Since the Taliban took control of Kabul on August 15, the international airport in the Afghan capital has become a scene of chaos. The scenes culminated on Thursday (26), when the terminal region was the target of attacks by the Islamic State. The death toll reached 73, between Afghans and American soldiers.
The scenario is unfavorable for US President Joe Biden, who executed the agreement signed by his predecessor, Donald Trump, for the withdrawal of US troops from the country. The deadline for this to happen remains the next 31st.
The Democrat has been accused of making errors in judgment and criticized for the way he handled the departure from the military. Recall times when the facts were far from the reality conceived by the agent.
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1.
Don’t rush to get out. Let’s go out – let’s do it responsibly, deliberately and safely
Originally announced for September 11, 20 years after the attack on the Twin Towers, the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan was put forward by Biden to August 31. The change led to an acceleration of the process, as the Taliban offensive intensified to regain territory.
Safety was not seen in the hours following the takeover of Kabul, as desperate people stormed the runways at the capital’s airport in an attempt to leave the country. One of the most striking scenes showed men clinging to the fuselage of an American freighter taking off – bodies were also seen falling and remains were found on the undercarriage. The chaos left at least seven people dead at the time.
A C-17 military aircraft with a capacity of just over a hundred people took off with more than 800 on board.
2 and 3.
it is not inevitable [que o Talibã tome o poder no Afeganistão]. […] They [agências de inteligência dos EUA] did not come to this conclusion [que o governo afegão vai colapsar]. The Afghan government must unite. They clearly have the ability to keep the government in power.
The truth is it went faster than expected
On July 8, the Afghan government warned that 15 of the 34 regional capitals were at risk of being taken. Additionally, a report from the same month exposed the growing dangers to Kabul, noting that the country’s government was unprepared for a Taliban attack, according to a New York Times report.
The US newspaper also reported that intelligence agencies had predicted that if the fundamentalist group took towns, a cascading collapse could occur quickly and the Afghan security forces were at high risk of disintegrating. It is not clear whether other reports during this period have presented a more optimistic picture of the ability of the Afghan army and government in Kabul to confront the insurgent group.
As early as July 13, around 20 State Department officials working at the US Embassy in Kabul sent an internal note to Secretary Antony Blinken and another senior cabinet official warning of the potential collapse in the Afghan capital shortly after August 31, as published by the The Wall Street Journal.
4.
The Taliban are not the army of North Vietnam. They are not comparable in terms of capacity. There will be no circumstances in which you will see people being kicked off the roof of the United States Embassy in Afghanistan. It is in no way comparable.
As the realities of Afghanistan and Vietnam have their particularities, and that almost 50 years also separate the situations, the result of the operations of Saigon (today Ho Chi Minh) and Kabul presented many similarities. In 1975, the North Vietnamese Communists took control of the capital of the American protectorate in the south of the country; in 2021, the taliban succeeded in regaining power in afghanistan.
And while scenes of Americans being abducted from the roof of the embassy were not recorded, the chaos seen at the airport did not represent a better image for the US government either.
5 and 6.
We protect the airport, allowing the resumption of flights
We maintain constant vigilance to monitor and stop threats from all perpetrators, including a probable IS-K [Estado Islâmico Kohrasan, filial afegã do grupo terrorista. […] Innocent troops and civilians at the airport face the risk of a remote ISIS attack, even though we have expanded the perimeter [de segurança] significantly
Within days of the attacks, Biden twice said the airport was safe and that there was constant surveillance, even though he recognized the terrorist threat present.
On the 18th Lloyd Austin and Mark Milley, respectively Secretary of Defense and Chief of Staff, also said the local situation was safe.