Allies round on US over Afghanistan 'debacle'Allies and critics alike on Monday condemned the United States over its 20-year NATO campaign in Afghanistan, with a leading German politician slamming the operation as "the biggest debacle" in the alliance's history.
Stunned by the Taliban's lightning advance across the country after the departure of Western troops, NATO allies have been left scrambling to evacuate their nationals as well as vulnerable Afghans.
The Taliban's return to power and chaotic scenes of people desperately seeking to flee Kabul on Western military aircraft have sparked criticism of the two-decade operation, which cost the alliance thousands of lives and over a trillion dollars.
Chancellor Angela Merkel said the US-led NATO operation achieved less than planned, adding she shared the pain of families of soldiers killed "as it seems right now like it was all in vain".
The deployment effectively ended Al-Qaeda's ability to launch another operation on the scale of its September 11, 2001 attack on the United States, but "everything else that has followed has not been as successful and has not been achieved in the way that we had planned", Merkel said.
Lessons must be drawn, she said.
"You also have to set smaller goals, I think, in such missions."
The Taliban's return to power was "particularly dramatic and terrible", she said.
"It is terrible for the millions of Afghans who had worked for a freer society and who, with the support of the Western community, have focused on democracy, on education, on women's rights," she said..........
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."It is the biggest debacle that NATO has suffered since its founding," said Armin Laschet, who is the conservative candidate to succeed Merkel as chancellor in September's election.....................
https://www.yahoo.com/news/allies-round-us-over-afghanistan-160022595.html
