FM Szi­jjártó: NATO ‘Seri­ous Mis­cal­cu­la­tion’ in Afghanistan

NATO has “seri­ous­ly mis­cal­cu­lat­ed” the sit­u­a­tion in Afghanistan, For­eign Min­is­ter Péter Szi­jjártó said in Riga on Wednes­day. He said the caus­es should be inves­ti­gat­ed and con­clu­sions drawn.

Speak­ing on the sec­ond day of a meet­ing of his NATO coun­ter­parts, Szi­jjártó said the Afghan government’s col­lapse was “a tragedy for Afghans and a shock for NATO”, whose mem­bers had planned to con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing finan­cial assis­tance until 2024. “But the polit­i­cal and secu­ri­ty struc­ture we were sup­port­ing in fact col­lapsed days after (NATO’s) pull­out,” he said.

The caus­es of NATO’s incor­rect assess­ment of Afghanistan’s “polit­i­cal, social, and secu­ri­ty aspects” should be under­stood, “whether they are of a per­son­al, pro­ce­dur­al or strate­gic nature, or whether NATO’s tac­tics led to this [out­come]”, the min­is­ter said.

Man­ag­ing the secu­ri­ty risks that evolved after NATO’s pull­out is an impor­tant task for Europe and cen­tral Asia, Szi­jjártó said. Each day 30,000−35,000 peo­ple set off from Afghanistan, result­ing in a “dra­mat­ic” increase in the num­ber of ille­gal migrants at Hungary’s south­ern bor­ders, he added.

He warned of an inten­si­fi­ca­tion of migra­tion waves through the West­ern Balka­ns, adding that “even greater mass­es may appear at Hun­gary’s south­ern border.

Cen­tral Asian coun­tries should receive assis­tance through aid and part­ner­ship pro­grammes so they can pro­tect their bor­ders and retain their sta­bil­i­ty, or else the exo­dus from Afghanistan will mount fur­ther, Szi­jjártó said.

Szi­jjártó also said that some of Hungary’s “big allies” had evac­u­at­ed peo­ple from Afghanistan with­out pri­or secu­ri­ty screen­ing, many of whom were tem­porar­i­ly accom­mo­dat­ed in the West­ern Balka­ns. “Quite a few of them are now unable to pass strict secu­ri­ty checks applied in the US and oth­er coun­tries, and the ques­tion is what will hap­pen to them and whether they pose a secu­ri­ty risk,” he said. “If there are hun­dreds or even thou­sands of them in the West­ern Balka­ns, that will indeed impact cen­tral Europe’s secu­ri­ty,” Szi­jjártó added.

Hun­gary will car­ry on main­tain­ing strict bor­der con­trols so that “nei­ther those peo­ple nor ille­gal migrants can make their way into the coun­try or to Europe through Hun­gary,” he said.

Source: hun​gary​to​day​.hu