The Taliban takeover is not the “worst case scenario”, stated Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor to President Joe Biden, on an NBC morning show, who added that Biden is behind the decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan.
“Actually, I think that the worst case scenario for the US would be a circumstance in which we were adding back thousands and thousands of troops to fight and die in a civil war in Afghanistan when the Afghan army wasn’t prepared to fight in it itself”.
“If we had stayed one more year or two more years or five more years or 10 more years, no amount of training, equipping, or money or lives lost by the United States was going to put the Afghan army in a position to be able to sustain that country on its own,” said Sullivan.
He said that Biden had faced a “bad choice”, but that he stands behind the choice he made, recognizing that the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan is sooner than expected and for that blamed the Afghan army’s lack of “will”.
“It is certainly the case that the speed with which cities fell was much greater than anyone anticipated. At the end of the day, “Despite the fact that we spent 20 years and tens of billions of dollars to give the best equipment, the best training and the best capacity to the Afghan security forces, we could not give them the will and they ultimately decided that they would not fight for Kabul and they would not fight for the country, and that opened the door to the Taliban to come into Kabul very rapidly”, stated Sullivan in front of the White House, adding that he stands behind Biden’s decision that the fall of Kabul was not inevitable.
“There was the capacity to stand up and resist. The capacity didn’t happen”, said Sullivan.
Russia, on the other hand, today urged all parties involved in the Afghan conflict to refrain from using violence, has reported Tass.
Russian Ambassador to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzya, urged all parties in Afghanistan involved in the efforts to resolve the violence “to refrain from hostilities and to foster a settlement peacefully”.
He urged not to panic due to the situation in Afghanistan.
“Currently, we believe that there is no point in panicking. The main point is that a widespread bloodbath among civilians has been prevented”, says Nebenzya.
