FRANCE 24 English published this video item, entitled “No easy way out: Biden squeezed between Taliban and allies” – below is their description.
NATO allies can ask, but even after a humiliating defeat, it is still up to the United States to decide whether to prolong evacuations of expats and asylum seekers from Kabul Airport.The UK, France and Germany need the support for their own rescue missions. The Taliban call the August 31st deadline a red line. Waverings will not upend the Atlantic Alliance, not when one member holds the lion’s share of the troops and hardware.
And no matter how much the departure itself may have been botched, Joe Biden’s had enough of Afghanistan and he is not changing his mind. After Bosnia and Libya, Afghanistan again a reminder that it’s the US that calls the shots. Will Europe and the UK, which saw with Donald Trump how the Atlantic Alliance can pivot on a dime, rethink defense policy? Is it the end of the post-Cold War Pax Americana where one superpower decides?
And are those smaller nations any better at understanding faraway conflicts, even in a world that’s gotten smaller? The jury’s still out on France, which is currently grappling with its own emboldened insurgency in former West African colony Mali. What will 20 years of Western intervention in Afghanistan teach us?
FRANCE 24 English YouTube Channel
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Libya, officially the State of Libya, is a country in the Maghreb region in North Africa, bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad to the south, Niger to the southwest, Algeria to the west, and Tunisia to the northwest.
The sovereign state is made of three historical regions: Tripolitania, Fezzan and Cyrenaica. The largest city and capital, Tripoli, is located in western Libya and contains over three million of Libya’s seven million people. The second-largest city is Benghazi, which is located in eastern Libya.
Libya became independent as a kingdom in 1951. A military coup in 1969 overthrew King Idris I. Parts of Libya are currently split between rival Tobruk and Tripoli-based governments, as well as various tribal and Islamist militias.
Libya is a member of the United Nations (since 1955), the Non-Aligned Movement, the Arab League, the OIC and OPEC. The country’s official religion is Islam, with 96.6% of the Libyan population being Sunni Muslims.
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Bosnia and Herzegovina, sometimes called Bosnia–Herzegovina and often known informally as Bosnia, is a country in South and Southeast Europe, located within the Balkans. Sarajevo is the capital and largest city.
Bosnia and Herzegovina is bordered by Serbia to the east, Montenegro to the southeast, and Croatia to the north and southwest. It is not entirely landlocked; to the south it has a narrow coast on the Adriatic Sea, which is about 20 kilometres (12 miles) long and surrounds the town of Neum.
The inland Bosnia region has a moderate continental climate, with hot summers and cold, snowy winters. In the central and eastern interior of the country the geography is mountainous, in the northwest moderately hilly, and in the northeast predominantly flatland. The smaller southern region, Herzegovina, has a Mediterranean climate and mostly mountainous topography.
