British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will lobby Joe Biden at the G7 leaders’ summit, No 10 has said, pleading with him to keep US troops at Kabul airport after 31 August, after a weekend of tension between the UK and its closest ally.
- With the Taliban tightening their grip at the airport, Downing Street confirmed on Sunday night that Boris would lobby the US president to maintain a presence after 31 August when the leaders hold a virtual meeting on Tuesday.
- The news came as Taliban forces sought to assert their authority, blaming the US for the “anarchy” at the airport and insisting they were the only ones capable of restoring order.
- Taliban fighters fired their guns into the air and used batons to force people into orderly queues in an attempt to halt the desperate scenes in which at least 20 people have died.
- Meanwhile, Afghans who manage to make the weeks-long journey through Iran on foot to the Turkish border face a three-meter high wall, ditches or barbed wire as Turkish authorities step up efforts to block any refugee influx into the country.
- In US, Joe Biden told on Sunday that “the evacuation of thousands of Americans and their Afghan allies from Kabul would have been hard and painful no matter when it started or when we began.”
- However, one of the main figures still leading Afghan opposition to the Taliban’s takeover of the country, Ahmad Massoud, has warned that a new civil war is inevitable without a comprehensive power-sharing agreement.
- Massoud, the son of Ahmad Shah Massoud, who opposed the Taliban in the 1990s and was assassinated two days before 9/11 in 2001, told the Dubai-based Al Arabiya TV channel that war was “unavoidable” if the Taliban refused dialogue. “We confronted the Soviet Union, and we will be able to confront the Taliban,” he said.
Massoud is the leader of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, has set up base in the Panjshir valley, north of Kabul, where the former vice-president Amrullah Saleh has also taken refuge.
