News / Interviews

'Afghanistan may see peace only if foreign troops leave'

Sunday, 01 July 2018 1:57 PM [ Last Update: Sunday, 01 July 2018 6:17 PM ]

The key to Afghanistan’s ongoing tragic situation is the withdrawal of foreign military forces from the country, a commentator says.

“It is a real tragedy … I think the key perhaps is maybe to get the foreign forces out of Afghanistan and maybe the Taliban and the government can talk but up to this point it is a real tragedy and it just continues and I have no real hopes for a better future for the country until major changes are made,” Michael Springmann, author and former US diplomat, told Press TV in an interview on Sunday.

“The United States and their NATO so-called allies don’t believe in peace, they believe in empire, they like to sugar-coat it and call it responsibility to protect and to engage in peacekeeping missions but unfortunately there is no peace and hasn’t been any peace for two decades if not longer. So I think that you really got to convince the Americans and their European confederates to stop this and to realize that the world has changed and empires are no longer in fashion,” he added.

Taliban’s five-year rule over at least three quarters of Afghanistan came to an end when the US and its allies invaded the country on October 7, 2001 as part of Washington’s so-called war on terror. Despite the presence of foreign troops across the country, Taliban has been involved in widespread militancy, killing thousands of civilians as well as Afghan security forces and displacing tens of thousands of people across the country ever since.