Biden places blame for Kabul chaos on deposed Afghan leaders and security forces

Joe Biden put the blame for the chaos engulfing Kabul on the shoulders of the deposed Afghan government and its ineffectual security forces, saying the inability of US-backed authorities to fend off the Taliban proved he was right to withdraw American troops.

The US president, speaking on Monday as the Pentagon struggled to restart flights from Kabul’s international airport after it was overrun by desperate Afghans seeking to escape, acknowledged events “did unfold more quickly than we anticipated”.

But he said the flight of government leaders and the lack of the Afghan military’s “will to fight” the Islamist insurgents meant that it was wrong to extend American deployments to combat the Taliban when local security forces themselves failed to do so.

“How many more generations of Americans’ daughters and sons would you have me send to fight Afghanistan’s civil war when Afghan troops will not?” Biden said in a nationally televised address, his first public comments since the fall of Kabul. “How many more lives, American lives, is it worth?” 

Biden spoke as stability at the airport, the last secure territory for foreign nationals and diplomats in the country, continued to break down, with US forces on Monday opening fire and at least five Afghans dying amid the unrest.

John Kirby, Pentagon spokesperson, said US troops at the Hamid Karzai International Airport had responded to “hostile threats that resulted in the death of two armed individuals”.