Comment: Looks like this will be quicker than I had expected. pl
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Going by this report and what FB Ali had written back in 2017 when Tillerson as Secdef took his 2 hour tour of Bagram, the Southern (Pashtun) Afghans are beating their Northern rivals for control of Kabul and what passes for a central government?
The Colonel Casssad web site has been covering the Taliban progress almost daily with photos and videos of recent take overs. These seem typically to require no fighting and add significant useful equipment, weapons and ammunition to the Taliban forces. It also appears that Afghan army members have typically not been paid for some time and the Taliban has been providing these surrendering soldiers enough funds to travel back to their homes. This website also has regular videos of Houti action against Saudi proxies in Yeman.
The contrast between the US and Russia’s departures seems striking.
Also two interesting articles with some details of the US Bagram departure (middle of the night, no notice, key equipment removed/disabled, etc.) in Asia Times Online today provide more insight into the situation, including details of the Russian departure, than I have seen elsewhere. Unfortunately one of these is behind a paywall.
See:
https://asiatimes.com/2021/07/us-bagram-retreat-consigns-afghanistan-to-the-dustbin/
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/
Joe100
We were never going to backhaul what we see as used junk from Bagram. Notify them of the exact time of our final evac sorties? C’mon man. If your ass had been there would you have wanted that? These are the true kabob eating surrender monkeys. C’mon man.
I was not suggesting otherwise and agree with your point this suggests a carefully planned and safe Bagram departure.
I really don’t see the impossibility of a more open departure.
Why couldn’t the U.S. and the Afghan security forces have had a change of ownership (or however they chose to describe it) ceremony at high noon on a designated day,
with the last American forces leaving Bagram in a well-protected convoy?
And if if the security situation was really so dire, with fixed- or rotary-wing gunships overhead.
(Could the Karzai A/P be used to base those on a one-time basis?)
There must have been some reason why they didn’t do that; it’s just not clear what that reason was.
(A threat from IEDs or suicide bombers?)
Please pardon my ignorance.
An afterthought:
Or for that matter, fly out the last U.S. forces.
Bagram was an airbase after all.
KH
You are a trusting soul. It is clear to me that the departure from Bagram was done the way it was because whomever was in command was not a trusting soul. “A well protected convoy.” Protected by whom, the Afghans who are surrendering to the Taliban? What gunships? We shipped them home out of Bagram. They were worth backhauling. I have no idea what we left at Karzai AP.
Re the numbers at the embassy; according to Stars and Stripes there are apparently “1,400 U.S. citizens and about 4,000 staff” still working in the embassy compound. Including family too, the number potentially in need of evacuation must surely be well north of 10,000. One must hope the State Department planners have conducted their own collapse simulation.
Barbara Ann
I served in two embassies and was the boss of all the military, naval and air attaches in the world. The 1400 would be State, CIA, FB, DIA, military assistance people and various contractor squirrels. The 4000 would be beasts of burden, drivers, carpenters, house servants, etc. You are right. The embassy total with the dependents of the 4000 locals would be something like 10000. And then there would be the weepers and beggars. Who knows how many. Save me, sahib! Save us. Ah, no Kipling? How many big plane sorties? How many?
I think everyone overestimated the resilience of what we created there. I thought it would take a few years for it to collapse, it may only take a year or less at this rate.
We spent so much money and effort on creating a military that is so terrible.
Tom
I would give it three months at the outside. I was being unrealistic before. I didn’t want to frighten the children.
Col. Lang,
Why was the Communist government more durable?
– Eliot
Eliot
It was not. It fell apart as the reality of the absence of the Soviets soaked in.
From the photo caption:
“All troops were set to be fully withdrawn by September 11 as the U.S. Central Command announced on Tuesday the drawdown was 90 percent complete.”
When I read this I thought, by September 11 the Taliban takeover will be 90 percent complete. So that is what you think and you actually know about these things.
I am so frustrated and heartsick about this. I suppose there will be a surge or at least an attempted surge of people into Europe. It goes without saying that Germany will not accept a million Afghanis as they did a million Syrians and the other countries don’t want them either.
Will there be a surge of rich Afghanis into the West using the money they stole from us and the Coalition to buy up property, make investments and obtain residency here where it is safe for them and their dirty money and we will give them freedoms the people they left behind won’t have? We will see.
The Chinese are hovering and ready to pounce as soon as we go. We will also see what kind of job they do and if they well have better luck than the Coalition and the Russians did. They won’t have a military venture there but an economic one. I guess it goes without saying the local people won’t receive any benefits from the billions to be spent.
So, you are saying the Chinese business model will be the same as the US’s…………..
Cheers
No, I meant that the good things in Afghanistan don’t trickle down to the people but stay in the hands of the corrupt few.
I see what China wants to do as being strictly economic where we had many goals.
Are you saying we were also there in Afghanistan so that American companies could make money?
Self-determination remains the best policy. They will get the government they deserve. Just like us.
I cannot agree with you in this case.
The Afghans fought like the devil for freedom and lost millions of people to get rid of the Russians in our lifetime. Can we be sure our people would have done what theirs did? And yet look at where they are today after decades of fighting, sometimes for the right thing, sometimes not. Certainly they are far worse off than they would have been if the Russians had left them alone. It is also true that corruption is entrenched there as are many other negatives that our ancestors did not have to confront here when America was founded.
The Haitians fought for freedom from slavery and won but have lost just about all later battles which have mostly been Haitian against Haitian fighting over spoils. Corruption and poverty there is also overwhelming, just like in Afghanistan.
I feel we should have compassion for these people and also remember that besides all the hard work done and dangers defeated that lead to making America what it is today, we also have had amazing luck through the years.
The Afghans didn’t “fight for freedom.”
They fought the Russian and then the American infidels.
They fought for their tribal 12th century way of life in all it’s Muslim glory.
We should have left after wiping out Al Qaeda (which the “best military” in world failed at), but nooooooo.
The swamp, once again reprising it’s massive incompetence, decided that the Afghans really, really wanted a Jeffersonian democracy.
“The swamp … decided that the Afghans really, really wanted a Jeffersonian democracy.”
In reality, there were significant politically powerful forces in America
that had a much more specific agenda for Afghanistan, e.g.
https://www.shaheen.senate.gov/news/press/shaheen-statement-on-withdrawal-of-us-troops-from-afghanistan
See also the many remarks from Hillary Clinton
demonstrating her obsession with imposing feminism on Afghanistan, e.g.
https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/03/1059091
I am not sure what all the adults of Afghanistan would chose for themselves if they had the chance. They do not think like us, that is very true, but I am not convinced that most would choose to stick with their traditional way of life, either. That way of life has many, many victims, more losers than winners by far if you consider that right off the bat the women are losers.
I have read a lot more girls went to school in recent years than ever before there. That would have been completely due to their parents, not custom or the law making them. It was voluntary and I am sure those girls’ work at home was greatly missed and yet the parents did it. I took hope from that and I suspect that sending the girls to school was an act of hope for them and a desire for a better life for their children.
I am heartsick about what was done to so little effect and what will happen there. You are right to be outraged about that. But I don’t believe the average Afghani deserves what has happened and what will happen to them.
‘fighting over spoils’, in colonial terms is called ‘divide and conquer’ without forced third world countries with all the proper capital assets, first world countries would…………..join them.
In English, they are kept 3rd world otherwise 1st world has nothing to exploit to keeps it’s exceptional status.
Cheers.
Local paper today reports a rather shabby departure from Bagram: “Last Friday, US troops ditched Bagram Airfield — without notifying the base’s Afghan commander, by slipping away in the night and shutting off the electricity, according to national media reports.”
(NB: “national media”???. How California gets its news.)
Disappointed, we were promised a Switzerland-like confederation with democracy and equality for all sexes, gender identities and economics opportunities.
Does anybody know if Kabul will hold or will we see images like Saigon?
jose
IMO there is no chance that Kabul will “hold?”
Not crumbling: China pundit admits they are very happy to have friends back in their elite US circle now that Trump is gone: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/07/video-uncovered-china-professor-claiming-us-elites-teamed-china-take-control-america/
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, “President Joe Biden dropped to his knees during a meeting with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin last Monday at the White House. President Rivlin and his chief of staff Rivka Ravitz could be seen laughing at Biden during the humiliating display.”
Glad we have our priorities straight!
Washington wanted Afghanistan to be the USSR’s Vietnam; decades later, it ended up getting its own second Vietnam, this time repeated as – what else? – farce.
Senhor Escobar, I presume. Either that or a shameless plagiarist:
https://asiatimes.com/2021/07/a-saigon-moment-in-the-hindu-kush/
Graveyard of Empires.
Is there a possibility the embassy will be left alone? Is there something to be gained by attacking the embassy, inviting a response that would tarnish what looks to be an overwhelming and relatively easy victory?
Evacuate the Embassy right now! By air if at all possible. The Afghans have a long tradition of destroying caravans and/or convoys, they are experts fighting on their own territory.
If we don’t do this right now then the Embassy American staff will be hostages until we:
1. Permit the U. N. to recognise the Taliban as Afghanistan’s de facto government, including their seat in the U.N General Assembly, and
2. Give said de facto government the authority to operate Afghanistan’s national accounts as well as IMF drawing rights, etc.
3. Engage with the Taliban with a view to normalizing relations.
Remember the first Afghan war. As I said in the beginning of this mess, the only sure thing is the establishment of some first class Afghan restaurants in American cities. Moi? I love a good goat curry.
RE Afghan Restaurants
There used to be one on a main drag from Alexandria to DC. Also, IMO, The Taliban Government, once fully emplaced can tell the Americans they want no relations with them and thus order the embassy to close.
fasteddiez
That is possible. It is one of the possibilities.