By: The Kabul Times
KABUL: President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani addressed a joint special session of the National Assembly on Monday and spoke about the current situation in the country.
Addressing the Lawmakers, the President said: “We have paid a high price for peace and showed great gentleness, but instead war was imposed on us.” The president also said an “imported” and “hasty” process was imposed on Afghanistan which resulted in “legitimizing an insurgent group instead of achieving peace.”
“The Taliban has changed only in that their cruelty has increased and they have become more mercenary than in the past,” the President said. “We no longer have the … opportunity of blaming each other, we all face a great test,” he added.
President Ghani stated that “the current situation is due to a sudden decision on the withdrawal of the international troops,” but “the protection of the people is our duty.” The President mentioned that the nation was faced with an unexpected situation in the past three months.
“This aggression and war have been imposed on us,” he said. The President urged the Afghan national assembly and the political leaders to seek unity, saying it is the “only way toward our victory.” “We must go toward national mobilization, and we must all work for the national mobilization,” he said.
He assured the nation that the situation will change in the upcoming six months due to the security plan that the Afghan government has prepared. “The army is defending strategic goals and the police are defending the cities,” he said.
“Our priority is to achieve lasting peace, but I see sedition in the Taliban. For those who whitewash this and say that the Taliban have changed, I repeat to them that they have become more violent and more mercenary in oppression,” the president said.
President Ghani said he believes the Taliban has no will for last peace but that a concise military plan has been drawn up to cover the next six months in order to suppress the Taliban.
“All preparations have been made to repel this wave of sedition for the next six months in order to restore stability. An important element of this plan, along with government forces, is the mobilization of public forces,” he said.
The President also said despite the group’s promise to the US to cut ties with terrorist organizations, this has not been done. President Ghani said the Taliban has instead strengthened ties with such groups.
The President told MPs he would “not kneel before any destructive force. We either sit on our knees at the negotiating table or break their knees on the battlefield.”
The President call to MPs comes amid raging battles across the country between the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces and the Taliban – which has captured large swathes of territory in the past few months.
