appearance since the Islamist insurgents took control of the country in astonishing fashion at the weekend -- he admitted the Taliban advance had unfolded more quickly than expected.
And he did not shy away from heaping criticism at the Western-backed government that was overthrown in Kabul, saying US troops could not defend a nation whose leaders "gave up and fled," as did President Ashraf Ghani.
"We gave them every chance to determine their own future. We could not provide them with the will to fight for that future," Biden said, adding he could no longer ask US soldiers to risk their lives in the country, 20 years on.
"Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation-building."
Failure
Critics say the US reputation as a global power has been badly tarnished by the Taliban s victory, nearly 20 years after they were ousted from power by a US-led invasion over their support for Al-Qaeda.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the US-led NATO operation in Afghanistan "has not been as successful and has not been achieved in the way that we had planned".
Britain s Defence Secretary Ben Wallace described the Taliban takeover as a "failure of the international community", assessing that the West s intervention was a job only half-done.
The US government has insisted that its two decades of war in Afghanistan was a success, defined by quashing the Al-Qaeda threat, and that the mission had far expanded beyond its original goals.
Biden said he was "left again to ask of those who argue that we should stay: how many more generations of America s daughters and sons would you have me send to Afghanistan s civil war when Afghan troops will not?"
The United Nations Security Council said Monday the international community must ensure Afghanistan does not become a breeding ground for terrorism under the Taliban, following an emergency meeting in New York.
"The following days will be pivotal," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. "The world is watching. We cannot and must not abandon the people of Afghanistan."
