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Taliban’s return may bring cheer among every jihadist group in world: Blair 

WION Web Team
London Updated: Aug 22, 2021, 04:41 PM IST
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Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair (file photo).   Photograph:(Reuters)

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Warning the return of the Taliban will bring cheer among every jihadist group around the world, former UK PM Tony Blair has said it is now a moral obligation for Western troops to stay until all those eligible are evacuated from Afghanistan. The former prime minister shared his views over the situation in Afghanistan in a lengthy essay published on his website last night 

Warning the return of the Taliban will bring cheer among every jihadist group around the world, former UK PM Tony Blair has said it is now a moral obligation for Western troops to stay until all those eligible are evacuated from Afghanistan. 

The former prime minister shared his views over the situation in Afghanistan in a lengthy essay published on his website last night. 

Blair, who ordered British troops to join the US-led invasion in 2001, said the hasty US troops’ withdrawal had been a 'tragic, dangerous, unnecessary' decision. It has undermined the West’s aims.  

The leader also accused US President Joe Biden of getting motivated by “an imbecilic political slogan about ending ‘the forever wars’, as if our engagement in 2021 was remotely comparable to our commitment 20 or even 10 years ago”. 

Blair wrote, “The abandonment of Afghanistan and its people is tragic, dangerous, unnecessary, not in their interests and not in ours. In the aftermath of the decision to return Afghanistan to the same group from which the carnage of 9/11 arose, and in a manner which seems almost designed to parade our humiliation, the question, which allies and enemies alike pose is: has the West lost its strategic will?" 

“The world is now uncertain of where the West stands because it is so obvious that the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan in this way was driven not by grand strategy but by politics,” he added.