US President Joe Biden said Monday that a longer war in Afghanistan would have benefited China and Russia, even as his top diplomat consulted the two adversaries on the swift Taliban victory.

"Our true strategic competitors China and Russia would love nothing more than the United States to continue to funnel billions of dollars in resources and attention in stabilizing Afghanistan indefinitely," Biden said in a nationwide address as he staunchly defended his decision to pull troops.

Earlier, Secretary of State Antony Blinken nonetheless discussed Afghanistan with the foreign ministers of Russia and China, both of which have moved quickly to work with the Taliban.

Russia said Blinken and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov discussed Moscow's outreach to various Afghan political forces that is aimed at "helping ensure stability and public order."

The two "agreed to continue consultations with the participation of China, Pakistan and other interested nations to establish the right conditions to begin an inclusive inter-Afghan dialogue under the new conditions," a Russian foreign ministry statement said.

Both Russia and China stepped up contacts with the Taliban after the United States decided to withdraw from Afghanistan, ending a 20-year military involvement and setting off the swift crumbling of the government in Kabul.

Moscow, which in Soviet times spent a decade in a costly occupation of Afghanistan during which it battled Islamic guerrillas then backed by Washington, has kept its embassy open in Kabul and plans discussions with the Taliban.

Russia has said it sees the Taliban "restoring order," while China said Monday it wanted "friendly and cooperative" relations" with Afghanistan under the Taliban.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Blinken that Beijing sought an "open and inclusive political framework."

"China stands ready to communicate with the United States to push for a soft landing of the Afghan issue, so that a new civil war or humanitarian disaster will be prevented in Afghanistan and the country will not relapse into a hotbed and shelter for terrorism," Wang said, according to state news agency Xinhua.

China, which according to human rights groups has incarcerated more than one million mostly Muslim people from the Uyghur and other minorities in a campaign Washington considers genocide, is eager to stop Islamic radicalism on its soil and is allied with Pakistan, the Taliban's historic backer.

Blinken also spoke Monday with Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and since Sunday has spoken to counterparts from key allies including Britain, France and Germany, the State Department said.

US negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad regularly consulted Russia and China during his unsuccessful diplomacy to encourage a peaceful power-sharing agreement as the United States withdrew.

Allies round on US over Afghanistan 'debacle'
Berlin (AFP) Aug 16, 2021 - Allies and critics alike on Monday condemned the United States over its 20-year NATO campaign in Afghanistan, with a leading German politician slamming the operation as "the biggest debacle" in the alliance's history.

Stunned by the Taliban's lightning advance across the country after the departure of Western troops, NATO allies have been left scrambling to evacuate their nationals as well as vulnerable Afghans.

The Taliban's return to power and chaotic scenes of people desperately seeking to flee Kabul on Western military aircraft have sparked criticism of the two-decade operation, which cost the alliance thousands of lives and over a trillion dollars.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said the US-led NATO operation achieved less than planned, adding she shared the pain of families of soldiers killed "as it seems right now like it was all in vain".

The deployment effectively ended Al-Qaeda's ability to launch another operation on the scale of its September 11, 2001 attack on the United States, but "everything else that has followed has not been as successful and has not been achieved in the way that we had planned", Merkel said.

Lessons must be drawn, she said.

"You also have to set smaller goals, I think, in such missions."

The Taliban's return to power was "particularly dramatic and terrible", she said.

"It is terrible for the millions of Afghans who had worked for a freer society and who, with the support of the Western community, have focused on democracy, on education, on women's rights," she said.

- 'Domino effect' -

In a meeting with her party's top brass earlier on Monday, Merkel had said that once the US decided to withdraw it was clear that other allies had to follow suit.

The decision was "ultimately made by the Americans", and "domestic political reasons" were partly to blame, said the chancellor, according to people in the meeting.

"The troop withdrawal sparked a domino effect" that culminated in the Taliban's return, said Merkel, whose country provided the second-biggest contingent of troops after the US.

The leader of her party had harsher words, calling the entire Afghanistan operation NATO's worst disaster.

"It is the biggest debacle that NATO has suffered since its founding," said Armin Laschet, who is the conservative candidate to succeed Merkel as chancellor in September's elections.

The focus at the moment must be on the German military's evacuation operation, he said.

"But we will talk about the causes and conclusions drawn after this rescue mission -- a no-holds-barred analysis of errors in Germany, with our allies and in the international community," he said.

Striking a more diplomatic note, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said the failure to anticipate the Taliban's swift advance was a collective error.

"All of us -- the federal government, intelligence services, the international community -- misjudged the situation," Maas told a press conference.

- 'Failure' -

Britain has also slammed the American decision to leave Afghanistan, with Defence Secretary Ben Wallace warning on Friday that the Taliban's resurgence would create a breeding ground for extremists that threatened the world.

"Of course Al-Qaeda will probably come back," he said, warning that would lead to "a security threat to us and our interests".

"I felt that that was a mistake to have done it that way, that we'll all, as an international community, probably pay the consequences of that," Wallace said of the Doha agreement signed between the United States and the Taliban.

The agreement, signed under former president Donald Trump last year, would have seen the US withdraw all its troops by May 2021 in exchange for security guarantees from the Islamist hardliners.

When Joe Biden took power earlier this year, he pushed back the deadline for the withdrawal to August 31.

Like Merkel, Wallace said the deal cut by Trump left Britain with no choice but to pull out too.

The rare criticism of the US's role by allies dovetailed with negative voices from China and Russia.

Beijing has repeatedly lambasted what it sees as the hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan as a failure of leadership, while Moscow has said the pullout meant the US had failed in its mission in Afghanistan.

For Wallace, the Taliban takeover was "a failure of the international community to not realise that you don't fix things overnight".

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Weapon seizures 'massive boon' for Taliban as cities fall
Kabul (AFP) Aug 14, 2021
The United States spent billions supplying the Afghan military with the tools to defeat the Taliban, but the rapid capitulation of the armed forces means that weaponry is now fuelling the insurgents' astonishing battlefield successes. "We provided our Afghan partners with all the tools - let me emphasise: all the tools," US President Joe Biden said when defending his decision to withdraw American forces and leave the fight to the locals. But Afghan defence forces have shown little appetite for ... read more