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Updated July 9th, 2021 at 14:11 IST

'I don't trust Taliban': Biden says 'did not go to build nation' amid US troop withdrawal

With a majority of troops already out of Afghan, President Joe Biden on July 8 said that the US military mission in Afghanistan will end on August 31.

Reported by: Bhavya Sukheja
Biden
IMAGE: AP | Image:self
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With a majority of troops already out of Afghan, President Joe Biden on July 8 said that the US military mission in Afghanistan will end on August 31. In a speech from the White House’s East Room, Biden pushed back against the notion that the US mission failed. He even urged the Afghan government and Taliban, which he said remains as formidable as it did before the start of the war, to come to a peace agreement. 

“We are ending America’s longest war. I will not send another generation of Americans to war in Afghanistan. The United States cannot afford to remain tethered to policies created to respond to a world as it was 20 years ago,” Biden said. 

He added, “We did not go to Afghanistan to nation-build”. “Afghan leaders have to come together and drive toward a future”. 

Previously, Biden had set September 11 as the final date for the pullback of US troops from Afghanistan. Last week, the US abandoned Bagram airbase, the longtime staging ground for US military operations in the country. The Pentagon has also said that the withdrawal of US forces is 90 per cent complete. 

Despite the US military exit, Biden has assured his Afghan counterpart, Ashraf Ghani, that Washington will continue to provide civilian and humanitarian assistance. Biden said that US support for Afghan people will endure. He also reiterated that its the rights and responsibility of the Afghan people to decide their future and how they want to run their country. 

Taliban takeover is ‘not inevitable’ 

The US President also went on to say that Washington has achieved its goals in Afghanistan of degrading Al-Qaeda and prevent more attacks on the US. "I do not trust the Taliban," Biden told reporters, adding, "but I trust the capacity of the Afghan military”. He also went on to say that the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan “is not inevitable”. Biden added that the Afghan military translators have a “home” in the US. 

Further, while talking about the American assistance to Afghanistan in the backdrop of its military drawdown, the US President said that together with NATO allies and partners, the US has trained and quipped nearly 300,000 current serving members of the military - Afghan National Security Forces. Biden also said that hundreds of that security forces trained over the last two decades. “We provided our Afghan partners with all the tools,” he said while also emphasising the modern military tools that have been provided to Afghanistan to fight back the terrorists.

(Image: AP)


 

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Published July 9th, 2021 at 14:11 IST

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