Afghanistan

The Taliban were attempting to demonstrate they control the areas around the chaotic Kabul airport on Sunday, where Nato said 20 people died in the past week.

As witnesses reported Taliban fighters to be firing into the air and using batons to force people to form orderly queues outside the main gates and not gather at the perimeter, the militant group that retook the Afghan capital last week after 20 years said it was seeking “complete clarity” on the evacuation plan being led by foreign forces.

It was not clear, however, whether the Taliban’s increasingly organised presence around the airport would also result in it controlling who is able to enter the airport and leave the country as the group’s spokesmen used the situation at the airport to criticise the US.

…President Obama insisted that violent jihadism is not reflective of any authentic construction of Islam. President Bush insisted that freedom is the longing of every human heart. Neither of these things is true in principle, and the Taliban are demonstrative proof of their falsity.

The Taliban are scholars and students of sharia (Islam’s ancient law and societal framework). They know much more about the subject than Obama. And while it is obvious that many people long for things other than freedom, it is even more obvious that the Taliban know what is in what passes for their own hearts, and those of other fundamentalist Muslims, better than Bush ever could. As it happens, the Taliban abominate the Western ideal of freedom. It contradicts their basic conceit that the good life calls for perfect submission to sharia — the opposite of freedom.

I spent 600 hours listening in on the people who now run Afghanistan. It wasn’t until the end of my tour that I understood what they were telling me.

When people ask me what I did in Afghanistan, I tell them that I hung out in planes and listened to the Taliban. My job was to provide “threat warning” to allied forces, and so I spent most of my time trying to discern the Taliban’s plans. Before I started, I was cautioned that I would hear terrible things, and I most certainly did. But when you listen to people for hundreds of hours—even people who are trying to kill your friends—you hear ordinary things as well.

According to the Pew Research Center: In 2013, 99% of Afghans were for the establishment of Sharia, 85% of them for the stoning of unfaithful women

And after Taliban win, millions of Afghan migrants may head to U.S. and Europe.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that 30,000 Afghans a week are fleeing their country. However a report in The Guardian states that “30,000 Afghan citizens have left the country each day for the past 10 days”. That would approach a third of a million migrants.

While a small minority can be seen trying to board American aircraft at Kabul airport, the vast majority are moving on foot through Pakistan and Iran. The Shiite terror state is a particularly ideal gateway destination because it allows them easy access to Turkey and then to Europe.

Canadian evacuees told to ‘wear red’ at crushing airport checkpoint while allies run armoured, airborne escorts out of besieged city

Canadian evacuees are being turned away from Kabul’s airport by American and Afghan soldiers, despite holding valid travel documents permitting them passage out of the besieged city.

And while other nations send helicopters and armed escorts to rescue their citizens from the Taliban-controlled city, Global Affairs Canada’s advice for evacuees to ‘wear red’ and identify themselves as Canadians is holding no sway for those tasked with gatekeeping the world’s most dangerous airport.

Twenty years after the 9/11 attacks, U.S. intelligence documents reveal 229 “rehabbed” former Gitmo detainees have returned to terrorism and killing Americans — and an alarming 66% of them have not been recaptured and are still at large.

Meanwhile, President Biden is quietly freeing more of these terrorist suspects from the Guantanamo Bay prison, all to fulfill his old boss’ pledge to permanently close the facility in Cuba.

In a voice quivering with fear and exhaustion, Sara pleaded down the phone: “Please, get us out of here. The situation is very bad, we are trapped in a hell.”

For the past four days, Sara, who asked for her real name not to be used, has waited with her family among the thousands of people outside the gates of Kabul airport, desperately trying to board a US evacuation flight.

In the past few days, she said she had seen more than 15 people, including children, shot before her eyes, witnessed her uncle beaten brutally by Taliban fighters and had her nights on the hard street outside the airport gates interrupted by crowd surges and the panic-inducing crack of gunfire.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told members of Congress on a conference call Friday that Americans attempting to evacuate Afghanistan have been beaten by the Taliban, directly contradicting President Biden’s assertion that U.S. citizens were not being blocked from the airport, two lawmakers told The Post.

Striking a decidedly more concerned tone than the commander in chief, Austin called the abuse of Americans at the hands of the Taliban “unacceptable” as lawmakers sought answers on how the Biden Administration is attempting to get U.S. citizens and allies out of the country.

“Within 30 minutes of Biden saying it publicly, the Secretary of Defense directly contradicted him,” one senior GOP lawmaker told The Post.

Kabul airport today. Rumors that the Americans will take anyone that gets through so tens of thousands have arrived. pic.twitter.com/n9yKaf98TJ

— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) August 20, 2021