The spokesman of the State Department, Ned Price, said Washington will not organize a military evacuation operation, as was the case in Afghanistan.
Le Monde with AFP
Monday, November 15, the United States has again urged their nationals to leave “immediately” Ethiopia at war by their own means, adding that there will be no military evacuation operation – like This was the case for Afghanistan. The American Embassy has been encouraging its fellow citizens to take commercial flights from the country, where rebel groups no longer exclude walking on Addis Ababa. It offers loans to those who would be unable to buy a ticket in the immediate future.
“We do this not by pessimism on the prospects of peace, but by practical sense,” said Monday, before the press, the spokesman of the State Department, Ned Price, by launching a new appeal. He said dread a “misunderstanding” from the opinion, which could “think that what happened in Afghanistan can be replicated by the US government everywhere in the world”.
mid-August, when the Taliban took Kabul even before the end of the withdrawal of Afghanistan’s American forces, the United States had disastered thousands of military at the airport from the Afghan capital to improvise an operation. unprecedented evacuation.
Do not wait “the last minute”
In just more than two weeks, with the help of its allies, the US military had set up an air bridge and evacuated more than 123,000 people: Americans, foreigners, but also and especially Afghans. Fearing retaliation on the part of the new Islamist masters of the country, especially for working with Westerners in the past.
However, the Government of President Joe Biden was criticized for not having evacuated these people upstream, rather than in the saved who-who-general, and for having left Americans on the spot after the withdrawal of foreign forces. The State Department announced an internal investigation to determine how it could have been better anticipated and organized these evacuations.
Obviously anxious to take the lead, Ned Price insisted on Monday on Ethiopia: “What we did in Afghanistan was unique”, “a military aerial bridge of nearly 125,000 people”, ” It’s not something that the US government can replicate elsewhere “. “There is no reason for Americans to wait the last minute” from Ethiopia with commercial flights, “he hammered.