According to Ferghana.ru news agency, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said in his interview with U.S. CBS TV Channel that the current Afghan government will collapse if the United States stops to support it.
“21 international terrorist groups are operating in the country,” said President Ghani. “Dozens of suicide bombers are being sent. There are factories…producing suicide bombers. We are under siege. And conditions of siege require protective responses.”
CBS reporter Lara Logan noted that according to ordinary Afghans “the current Afghan government will collapse in three days if the United States does not support it.”
“We will not be able to support our army for six months without U.S. support, and U.S. capabilities. Because we do not have money (for supporting our army – Ferghana.ru)," Ghani told Logan.
According to CSB, the protection is nearly all paid for by American taxpayers, who foot 90-percent — more than 4 billion a year — of the Afghan military budget.
Lora Logan interviewed Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and the U.S. commanding officer in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, in Kabul on January 14.
The Afghan War has cost America 2,400 lives and a trillion dollars, but 16 years later, the country's capital may be at its most dangerous. The threat of roadside bombs is so high, U.S. personnel must fly the two miles from Kabul's airport to their headquarters. As costly as America's longest war has been, to fail in its mission there would be even costlier, Gen. John Nicholson said.
The U.S. began the war in Afghanistan as part of a response to the foreign terrorists who attacked the U.S. on 9/11. When Logan pointed out that Americans are now more afraid of domestic terrorists, the general said all the more important to beat Islamic militant terror wherever it is. “We need to defeat the ideology,” said Nicholson. “If we were to lose here or if we were to leave here, the cost would be unacceptable. Why? It would embolden jihadists globally, those living in our own countries…In my view the cost of failure here is unacceptable.”
