After US withdrawal: UK tried to convince Nato to keep troops in Afghanistan

LONDON: The UK tried to form a military coalition with Nato forces to keep troops in Afghanistan after the US announced its withdrawal, UK Secretary of Defence Ben Wallace has revealed.

The Defence Secretary said he had attempted to convince "like-minded" nations to stay in the country after it became clear the UK could not remain there without the support of US forces. "I did try talking to Nato nations, but they were not interested, nearly all of them," Wallace told The Daily Mail. "We tried a number of like-minded nations. Some said they were keen, but their parliaments weren't, a UK media outlet reported on Monday.

"It became apparent pretty quickly that, without the United States as the framework nation it had been, these options were closed off. All of us were saddened, from the prime minister down, about all the blood and treasure that had been spent, that this was how it was ending."

The news comes to fore as the Taliban captured their sixth regional centre in four days on Monday, extending a blitz across northern Afghanistan. Aybak, the capital of the province of Samangan, joined the capitals of Nimroz, Kunduz, Takhar, Jawzjan and Sar-e-Pol in falling.

Sefatullah Samangani, the deputy governor of Samangan province, said insurgents entered Aybak without resistance after the community elders pleaded with officials to spare the city from further violence following weeks of clashes on the outskirts. "The governor accepted and withdrew all the forces from the city," Samangani added, saying the Taliban was now in "full control".

Similarly, Germany's defence minister, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, rejected calls for German soldiers to return to Afghanistan after Taliban insurgents took Kunduz city, where the country's troops had been deployed for a decade. Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer said: "The reports from Kunduz and from all over Afghanistan are bitter and hurt a lot.

"Are society and parliament prepared to send the armed forces into a war and remain there with lots of troops for at least a generation? If we are not, then the joint withdrawal with the partners remains the right decision."

Some within her own conservative party want German troops to be part of an intervention against the Taliban, but Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer said that would entail a long and hard campaign. She also blamed Donald Trump, the former US president, for undermining the Afghanistan operation over the deal he struck with Islamist militants in 2020 for US troops to leave. The policy was then implemented by his successor, Joe Biden. "Trump's unfortunate deal with the Taliban was the beginning of the end," she said.

As fighting widens across Afghanistan, aid agencies warned of the growing toll on civilians. The United Nations said at least 27 children had been killed and 130 wounded in the past three days in three of the country's 34 provinces. "The atrocities grow higher by the day," said Herve Ludovic De Lys, the representative for Unicef, the UN children's body.

Thousands of people have fled their homes in recent days, triggering a humanitarian crisis. Several thousand arrived in a central Kabul park after fleeing provinces such as Kunduz and Takhar with almost no possessions. "We have no food, we have no tents. We are helpless. Everything was destroyed in the fighting. The Taliban were on one side, the government on the other. The bullets were like rain," one man told The Telegraph.