UK Rules Out Returning Troops To Taliban-controlled Afghanistan

UK defence secretary says the Taliban’s rapid takeover is a sign of the international community’s ‘failure’.

British and NATO forces will not return to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban, the United Kingdom’s defence secretary, Ben Wallace said, after the group took control of Kabul following a blistering nationwide offensive.

Ben Wallace told Sky News on Monday that it was “not on the cards that we’re going to go back” as reports of bloodshed in the Afghan capital fuelled concerns of a looming humanitarian crisis.

UK troops
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“I acknowledge that the Taliban are in control of the country,” Wallace said.

The group’s rapid takeover was a “failure of the international community”, Wallace later told the BBC, describing the 20-year-long intervention led by the United States as a job only half-done.

“All of us know that Afghanistan is not finished. It’s an unfinished problem for the world and the world needs to help it,” he said.

Wallace pointed to the Taliban’s removal from power after the September 11, 2001, attacks and the death of al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden as evidence that “half the mission … was entirely successful”, but warned of an impending threat to global security as the group resurged.

He has previously accused former US President Donald Trump of having brokered a “rotten deal” with the Taliban that allowed their return against the backdrop of a hasty withdrawal of foreign forces.

“I’m afraid when you deal with a country like Afghanistan, that is 1,000 years of history effectively and civil war, you manage its problems and you might have to manage it for 100 years,” Wallace said.

“It’s not something that you just rock in, rock out and expect something to be fixed.”

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace had admitted “some people won’t get back” from Afghanistan as a desperate struggle to get UK nationals and local allies out of the country continued.