Will History consider the Americans as having been defeated in Afghanistan?

[MenInG]

US President Joe Biden has defended his decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan - a move which led to Taliban militants returning to power.

Staying longer was not an option, Mr Biden said in an address to the nation, a day after the end of a 20-year US presence in Afghanistan.

He praised troops for organising an airlift of more than 120,000 people wishing to flee the Taliban regime.

The Islamist militants have been celebrating what they call a victory.

US-led troops went into Afghanistan in 2001, ousting the Taliban in the wake of the devastating 9/11 attacks, blamed on al-Qaeda - a militant jihadist group then based in the Asian country.

Mr Biden has been widely criticised - at home and by his allies - over the abrupt manner of the US withdrawal, which led to the unexpected collapse of the Afghan security forces US troops had trained and funded for years.

Taliban militants were able to reclaim control of the whole country within 11 days - finally entering the capital, Kabul, on 15 August.

President Biden deployed nearly 6,000 troops to seize control of the airport to co-ordinate the evacuation of US and allied foreign nationals and local Afghans who had been working for them.

Thousands of people converged on Kabul international airport in the hope of being able to board one of the evacuation flights.

In Tuesday's address, Mr Biden praised troops for the mass evacuation and promised to continue efforts to bring out those Americans who were still in Afghanistan and wanted to return - about 200 people altogether.

But the US leader strongly defended his move to pull out.

"I was not going to extend this forever war, and I was not extending a forever exit," Mr Biden said, adding: "The war in Afghanistan is now over."

He said the US did not need troops on the ground to defend itself.

BBC

 

[Pakpak]

Afghanistan's ghost soldiers undermined fight against Taliban - ex-official

Afghanistan's ex-finance minister has blamed the government's fall on corrupt officials who invented "ghost soldiers" and took payments from the Taliban.

Khalid Payenda told the BBC that most of the 300,000 troops and police on the government's books did not exist.

He said phantom personnel were added to official lists so that generals could pocket their wages.

The Taliban rapidly seized control of Afghanistan in August, as US forces withdrew after 20 years in the country.

Mr Payenda, who resigned and left Afghanistan as the Islamist group advanced, said records showing that security forces greatly outnumbered the Taliban were incorrect.

"The way the accountability was done, you would ask the chief in that province how many people you have and based on that you could calculate salaries and ration expenses and they would always be inflated," he told Ed Butler, presenter of the BBC's Business Daily programme.

The former minister said the numbers may have been inflated by more than six times, and included "desertions [and] martyrs who were never accounted for because some of the commanders would keep their bank cards" and withdraw their salaries, he alleged.

There have long been questions over Afghan troop numbers.

A 2016 report by the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (Sigar) claimed that "neither the United States nor its Afghan allies know how many Afghan soldiers and police actually exist, how many are in fact available for duty, or, by extension, the true nature of their operational capabilities".

In a more recent report, Sigar expressed "serious concerns about the corrosive effects of corruption... and the questionable accuracy of data on the actual strength of the force".

Mr Payenda said that troops who did exist were often not paid on time, while there were leaders of government-backed militias who were "double-dipping" - taking their government wage, and then also accepting payments from the Taliban to give up without a fight.

"The whole feeling was, we cannot change this. This is how the parliament works, this is how the governors work. Everybody would say the stream is murky from the very top, meaning the very top is involved in this," he said.

He said he did not think former President Ashraf Ghani was "financially corrupt". Responding to accusations of corruption within the finance ministry, Mr Payenda said: "I agree with that to a certain extent but in these issues, absolutely not."

He added that the West was "part of" some of the failures in Afghanistan, and described the US and Nato's involvement in the country as "a great opportunity lost".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-59230564

 

[MenInG]

Absolutely damning report above.

Shows exactly what US and Allies did in Afghanistan.

 

[MenInG]

KABUL: The Taliban didn’t take the Afghan capital, they were invited, says the man who reportedly issued the invitation.

In an interview, former Afghan president Hamid Karzai offered some of the first insights into the secret and sudden departure of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and how he came to invite the Taliban into the city to protect the population so that the country doesn’t fall into chaos.

When Ghani left, his security officials also left. Defence minister Bismillah Khan even asked Karzai if he wanted to leave Kabul when Karzai contacted him to know what remnants of the government still remained. It turned out there were none. Not even the Kabul police chief had remained.

Karzai, who was the country’s president for 13 years after the Taliban were first ousted in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, refused to leave.

In a wide-ranging interview at his tree-lined compound in the centre of the city where he lives with his wife and young children, Karzai was adamant that Ghani’s flight scuttled a last-minute plan focused on the Taliban’s entry into the capital.

He and Abdullah, the government’s chief negotiator, had been working with the Taliban leadership in Doha on a negotiated agreement to allow the militia to enter the capital under controlled conditions. The countdown to a possible deal began on Aug 14, the day before the Taliban came to power.

Karzai and Abdullah met Ghani, and they agreed that they would leave for Doha the next day with a list of 15 others to negotiate a power-sharing agreement. The Taliban were already on the outskirts of Kabul, but Karzai said the leadership in Qatar promised the insurgent force would remain outside the city until the deal was struck.

Early on the morning of Aug 15, Karzai said, he waited to draw up the list. The capital was fidgety, on edge. Rumours were swirling about a Taliban takeover. Karzai called Doha. He was told the Taliban would not enter the city.

At noon, the Taliban called to say that “the government should stay in its positions and should not move (as) they have no intention to (go) into the city,” Karzai said.

By about 2:45pm, though, it became apparent Ghani had fled the city. Karzai called the defence minister, called the interior minister, searched for the Kabul police chief. Everyone was gone.

Ghani’s own protection unit’s deputy chief called Karzai to come to the palace and take over the presidency. He declined, saying legally he had no right to the job. Instead the former president decided “to make a public, televised message, with his children at his side so that the Afghan people know that we are all here”.

Karzai was adamant that there would have been an agreement for a peaceful transition had Ghani remained in Kabul.

Today, Karzai regularly meets members of the Taliban leadership and says the world must engage with them. “Equally important,” he said, “is that Afghans have to come together”.

He added: “An end to that can only come when Afghans get together, find their own way out.”

Published in Dawn, December 16th, 2021

 

[daytrader]

Weeping US Marine describes Afghan 'catastrophe' before Congress

A former US Marine badly injured in Afghanistan has described the withdrawal in 2021 as a "catastrophe" in testimony before Congress.

Tyler Vargas-Andrews spoke in the first of a series of Republican-led hearings examining the Biden administration's handling of the pull-out.

He detailed a period of chaos and unpreparedness in the days after the Taliban captured Kabul.

Others spoke of enduring trauma and moral injury in the aftermath.

Sgt Vargas-Andrews, 25, was one of several US military personnel tasked with protecting Kabul's airport on 26 August 2021, when two suicide bombers attacked crowds of Afghans trying to flee the Taliban during the US evacuation.

Thirteen US soldiers died in the bombing, along with 170 Afghan civilians.

Sgt Vargas-Andrews testified that he and another US Marine had received intelligence about the bombing before it occurred, and that he had spotted the suspect in the crowd.

He said he had alerted his supervisors and requested permission to act but had never received it.

"Plain and simple, we were ignored," Sgt Vargas-Andrews said.

In emotional testimony, he described being thrown in the air during the bombing and opening his eyes to see his comrades dead or lying unconscious around him.

"My body was overwhelmed from the trauma of the blast. My abdomen had been ripped open. Every inch of my exposed body took ball bearings and shrapnel," he said.

Sgt Vargas-Andrews called the withdrawal a "catastrophe", adding: "There was an inexcusable lack of accountability and negligence."

"I see the faces of all of those we could not save, those we left behind," he said.

...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64897424

 

[MenInG]

US President Joe Biden's administration has blamed its chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan on his predecessor, Donald Trump, in a new report.

A 12-page summary of the report says Mr Biden was "severely constrained" by Mr Trump's decisions, including a 2020 deal with the Taliban to end the war.

But the report also acknowledges that the government should have begun the evacuation of civilians earlier.

Mr Trump responded that the White House was playing a "disinformation game".

The deadly pull-out in August 2021 ended America's longest war.

Thirteen US soldiers and nearly 200 Afghans were killed as US troops scrambled to evacuate more than 120,000 people in a matter of days.

A review of decisions and actions leading up to the withdrawal, conducted by the State Department and the Pentagon, was sent privately to Congress on Thursday.

Republicans in the US House of Representatives, who are investigating the pull-out, had been demanding to see the report for weeks.

The document remains confidential, but a summary of its conclusions - put together by the White House National Security Council with input from President Biden himself - has been made available to the public.

When the Afghan government collapsed, there were desperate scenes at Kabul airport as huge crowds tried to flee the Taliban.

On 26 August, an attack at the airport by two suicide bombers killed 170 Afghans and 13 US soldiers.

BBC