Where Taliban has captured huge swathes of land in Afghanistan, US President Joe Biden has ruled out any changes to his troop withdrawal from the war-torn nation on August 10. Giving a straight ‘no’, Biden stated Afghan authorities must come together and fight for themselves and their country.
In April, President Biden ordered the withdrawal of all US soldiers from Afghanistan by September 11 to bring the country's longest war to an end. According to reports in the global media, the United States has already evacuated more than 90% of its troops from the war-torn country, with the military operation set to finish on August 31.
When asked if his current military withdrawal strategy might alter, Mr Biden told "No."
Clarifying his stance on the situation, Biden stated, “Look, we spent over a trillion dollars over 20 years. We trained and equipped over 300,000 Afghan forces. Afghan leaders have to come together. We lost thousands — lost to death and injury — thousands of American personnel. They've got to fight for themselves, fight for their nation."
“The United States — I’ll insist we continue to keep the commitments we made of providing close air support, making sure that their air force functions and is operable, resupplying their forces with food and equipment, and paying all their salaries. But they’ve got to want to fight. They have outnumbered the Taliban,” he added.
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Afghans are beginning to realise, according to Mr Biden, that they need to join together politically at the top. “However, we will continue to uphold our commitment. But I have no regrets about my decision,” he stated.
'The US went to Afghanistan to deliver justice to those responsible for the September 11 terrorist attacks and to disrupt terrorists attempting to use Afghanistan as a safe haven to target the nation,' said White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. "We achieved those objectives some years ago."
Despite being massively outmanned by the Afghan forces, the Taliban managed to capture the large area of the country when US soldiers left Afghanistan.
The terrorist group took control of Afghanistan's eighth provincial city on August 10 as part of their push towards Kabul.
Latest update: Officials, today said that the Taliban seized three more provincial capitals in Afghanistan, as well as a local army headquarters, in a blitz across the country's northeast, giving the insurgents control of roughly two-thirds of the country.