NEW DELHI, March 29. /TASS/. The situation in Afghanistan not only remains tense, but it is also beginning to look like a protracted crisis, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev said on Wednesday.

"It is important to watch the situation in Afghanistan closely as it remains tense and is taking on a protracted nature a year and a half after the Taliban (outlawed in Russia - TASS) came to power," he said at a meeting with his counterparts from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in New Delhi.

According to the Russian security chief, Afghanistan is posing major threats and risks to the security of SCO member countries. These include terrorism, illegal arms and drug trafficking, illegal migration and the spread of extremist ideology, he warned.

"We believe that Washington and its allies who are responsible for the critical situation in the country after the withdrawal of the occupation forces should bear the bulk of the cost of restoring the Afghan economy in the wake of the conflict," Patrushev maintained. "We consider the return of any US or NATO military infrastructure facilities to the region, including to Afghanistan’s neighboring countries, in any form and on any pretext categorically inadmissible."

In mid-April 2023, US President Joe Biden announced a decision to end what he said was America’s longest war and send American troops home. At the peak of the US operation in Afghanistan in 2010-2013, the number of Western troops in the country exceeded 150,000 soldiers. The main operational forces of the US and NATO were withdrawn from Afghanistan in 2014.