by Shamil Shams at DW – Germany
US President Joe Biden on Monday addressed the nation to share his views on the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and the Taliban takeover of the war-ravaged country.
As Biden justified his decision to pull all US troops out of Afghanistan, he blamed the Afghan leadership for not resisting Taliban advances in recent weeks.
“The truth is: This did unfold more quickly than we anticipated. So what happened? Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country. The Afghan military gave up, sometimes without trying to fight,” Biden said.
“American troops cannot and should not be fighting the war, and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves,” he added.
It is still puzzling for many observers how the Afghan army, which was trained and equipped by the US for two decades, could have surrendered to the Taliban so quickly.
From the perspective of size, the Taliban have about 80,000 fighters, in comparison with the more than 300,000 soldiers working for the former Afghan government. Yet, the militant group still overran the country within weeks.
There could be several reasons for this debacle.
No NATO air support
Air power was a crucial factor in anti-Taliban operations over the past two decades. Though the Afghan forces conducted group operations, they could always count on the backing of NATO and US air support. With the withdrawal of NATO, Afghan forces on the ground were missing a key element on the battlefield against organized Taliban fighters…
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