Europeans trapped in hasty American withdrawal from Afghanistan – archyworldys

Manage the emergency of evacuations and take up a dual migration and security challenge. Emmanuel Macron held, Monday August 16 from Fort Brégançon (Var), to react quickly to the return to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan, after the hasty withdrawal of American troops and their Western allies. Earlier today, the head of state chaired a virtual defense council on the brutal regime change in Kabul. Your serious, weighed words, he spoke of a “Historic turning point”, likely to have “Major consequences” on the international scene. Words in tune with those of his European counterparts, each more worried than the other.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson also chaired an interministerial crisis meeting on Monday, the third in four days. The day before, he had called on the West to adopt a united front to prevent Afghanistan “Does not become a breeding ground for terrorism again”. His defense minister, Ben Wallace, called the Taliban’s return to power“Failure of the international community”. “It’s an absolutely bitter development. Bitter, dramatic and horrible, especially for the Afghan people ”, said German Chancellor Angela Merkel from Berlin.

The dismay is heightened by the images shot on Monday on the tarmac of the Kabul airport, invaded by the candidates for exile, during the operations to evacuate Western nationals and Afghan personnel employed over twenty years of intervention military.

Migratory wave

Europeans fear above all that the “Islamic emirate of Afghanistan”, as the new rulers of Kabul renamed the country, will once again become a jihadist sanctuary, twenty years after their refusal to hand over the leader of Al-Qaida, Bin Laden, responsible for the September 11 attacks. “Terrorist groups are present in Afghanistan and will seek to profit from the destabilization” of the country, said Macron: “In this regard, we will do everything so that Russia, the United States and Europe can cooperate effectively, because our interests are the same”, he stressed. The French leader agreed a little earlier with Boris Johnson to take initiatives in this direction within the United Nations Security Council.

Without openly criticizing President Biden, the French president sought to distance himself from the American approach. He recalled that the French forces dispatched to Afghanistan under Jacques Chirac, shortly after the attacks orchestrated by Al-Qaida on American soil, had been completely withdrawn in 2014, following a decision by François Hollande. “Our military interventions are not intended to replace the sovereignty of peoples, nor to impose democracy from the outside, but to defend international stability and our security”, he said, in an indirect allusion to the anti-jihadist engagement of Paris in other areas, such as the Sahel.

You have 54.09% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.