Afghanistan

The Taliban took control of Bagram Air Base on Sunday, a former American airbase that the U.S turned over to the Afghanistan government last month.

The Taliban have reportedly released thousands of prisoners that were held at Bagram, including members of al Qaeda, the terror group that carried out the 9-11 attacks and prompted the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Bagram was under control of the U.S. military for roughly two decades before leaving it in control of the Afghan military in July as the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan.

As Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau emerged from Rideau Hall to announce an early election, journalists were flooded with messages and photos from interpreters in Afghanistan and their families who had helped Canada’s intervention against the Taliban. They said they feared for their lives.

Many were told to travel to Kabul, where the Canadian embassy is located, only to find it had been shut down when they arrived.

Canada temporarily suspended its diplomatic operations in Kabul amid safety concerns on Sunday as Taliban fighters entered the Afghan capital in what is expected to be the final push to overtake the government.

Kabul safe houses set up by Canadians for Afghan interpreters under threat of collapse

A volunteer humanitarian effort to bring former interpreters to safe houses in Kabul while they wait for flights to Canada is collapsing as Taliban forces take over the Afghan capital.

A group of Canadian veterans and volunteers have been working for weeks to bring Afghans, who worked with the Canadian military in the past, into the relative safety of Kabul before being evacuated from the country. With the city now falling to the Taliban, the veterans say the situation is desperate and they’re appealing for help from Ottawa.

… “We’ve got a small window of opportunity to do the right thing, and I don’t think our government has the risk appetite or the moral fortitude to do anything about that,” Mr. Carroll said. “I hope I’m wrong.”

Go Incognito

Media outlets across the political divide in the US and Britain have united in their condemnation over Joe Biden’s handling of the Afghanistan crisis amid what is being billed the biggest foreign policy catastrophe in 65 years.

Even Left-wing outlets such as CNN and The New York Times that would traditionally back a Democrat president have hit out at Mr Biden for his role in allowing insurgents to take Kabul after routing Afghan forces in just a week.

The Wall Street Journal condemned Joe Biden’s statement ‘washing his hands’ of the situation, saying it should ‘go down as one of the most shameful in history by a Commander in Chief at such a moment of American retreat’.

Biden team surprised by rapid Taliban gains in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden and other top U.S. officials have been stunned by the pace of the Taliban’s nearly complete takeover of Afghanistan, as the planned withdrawal of American forces urgently became a mission to ensure a safe evacuation.

The speed of the Afghan government’s collapse and the ensuing chaos posed the most serious test of Biden as commander in chief, and he was the subject of withering criticism from Republicans who said that he had failed.

Yes it’s ugly but leaving Afghanistan stands as the right thing to do.

There’s no denying that the withdrawal looks like a Hunter Biden choreographed crack-house horror show but it is impossible to make a case for the 20 years that were wasted.

Keep in mind that the Afghan’s bear some responsibility for their own security.

It’s as if corruption was a virus that infected everyone involved.

A lot of heads should roll, but they won’t.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Thousands of people packed into the Afghan capital’s airport on Monday, rushing the tarmac and pushing onto planes in desperate attempts to flee the country after the Taliban overthrew the Western-backed government. U.S. troops fired warning shots as they struggled to manage the chaotic evacuation.

The Taliban swept into Kabul on Sunday after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, bringing a stunning end to a two-decade campaign in which the U.S. and its allies had tried to transform Afghanistan. The country’s Western-trained security forces collapsed or fled in the face of an insurgent offensive that tore through the country in just over a week, ahead of the planned withdrawal of the last American troops at the end of the month.

Civilians occupy the runway and cling to the exterior of a C-17 Globemaster III as it attempts to take off, Hamid Karzai International Airport, #Kabul, Kabul province. pic.twitter.com/PdBI33U3u1

— Malik Ali Raza (@MalikAliiRaza) August 16, 2021

Afghans surround departing plane and attempt to board in desperate move

More: https://t.co/mkJ5rlh0NY pic.twitter.com/zugvHqGzWM

— RT (@RT_com) August 16, 2021

Three stowaways ‘fall to their deaths from plane’ and five are killed at airport as increasingly desperate Afghans climb on MOVING US Air Force jet as they flee from Taliban: All US Embassy staff have now been evacuated

The Taliban have 80,000 troops in comparison with a nominal 300,699 serving the Afghan government, yet the whole country has been effectively overrun in a matter of weeks as military commanders surrendered without a fight in a matter of hours.

It is a tale of two armies, one poorly equipped but highly motivated ideologically, and the other nominally well-equipped, but dependent on Nato support, poorly led and riddled with corruption.

The US aid spending watchdog for Afghanistan warned last month that the US military had little or no means of knowing the capability of the Afghan National Defense and Security forces (ANDSF) when required to operate independently of the US forces, despite spending $88.3bn (£64bn) on security-related reconstruction in Afghanistan up to March 2021.

A 20 year grift.

Our longest war ends in another abject failure

‘Your country just betrayed us.’ So Haji Sakhi, a resident of Kabul, recently remarked to a New York Times reporter. ‘Look at what they brought on us,’ the 68-year-old Afghan continued. ‘They lost the war and just fled the country.’ His they refers to us — the United States of America.

Haji Sakhi’s unsparing judgment deserves sober consideration. Kabul is about to fall to the Taliban, faster than even the most gloomy experts predicted. Our nation’s ‘longest war’ is now ending in abject failure.

How are Americans — at least those few of us who attend to such matters — to apportion responsibility for the outcome? Who or what is to blame for ‘losing’ Afghanistan? Was it ever ours to lose in the first place?