-Afghan Forces recapture capital of Badghis Province
-UK PM says Britain nears to complete Afghan exit
DM Monitoring
WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden on Thursday said it is up to the Afghan people alone how they run their country, as he announced the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan will end on Aug. 31 despite new concerns about the possibility of a civil war.
“We did not go to Afghanistan to nation-build,” Biden said. “It’s the right and the responsibility of the Afghan people alone to decide their future and how they want to run their country.”
Biden delivered his most extensive comments to date about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan under pressure from critics to give more explanation for his decision to withdraw.
Biden also said U.S. plans to move thousands of Afghan interpreters out of the country in anticipation of the end of the U.S. military mission in the country on Aug. 31. The United States last weekend abandoned Bagram air base, the longtime staging ground for U.S. military operations in the country, effectively ending America’s longest war. The Pentagon says the withdrawal of U.S. forces is 90% complete.
Washington agreed to withdraw in a deal negotiated last year under Biden’s Republican predecessor, Donald Trump. Biden overruled military leaders who wanted to keep a larger presence to assist Afghan security forces and prevent Afghanistan from becoming a staging ground for extremist groups.
Instead, the United States plans to leave 650 troops in Afghanistan to provide security for the U.S. Embassy. The commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, General Austin Miller, warned last week that the country may be headed toward a civil war.
Meanwhile, Afghan government forces on Thursday wrested back control of a western provincial capital stormed by the Taliban days earlier and hundreds of fresh troops have been deployed to the region, the Defence Ministry said. It said some fighting was continuing on the fringes of Qala-e-Naw, capital of Badghis province, which borders the central Asian country of Turkmenistan.
Insurgents had on Wednesday seized key government buildings in the city including the police headquarters as part of a dramatic Taliban advance unfolding as foreign forces withdraw from Afghanistan after a 20-year-long intervention.
“The city is fully (back) under our control and we are conducting operations against the Taliban on the outskirts of the city,” defence ministry spokesman Fawad Aman said. The ministry said 69 Taliban fighters had been killed in fresh operations on the edge of Qala-e-Naw — the first major provincial capital entered by the Islamist insurgents in their latest offensive. A large quantity of Taliban arms and ammunition was also seized by government forces, the ministry said on Twitter.
The rest of Badghis province is in Taliban hands. Western security officials say the Taliban have captured more than 100 districts in Afghanistan; the Taliban say they hold over 200 districts in 34 provinces comprising over half the country. Main cities and provincial capitals remain under government control. The insurgents have been gaining territory for weeks but accelerated their thrust as the United States vacated its main Afghan base, effectively ending an intervention that began with the ousting of the radical Islamist Taliban government in 2001.
Taliban advances have been especially dramatic in northern provinces where they had long been kept at bay. Stop-start peace talks between the government and insurgents remain inconclusive.
Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Thursday that most of British troops have been pulled out of Afghanistan, ending its official role in a two-decades long conflict amid fears the departure of foreign soldiers could lead to a chaotic civil war.
A total of 457 British soldiers were killed in the country. “All British troops assigned to NATO’s mission in Afghanistan are now returning home,” Johnson said in a statement to parliament. “For obvious reasons, I will not disclose the timetable of our departure, though I can tell the house (parliament) that most of our personnel have already left.”
Violence has been raging throughout Afghanistan in the weeks since President Joe Biden announced troops would withdraw unconditionally by Sept. 11.
