Chaos was unavoidable, says Joe Biden on US exit from Afghanistan

US President Joe Biden, in his first interviews since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan’s Kabul, said on Wednesday that he did not see a way of withdrawing the country’s troops where chaos was avoidable, according to US media reports.

Biden, who was speaking to George Stephanopoulos in an exclusive interview with ABC News, said that he believes there was no way the United States forces could have exited Afghanistan without “chaos ensuing”.

Biden went on to speak about the unpredictable nature of the Taliban‘s reaction to American civilians attempting to escape the country. He said, “One of the things we didn’t know is what the Taliban would do in terms of trying to keep people from getting out. What they would do. What are they doing now?”, according to reports from ABC News.

However, Biden later added that the Taliban were not intervening with the evacuation operations of the United States and that they were in fact “cooperating”. He said, “They’re cooperating, letting American citizens get out, American personnel get out, embassies get out.”

The United States President later added that he was having difficulty in helping those who assisted the country’s forces while they were still in Afghanistan, according to reports from ABC News.

In a separate statement on Wednesday, Biden said that the presence of United States troops could extend beyond the August 31 deadline as he committed to evacuating every American stuck in the chaos.

Meanwhile, Ashraf Ghani, the former President of Afghanistan, said on Wednesday that he will “speak to the nation”, according to reports from AFP.

The news comes hours after United Arab Emirates Foreign Ministry announced that Ghani had been admitted into the gulf country along with his family on humanitarian grounds.

The statement read, “The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation can confirm that the UAE has welcomed President Ashraf Ghani and his family into the country on humanitarian grounds”, according to reports from CNN.