A double amputee ex-Commando and friend of Prince Harry has branded US President Joe Biden a ‘d***head’ over his handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan as the Taliban rampage through the country.
Mr Biden has said the crumbling Afghan forces armed and trained by the US and UK ‘have got to want to fight’ in the country’s civil war that has seen extremists take a quarter of provincial capitals and two-thirds of the country in weeks.
British soldier Ben McBean, 33, lost an arm and a leg to a landmine blast in Helmand Province, Afghanistan in 2008, aged just 20, getting to know the Duke of Sussex at various charity events.
Today he has laid into Mr Biden, who insists he has no regrets about pulling US forces out of Afghanistan before questioning the mettle of the Afghan government’s troops.
Mr McBean said: ‘I saw Biden’s comments and I just thought, ‘D***head’. You can’t say ‘fend for yourselves’, when you know damned f***ing well they can’t. That’s why we were there.
Former Royal Marine and double amputee Ben McBean (left) shares a joke with Prince Harry (right) in 2017 after completing his 31-mile run through the streets of London
Mr McBean has branded US President Joe Biden a ‘d***head’ over his handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan
Taliban fighters execute 22 Afghan commandos as they try to surrender in the civil war sparked by the withdrawal of US and Uk troops
Children forced to flee their homes due to fighting in Afghanistan drink tea as they sit in a refugee camp in Kabul
‘It’s harsh to make out now that they have the resources to beat the Taliban when obviously they never have. He’s had enough. He doesn’t care. And it’s just going to be chaos there until it reaches our shores again’, he told The Sun.
Ex-military chiefs have also questioned what has taken place in Afghanistan.
Former Army commander General Sir Richard Barrons warned that the UK and its allies were making a ‘strategic mistake’ in withdrawing from Afghanistan, which could once again become a base for international terror groups.
He said: ‘We will run the risk of terrorist entities re-establishing in Afghanistan to bring harm in Europe and elsewhere. So I think this is a very poor strategic outcome.’
General Sir Richard Dannatt, former UK Army chief, said of Mr Biden’s words: ‘It is an indication they have gone and they don’t care’.
The Taliban advance, which has taken a series of cities in quick succession, comes as President Joe Biden has ordered all US troops out of the country by the end of the month.
The militants are now battling the Western-backed government for control of several other provinces.
While the capital Kabul has not been directly threatened by the advance, the Taliban offensive continues to stretch Afghan security forces now largely fighting against the insurgents on their own.
Ben and the Duke of Sussex struck up a close friendship after flying home from Afghanistan together. Here they met at HM Naval Base Devonport, Plymouth, where the prince launched an adventure training expedition to the base of Mount Everest for injured service personnel
Despite a 20-year Western military mission and billions of dollars spent training and shoring up Afghan troops, regular forces have collapsed, fleeing the battle sometimes by the hundreds.
The fighting has fallen largely to small groups of elite troops and the Afghan air force.
The success of the Taliban blitz has added urgency to the need to restart long-stalled talks in Qatar that could end the fighting and move Afghanistan towards an inclusive interim administration.
The insurgents have so far refused to return to the negotiating table.
Tens of thousands of people have fled their homes in the country’s north to escape battles that have overwhelmed their towns and villages. Families have flowed into the capital Kabul, living in parks and streets with little food or water.
Ben McBean was while in hospital recovering that he decided to run the marathon as a disabled athlete, and completed one in 2009.
But by chance, the father-of-two was flown home on the same flight in 2008 which brought Prince Harry back to the UK.
The Duke of Sussex later said the ex-Marine was ‘a hero’, after learning that he had lost his left arm and right leg in the IED blast.
Ben, who lives in Plymouth, who was described as a hero by Prince Harry, smiles as he and Mark Ormrod (left) receive their medals for serving in Afghanistan
Doctors had feared Mr McBean might die from his injuries but the former Commando recovered and now has a prosthetic leg.
In 2014 Prince Harry again cheered him on as he completed a gruelling 31-mile run on behalf of the Poppy Appeal through London.
The appearance was a surprise to the ex-Marine, who had designed the route using a smartphone app to look like a Royal British Legion poppy.
Taliban capture ANOTHER Afghan city bringing total to ten as they close in on capital Kabul with two more major centres on the verge of falling
The Taliban has taken yet another city from beleaguered and bloodied Afghan forces as the Islamists slowly tighten the noose on the capital Kabul.
Ghazni, capital of a province that bears the same name, was the latest to fall – with Taliban fighters filming themselves strolling through the city centre on Thursday morning. ‘Large numbers of soldiers were killed and dozens more surrendered,’ a Taliban spokesman said.
The city is located just 80 miles south of the capital Kabul and straddles the main road heading south. The Taliban already controls the main highway heading north after capturing Pul-e Khumri earlier this week, meaning the two main routes into and out of the city are now effectively closed.
Meanwhile fighting has ramped up in Lashkar Gah, capital of Helmand province, and Kandahar, capital of Kandahar province, which appear on the brink of falling into Taliban hands.
The Taliban is now thought to control two thirds of the country, with the government in retreat in almost every region except Kabul – which is one of the only cities not yet under direct attack.
The Taliban has taken the city of Ghanzi, just 80 miles south of the capital Kabul, meaning Islamist fighters now control the main highways leading both north and south out of the city
Lashkar Gah, capital of Helmand, appears on the verge of falling to the Islamists after a huge IED explosion destroyed part of the police headquarters on Wednesday and allowed fighters to capture it
Taliban fighters were parading on the streets of Ghazni on Thursday morning, as local officials said they had captured the governor’s office, police station and main prison
Sami Sadat, one of the Afghan government’s commanders, is pictured speaking on the radio as he attempts to defend Helmand province from the jihadist assault
Fighting has displaced hundreds of thousands of Afghan civilians who have fled their homes, with thousands of those heading for the safety of government-held Kabul (pictured)
A woman carries her child through a refugee camp in the Afghan capital of Kabul where thousands are now living after being displaced by fighting elsewhere in the country
The jihadists said Lashkar Gah briefly fell into their hands on Wednesday, but later revised to say that fighting is still ongoing and the city is not fully under their control.
A huge IED exploded near the main police headquarters yesterday, sending a plume of smoke into the sky and partially destroying the outer walls – allowing Taliban fighters to stream inside.
However, it is thought that some of the government troops holed up there managed to escape the slaughter and made it to the governor’s office, where they have resumed their fight.
Nasima Niazi, a lawmaker from Helmand. said she believed the Taliban attack killed and wounded security force members, but she had no casualty breakdown.
Another suicide car bombing targeted the provincial prison, but the government still held it, she said.
In Kandahar, the Taliban claimed to have captured the city’s prison on Wednesday, freeing ‘hundreds’ of inmates which including some of its own fighters, who have now rejoined the ranks as reinforcements.
The loss of the jail is an ominous sign for government forces defending the city, which has been besieged for weeks by an assault that shows no sign of letting up.
Afghan security forces and the government have not responded to repeated requests for comment over the days of fighting.
However, President Ashraf Ghani is trying to rally a counteroffensive relying on his country’s special forces, the militias of warlords and American airpower ahead of the U.S. and NATO withdrawal at the end of the month.
He was in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif, in the country’s traditionally anti-Taliban northern strongholds, on Wednesday in an attempt to rally his men as jihadists approached its outskirts with a major offensive expected soon.
Young boys rest in a refugee camp in Kabul, Afghanistan, after fleeing fighting elsewhere in the country
Makeshift camps are springing up around Kabul to house thousands of refugees who have fled their homes due to fighting
Families sleep in a camp in Kabul after they fled their homes due to fear of the Taliban and sought shelter in government areas
While Kabul itself has not been directly threatened in the advance, the stunning speed of the offensive raises questions of how long the Afghan government can maintain control of the slivers of the country it has left.
The government may eventually be forced to pull back to defend the capital and just a few other cities as thousands displaced by the fighting fled to Kabul and now live in open fields and parks.
With the Afghan air power limited and in disarray, the U.S. Air Force is believed to be carrying out some series of strikes to support Afghan forces.
Aviation tracking data suggested U.S. Air Force B-52 bombers, F-15 fighter jets, drones and other aircraft were involved in the fighting overnight across the country, according to Australia-based security firm The Cavell Group.
It’s unclear what casualties the U.S. bombing campaign has caused. The U.S. Air Force’s Central Command, based in Qatar, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
The success of the Taliban offensive also calls into question whether they would ever rejoin long-stalled peace talks in Qatar aimed at moving Afghanistan toward an inclusive interim administration as the West hoped.
Instead, the Taliban appears to aim to seize power by force – or the country could splinter into factional fighting like it did after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989.
In Doha, U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad has met with diplomats from China, Pakistan and Russia in an effort to as a group warn the Taliban they could again be considered international pariahs if they continue their offensive, State Department spokesman Ned Price said.
Khalizad also plans to meet with Afghan government and Taliban officials as the fighting goes on without a sign of it abating.
The multiple battle fronts have stretched the government’s special operations forces – while regular troops have often fled the battlefield – and the violence has pushed thousands of civilians to seek safety in the capital.
The latest U.S. military intelligence assessment is that Kabul could come under insurgent pressure within 30 days and that if current trends hold, the Taliban could gain full control of the country within a couple of months.
A family including women and children rest at a makeshift camp in the Afghan capital of Kabul after fleeing fighting
An internally displaced Afghan family, who fled from Takhar province due to battles between Taliban and Afghan security forces, sits inside their temporary tent at Sara-e-Shamali in Kabul
Internally displaced Afghan families, who fled from Kunduz, Takhar and Baghlan province due to battles between Taliban and Afghan security forces, walk past their temporary tents at Sara-e-Shamali in Kabul
A woman carries her children through a camp for refugees in the Afghan capital of Kabul
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