Taliban’s Afghanistan takeover ‘terrible’, says German Chancellor Merkel

Berlin [Germany], August 17 (ANI): German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday described the Taliban’s Afghanistan takeover as “bitter, dramatic and terrible”, a media report said.

During a televised news conference on Monday, Angela Merkel said, “This is a particularly bitter development. Bitter, dramatic and  terrible…it is terrible for the millions of Afghans who have worked for the freedom of a society,” CNN reported. “We need to make sure that the many people who have big worries and concerns have a secure stay in countries neighbouring Afghanistan. We should not repeat the mistakes of the past when we did not give enough funds to UNHCR and other aid programs, and people left Jordan and Lebanon toward Europe,” CNN quoted her as saying.

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, on Saturday said that it’s alarmed by the unfolding humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. The refugee agency expressed its concerns about the impact of the conflict in Afghanistan on women and girls. Some 80 percent of nearly a quarter of a million Afghans forced to flee since the end of May are women and children.

Nearly 4,00,000 were forced from their homes since the beginning of the year, joining 2.9 million Afghans already internally displaced across the country at the end of 2020, the UNHCR added. The Taliban on Sunday took control of the presidential palace in Kabul soon after Asharaf Ghani fled Afghanistan.

On Monday, Biden put the blame for the current situation on the Afghan leaders, saying they gave up and fled the country so the military collapsed. “I stand squarely behind my decision. After 20 years I have learned the hard way that there was no good time to withdraw US forces and that’s why we are still there,” he said.

“We were clear-eyed about the risk. We planned for every contingency that this did unfold more quickly than we anticipated. Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country so the military collapsed,” he added. (ANI)