I don’t think Mr. Biden will be able to deliver on his promise to Afghan allies, and he deserves harsh criticism for that, but it appears he kept his promise to the Americans. I feel a bad for saying it but I do believe evac of American citizens should be priority #1.
The New York Times broke this story,
The U.S.-led coalition told Afghans awaiting transport out of the country that for them the airlift was over. “We regret to inform you that international military evacuations from Kabul airport have ended,” it said in a text message sent late Saturday night, “and we are no longer able to call anyone forward for evacuation flights.”
I’m listening to the Pentagon press briefing now. I believe that the last flight did go out on the 30th. They’re announcing that they went out now (it has just passed midnight in Afghanistan), but they left slightly early. I would postulate that they left slightly early for safety reasons. Meaning that a surprise departure deprived ISIS of the opportunity for a last round of rocket attacks.
Gen. McKenzie said the Taliban did not have direct knowledge of the final time of departure, despite the coordination, so I think you’re right about it being a safety issue.
Something not mentioned so far in this topic, surprisingly given the title…
Apparently the retaliatory drone strikes ordered after last week’s terrorist attack killed multiple children.
I never know what to make of these situations. The U.S. offers a defense, they took out the target vehicle and the presence of explosives caused secondary explosions, thus the civilian casualties.
Seems like that is on the Taliban for letting suicide bombers to be in the area, and on the suicide bombers, of course. The secondary explosives were the ones on the bombers themselves, right?
Right, explosives either on their person(s) or in their car. (ETA: I mean the terrorist(s), not the children or the family in the building that collapsed.) I am not in a position to know but I don’t believe the Taliban had anything to act upon, because of inferior intelligence.
The strike was in a neighborhood about a 4mi/15m drive from the airport (based on Google Maps), so I don’t think it would be within either the Taliban or the U.S. airport military perimeters.
And we’re out. Thank God. And with the biggest air evacuation in history, AFAICT. This is a great day, or at least an end to twenty years of very bad days with respect to policy on Afghanistan.
And all but a handful of civilians, many of whom have deliberately chosen to remain behind.
All told, I’d say the evacuation was by and large a success. We airlifted tens of thousands of people out on short notice with only one casualty incident, with a minimal ground force and without having to rely on an isolated ex-Soviet airfield.
There has been no independent confirmation of anything about that situation yet, so I would advise waiting and seeing before we make any serious judgement. Unfortunately there have been many cases where actual terrorists in Afghanistan had jobs with the United States–in fact in the final 6-7 years of our involvement in Afghanistan, when we had deliberately drawn back a lot of our direct combat role, many of our combat deaths were from people we thought were our Afghan friends doing suicide bombings or shooting sprees inside U.S. facilities. So just because there is a person killed in Kabul whose family says he was a nice guy who worked with U.S. aid groups, doesn’t mean he wasn’t with ISIS-K. In fact at this point we don’t even have any Pentagon confirmation the family in question was the victim of an American drone strike. We don’t know if the car had additional explosive in it because it was being prepared for using in a car bombing or etc.
We have 100% had drone fuckups before, and sadly will in the future, where we kill innocent people. But in basically every such situation there’s someone on the ground saying it was a mess up and a good person who died, even in cases when intelligence has hard confirmation it was actually a violent terrorist.
Terrorists who choose to conduct a guerrilla campaign, embedded in the civilian population, have to accept some responsibility for civilian losses.
So … we’re out of Afghanistan. Does this mean that we are not engaged in any wars now? Are there any American troops in combat zones? Are we done with support the troops/thank you for your service/heart-warming reunion videos/military fly-overs…?
I’m reading today’s news and the general says there are Americans we wanted to get out that we couldn’t get out (must have tuned in after that announcement yesterday). Various news sources have reported the number of Americans that wanted to leave but couldn’t is under “two-hundred fifty” and “more than 100”.
Over one hundred American civilians stranded in a newly hostile country against their will is a serious failure in my eyes, especially if they made it to the airport before the deadline. And my new understanding as of today is that the deadline is 11:59pm 8/31 Afghan time, which would be later this afternoon eastern time.
The worst case scenario is a hostage crisis not unlike Iran under Carter, which involved fifty-two hostages. This could be much worse.
My understanding is that all the people who were unable to leave were people who were unable to make it to the airport. Given the fact that we got over 122 thousand people out, I find it inconceivable that there would be a small group of American citizens left in the airport when the last plane took off.
Well, if being turned back at the gates counts as not reaching the airport…
But after seven hours of waiting for clearance to enter the airport gates and driving around the city, the group met a dead end: Evacuations were permanently called off. The airport gates remained a security threat, and civilian evacuations were ending Monday.
“I regret to inform you that the high command at HKIA in the airport has announced there will be no more rescue flights,” said an email sent to students from the university administration on Sunday afternoon, which was shared with The New York Times.
So it’s not a case where the Americans were held back at a Taliban checkpoint or their bus broke down en route. They were there, they made it well before the deadline (two days), but the gates were shut.
The security at the airport was an extremely complex situation, especially considering they’d already sustained a mass-fatality attack. I think the real culprit is the god-awfully slow visa screening and approval process.
I admit I am in no position to make recommendations on how to handle security at the airport. It may well have been that the terrorist attack forced us to abandon the Americans who had not yet made it into the airport. Which sucks, but is conceivable.
Some of the Americans were apparently trying to locate family, some of whom might have had travel documents and some of whom might not. Remember that the collapse happened much faster than expected, so some were undoubtedly not ready to move.
