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The Pentagon claims that the Taliban have taken over Afghanistan like the “fall of Saigon”
A Pentagon (DOD) spokesperson said most US troops would arrive in Kabul by the end of the weekend, adding that some had already arrived.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters that the Taliban had recently taken over the country’s swath and “focused on their speed of movement with great concern.”
When asked about the fall of Saigon in 1975, or when Vietnam’s communist forces hijacked the capital during the Vietnam War, Kirby objected to comparing the situation with what is currently happening in Afghanistan. At that time, the United States was forced to evacuate thousands of American civilians and some Vietnamese by helicopter, leaving many lasting images.
“We are not focused on the history of the Vietnam War,” Kirby said.
However, Mr Kirby said it was unpredictable whether Afghan troops would be hijacked by the Taliban and vowed that the United States would guarantee that the threat of terrorism would not recur in Central Asia.
It is speculated that the Taliban will soon launch an attack on Kabul after the second and third largest cities of Kandahar and Herat, respectively, were captured by terrorist groups on Thursday.
“Looking at what the Taliban are doing, they are trying to isolate Kabul,” Kirby said, adding that the city was not facing an “imminent threat” from the group.
The United States withdrew from a poor country earlier this year after President Joe Biden announced that all troops would be withdrawn by September 11, the 20th anniversary of a terrorist attack that killed nearly 3,000 people 20 years ago. I started. ..
According to Kirby and the State Department, it has been approved to deploy an army of about 3,000 to assist in evacuating the US embassy. According to unconfirmed reports, US troops began arriving in Kabul on Friday.
However, as soon as the US military began to leave, the Taliban quickly launched an attack, occupying more than 12 state capitals in about a week.To date, 18 state capitals under Taliban rule.
Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand, fell to the Taliban on Friday, according to a group spokesman.
“The country’s most important states, Kandahar, Helmand, Herat and Bagis, have been completely conquered,” said Qari Yousef Ahmadi, a Taliban spokesman. according to To Long War Journal.
“The situation has all the characteristics of a humanitarian catastrophe,” Thomson Phili of the United Nations World Food Program told briefings, expressing concern about “the greater tide of hunger,” due to the poor human rights records of the fighting and the Taliban. did.
Domestically, the US withdrawal from Afghanistan could have political implications for the Biden administration.
Former Afghanistan Ambassador to the United States Ronald Neumann on Friday Said The NPR added that the decision to withdraw is likely to be a “bad decision” and “stabilizes or stabilizes the situation with the same force that it thinks it needs to be temporarily reinstated under adverse circumstances. I was able to get it done, “he added.
Neumann added that the United States is in “a kind of … panic mode” about how to treat Afghans, including translators who worked with the US military. “If the United States leaves these people in a way that does harm, we are setting a huge sunspot for ourselves, our country, and the future,” he said.
Reuters contributed to this report.
Jack phillips
Senior reporter
Jack Phillips is a New York-based reporter for The Epoch Times.
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