NATO’s European Leaders Also Blamed for Kabul Debacle 

U.S. officials are not alone in facing blame for miscalculating the speed of the Taliban offensive.  European leaders and their security advisers are also coming under mounting criticism for misjudging how rapidly events would play out in Afghanistan once President Joe Biden had decided on withdrawing American forces from the central Asian country. 

In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his top ministers are being accused by lawmakers from their own party as well as by opposition politicians of failing to have evacuation plans ready ahead of a possible Taliban surge as U.S. and NATO troops were being withdrawn. With recriminations flying over the lack of apparent evacuation preparation and amid chaotic scenes at Kabul’s airport, a senior member of Johnson’s ruling Conservative party, Tobias Ellwood, a former British defense minister, complained Saturday of lack of coordination between NATO governments. Ellwood questioned the overall thinking which saw NATO forces being withdrawn before the evacuation of the Afghan civilians they needed to get out. “You don’t get your military out first, you get the civilians out, then you retreat yourselves?” he told "Times Radio," a British station. “We’ve done it the other way round.”