His Majesty King Abdullah II on Afghanistan during an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria

Fareed Zakaria: I want to ask you about Afghanistan, and from your point of view, looking at it as part of the greater Middle East, but also as a man who really understands military affairs. I have always been struck when you have briefed me on military stuff, I felt like it was a very detailed understanding of things on the ground. So the United States has been there for 20 years; it has not been able to defeat the Taliban. A. Does that mean it is inevitable that the Taliban will take over? And B. should the United States have stayed?

His Majesty King Abdullah II: You have to be very sympathetic to the United States and other nations around the world that have made a decision to leave Afghanistan. Many countries have had young men and women pay the ultimate price in trying to help countries around the world. And so, it is very difficult for us to try to judge this quickly in such a setting.

In my humble opinion, when we looked at Afghanistan, the political strategy was not really thought out. What did we try to achieve in Afghanistan? Knowing its history, knowing its culture, knowing that empires have bled there for centuries; to try and get a Western democracy in the shortest amount of time, in the transparency that the West is used to, may have been a bridge too far. Soldiers did their job. They fought with bravery and courage, because that is what soldiers all over the world do. But without that clarity of where we were supposed to go, the military suffered. So now, the military is out. Like all these issues, depending on what happens with the Taliban and whether we see more extremist organisations anchor themselves in Afghanistan, are we years from now or months from now back to revisit the problem? God forbid that is the case, we have got to make sure what are the political objectives and are they realistic and achievable.