CRITICIZED: NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is criticized for the Defense Alliance’s Afghanistan strategy. Photo: Thomas Nilsson / VG
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The collapse of power in Afghanistan is NATO’s biggest failure, according to German top politician Armin Laschet. The self-examination of the defense alliance will start on Tuesday, and at 3 pm NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg will hold a press briefing.
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It is only two months since NATO’s Heads of State and Government met in Brussels. The summit expressed full support for US President Joe Biden’s order to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.
But more than that: Top leaders promised the Afghan people a new chapter in cooperation.
“We reaffirm our commitment to Afghanistan, the people there and the institutions in promoting security and sustaining progress over the last 20 years,” the top leaders from 30 NATO countries wrote in the final declaration of the meeting.
—-– EMBARRASSING: Armin Laschet is Angela Merkel’s successor in the German Christian Democratic Party CDU. He calls the Afghanistan situation NATO’s biggest mistake. Photo: CHRISTIAN MANG / POOL
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This support should come in several ways: NATO would continue to support the Afghan security forces with money and training, The Alliance promised to train Afghan special forces abroad when NATO was no longer physically present in Afghanistan. And NATO wanted to actively support the peace process between the Kabul government and the Taliban.
During a few hectic days, all of this had collapsed. The United States sent thousands of troops back to Kabul – not to fight the Taliban but to evacuate their and Western diplomats, and their local aides.
On Tuesday, there is hectic meeting activity in NATO, where the member countries’ ambassadors have been summoned to a meeting. NATO announced that Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg will hold a press conference at 3 p.m.
—-MORE COMFORTABLE: German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer asks if Germany and the other NATO countries must henceforth take greater responsibility for things that have previously been left to the United States. The photo was taken by her together with Jens Stoltenberg during the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Photo: Ola Vatn / VG
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– Big NATO mistake
Armin Laschet is Angela Merkel’s successor, leader of the German Christian Democrats and the party’s chancellor candidate for this autumn’s election. He says that the withdrawal of forces, which began in May, is embarrassing for NATO and that lessons must be learned from it:
“It is obvious that this was not a successful engagement of the international community,” Laschet said, according to the German press.
– This is the biggest failure NATO has suffered since the beginning, and we are now facing changes of epic dimensions, he added.
German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer is looking for learning points – and suggests that the United States has had too much responsibility for the Afghanistan strategy.
– The question for us is to what extent we are willing to take the consequences of this and to what extent we are willing to take on the things we have so far left to the Americans, says Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer in an interview with the German broadcaster ZDF.
There is also harsh criticism of the United States in London. Tobias Ellwood, the Conservative leader of the British Parliament’s Defense Committee, says that Britain has given in to bad US decisions.
He believes it is extremely embarrassing for the West that the Taliban now have control over a much larger part of Afghanistan than the movement had before September 11, 2011 – and calls for the initiative of an international coalition that can prevent civil war in the country:
– If the United States can not do that, then Britain is an obvious candidate. But I do not see any of the qualities needed to stand out and fill this vacuum, says Ellwood.
NATO’s co-responsibility
Senior researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Foreign Policy (NUPI), Karsten Friis, says like other researchers that NATO obviously has a responsibility for the collapse of Afghanistan.
– Definitely a co-responsibility. The original strategy has changed along the way. First, it was about cracking down on the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Then there was ambitious state-building. This was given up. Then the strategy was the presence of security forces as well as training of the country’s own security forces. None of the parts have been created by NATO, says the NUPI researcher to VG.
However, he believes it is too easy to give NATO full responsibility for the collapse of Afghanistan.
– This is about bigger things than what NATO is in charge of. Part of the reason for what is happening now is probably also that a date was set for the draw. This is something the Trump administration in the United States decided, Friis reminds.
—-SPEAKING WITH THE UNITED STATES: Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned against using a foreign approach on land with a different culture and history when he spoke with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday. Photo: Helge Mikalsen, VG
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China: – Too fast extraction
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi spoke with his US counterpart on Tuesday, criticizing the United States for withdrawing its forces from Afghanistan too quickly.
– Wang Yi clarified China’s position regarding the situation in Afghanistan. He says the realities have once again shown that it is difficult to gain a foothold by slavishly using foreign models on land with a completely different history, culture and national conditions, says the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs after Wang’s conversation with Antony Blinken.
According to NTB, Wang says that China is committed to communication and dialogue with the United States to ensure a smooth transition in Afghanistan and avoid a new civil war and humanitarian catastrophe.
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