By Patrick Goodenough | July 8, 2021 | 7:22pm EDT
Taliban fighters in Afghanistan’s western province of Farah. (Photo by Javed Tanveer/AFP via Getty Images)
(CNSNews.com) – The U.S. intelligence community has not assessed that the Afghan government will collapse after the withdrawal of U.S. and coalition forces is complete, President Biden said on Thursday.
“There’s not a conclusion that, in fact, they cannot defeat the Taliban,” he told reporters in the East Room of the White House, in reference to the U.S.- and NATO-trained Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF).
He did not, however, discount the possibility of a civil war, drawing a distinction between that outcome and one in which the Taliban is victorious.
In Haiti chaos, world powers struggle for new ideas
Issued on:
08/07/2021 - 23:28 Crowds watch as two men, accused of being involved in the assassination of President Jovenel Moise, are transported to the Petionville station in a police car in Port-au-Prince Valerie Baeriswyl AFP 4 min
Washington (AFP)
The last time a president of Haiti was assassinated, in 1915, the United States seized the Caribbean nation for 19 years. A century and multiple interventions later, some Haiti watchers say it s time for new ideas.
The Western Hemisphere s poorest nation was already ravaged by overlapping political, economic and security crises, with swathes of the capital Port-au-Prince under gang control, when President Jovenel Moise was gunned down in a murky raid on his private home early Wednesday morning.
Biden says Afghans must decide own future; U.S. to leave on Aug. 31
By Steve Holland
Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Joe Biden on Thursday strongly defended his decision to pull U.S. military forces out of Afghanistan, saying the Afghan people must decide their own future and that he would not consign another generation of Americans to the 20-year war.
Speaking in the White House East Room, Biden said the Afghan military has the ability to repel the Taliban, denying reports that U.S. intelligence had forecast a collapse of the U.S.-backed government in Kabul in six months amid warnings of a civil war.