Viktor Orbán highlighted that they are grateful to those who are participating in military operations for taking a significant risk.
Hungary will also rescue the Afghans whose lives may be in danger for having cooperated with Hungary in the past fifteen to twenty years, he stressed.
“It think it’s only fair for Hungary – but also for all other NATO Member States – to take care of the Afghans who cooperated with us” while we were present in the country and whose lives are now in danger because the new Afghan government is threatening to retaliate, the Prime Minister said, adding that we should have no illusions regarding the safety of these families.
“The right, the fair thing to do is to rescue them,” he said, adding that there is a finite list, but those on the list must be checked, “we don’t want to let in just anyone,” and from such a distance this is not an easy task.
Mr Orbán described this as a more dangerous, but simpler part of the job. “The migrant crisis is more complex,” he said, warning that we can expect a wave of mass migration. He said regarding this issue we should pay close attention to the Turks, they are the closest, they have experience on the ground, they know precisely what the actual situation is, and in contrast to the United States, they are not obsessed with “exporting democracy”.
“Cooperating with the Turkish government is key,” the Prime Minister stated, adding that we have a vested interest in keeping the migrants who want to leave Afghanistan in the region.
“We should take help there, rather than bringing trouble here,” he said, and to this end, we must “rewarm” our close relations also with the states lying on the Balkans migration route, in addition to Turkey “in order to be able to defend Hungary against the migrant crisis,” he said, observing that we have a fence and border guards, we are able to protect ourselves. According to Hungary, migration is not a human right.
Regarding the situation that has developed in Afghanistan, Mr Orbán said with reference to the United States that “intelligence is not determined by the size of a country”. The United States is rather large, and “one would believe that there is plenty of intelligence and information to go with it”. However, it has transpired that this is not the case. The Afghanistan mission is “fatally flawed,” the Prime Minister stated.
“We were OK” as long as we attacked the nests of terrorist operations in and around Afghanistan, he said. The rule in NATO is that the Member States defend one another. Hungary, too, may need such help at any time, he observed.
According to Mr Orbán, problems began when the “terrorist nests” had already been destroyed, but the Americans believed it would be a good idea if the whole world functioned the way their society did.
“The exportation of democracy” – which disregards all cultural and historical specificities – almost always fails, he stated.
He added that they are also trying to “improve” Hungary, they believe they know best how to handle the migrant and gender issues.
It is therefore possible to conclude that “democracy building” did not work in Afghanistan. It would, however, have been possible to set up an effective Afghan government that was able to defend its own country after the withdrawal of US troops.
The intelligence services of the United States appeared to have information to confirm that the Afghan government would be strong enough to maintain order for a year or two. By contrast, the country collapsed within just three days, the Prime Minister remarked.
The Prime Minister also said we will have to fight three major battles in Brussels. One is connected to “gender madness,” another to the issue of migration, while the third one is about who should pay the price of environmental destruction as some want to tax the properties and cars of Hungarian families, a plan which the Hungarian government does not support. These issues will be at the centre of European debates in the autumn, Mr Orbán stated.
