NATO chief backs Biden on withdrawal
NATO head hits European talk of a separate EU force
BRUSSELS >> Pushing back against European complaints that the Biden administration had failed to consult its allies over the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary-general, said those objections were exaggerated and that NATO had given unanimous approval for the withdrawal as far back as April.
Stoltenberg also said that talk of a new, separate European Union military force — which some have argued is necessary in the aftermath of the collapse of Afghanistan — could only weaken the trans-Atlantic alliance and divide the continent.
“You see different voices in Europe, and some are talking about the lack of consultation, but I was present in those meetings,” Stoltenberg said late Thursday in a wide-ranging interview at NATO’s headquarters. “Of course the United States consulted with European allies, but at the end of the day, every nation has to make their own decision on deploying forces.”
He acknowledged that the consultation was somewhat artificial, because once the U.S. decided to withdraw, he said, “it was hard for other allies to continue without the United States. It was not a realistic option.”
Stoltenberg is described by those familiar with his thinking as unhappy with the decision by President Joe Biden to leave Afghanistan by Sept. 11 without conditions. He had urged “a conditional withdrawal” that would have required the Taliban to follow through on its vow to seek a negotiated political solution.
In the interview, Stoltenberg declined to confirm that version of his views but argued that once NATO decided to support the Biden plan in April in a meeting with no voiced objections from other allies there was no point revisiting the decision.
NATO allies did push for a political process, Stoltenberg said, even after former President Donald Trump signed a bilateral deal with the Taliban in February 2020 that excluded the Afghan government and set May 1 for U.S. troop withdrawal.
“The problem was that the Taliban did not want to negotiate if the government in Kabul was part of those negotiations,” he said.
But given the U.S. importance to an alliance where 80% of military spending comes from countries that do not belong to the European Union, Stoltenberg has been openly solicitous and supportive of Biden, too, not just on Afghanistan but also on China, Washington’s primary diplomatic concern.
In other developments: • The U.S. on Friday halted U.S.-bound flights of Afghan evacuees, pulling some off planes, after discovering a few cases of measles among new arrivals in the United States.
A U.S. government document viewed by The Associated Press warned the development would have a severe impact on an evacuation that since Aug. 15 has moved many thousands of people out of Taliban-held Afghanistan, but also been grindingly drawn out for Afghan evacuees and Americans alike, and was plagued by attacks and other deadly violence.
The decision was made by U.S. Customs and Border Protection on the recommendation of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the halt stemmed from discovery of measles among four Afghans who had arrived in the United States. It was not immediately clear from Psaki’s remarks whether the stop applied to flights from all transit sites overseas, or only two of the biggest ones, in Qatar and in Germany.
The development had American officials overseas Friday removing from planes Afghan families who already had struggled through a grueling, dangerous escape to safety after Kabul fell to the Taliban on Aug. 15.
.• The United Nations on Friday sounded the alarm over Taliban crackdowns on peaceful protests, many of them by women demanding equal rights, and journalists covering such events.
In one case, two Afghan video journalists were beaten with iron rods.
Tagi Daryabi said he and a colleague were covering a protest earlier this week by women demanding their rights from Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers. Taliban fighters stopped the two journalists, bound their hands and dragged them away to a police station in Kabul’s District Three.
The 22-year-old photographer said the first thing he heard in the station were screams from a nearby room.
Several fighters then began beating him and his colleague, 28-year-old Neamatullah Naqdi.
At one point, Daryabi said he was beaten nonstop for 10 minutes.