Afghanistan

Canadian expats and Afghans trying to gain access to evacuation flights out of Kabul say they can’t find Canadian soldiers at the city’s airport and aren’t getting sufficient information from federal officials in Ottawa.

Complaints about a slow and ineffective Canadian response contradict assurances from government ministers and federal officials that everything possible is being done to assist Canadian citizens on the ground in Afghanistan, as well as Afghan nationals who are connected to Canada because they or their family members worked as support staff for the country’s military or diplomats. The situation in Kabul has grown increasingly chaotic over the past week as the Taliban have consolidated their control over the city.

Update: Defiant Taliban REFUSES to extend evacuation deadline despite secret talks with CIA boss: Regime issues chilling warning to westerners just minutes before G7 leaders plead with Biden to stay beyond August 31

Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said Tuesday they will not extend the August 31 deadline for all U.S. troops to leave Afghanistan – just 24 hours after Joe Biden sent his CIA director to negotiate with the militant group in a bid to get the remaining American citizens and Afghan allies out.

‘We will not extend the deadline for the presence of U.S. troops in Afghanistan,’ Myjahid said in a Tuesday press conference. ‘They are capable of evacuating their citizens and troops by August 31.’

This could get very ugly. Given the US does not seem able to account for all Americans in Afghanistan you have to wonder if the Taliban have begun hostage taking.

Taliban ‘will not extend 31 August deadline’

Spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid says he does not think that the 31 August deadline for evacuations from Kabul will be extended.

He adds there is enough time to get foreign nationals out before the deadline, and that the Taliban are “not in favour” of allowing Afghans to leave.

Afghans ‘no longer allowed to go to Kabul airport’

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid says the Taliban are no longer allowing Afghan nationals to go to Kabul airport because of the chaotic situation there.

At a news conference, he said crowds at the airport should go home and their security would be guaranteed.

But he said the US had kept on inviting people to the airport to board planes.

“We ask the Americans,” he said. “Don’t encourage Afghans to leave… We need their talent.”

He added that Afghan media outlets were now working again, as were hospitals, schools, university and local government.

Afghanistan is a mess, despite vain attempts by Democrats and the media to spin it otherwise. We left behind a trove of weapons and intelligence secrets in our abandoned airbases and embassy. This was a gift to the Taliban, overnight making them one of the best-equipped military forces in the world. They reminded America and the world of this fact by recreating the famous photo of US soldiers raising the American flag during the Battle of Iwo Jima.

President Biden’s shoddy withdrawal from Afghanistan has irrevocably sullied America’s reputation. Even opponents of continued occupation have been horrified at the indefensible manner in which this extraction was done.

But it’s also worth stepping back from the immediate Biden-orchestrated debacle to focus on the broader lessons we can glean from this unceremonious end to America’s longest-ever war: To wit, America must put aside the hopeless project of nation-building once and for all.

Our worthless elite were not always, and will not always be, in charge.

It wasn’t always like this. It didn’t have to go the way it did. There were in fact signs of early success when we started bombing the Taliban in October of 2001. This was a raw time. We were hurt and aggrieved. If you squinted, you could still see the smoke coming from the rubble of the Twin Towers. We put our best guys on the ground, a few hundred Delta forces to track down Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden—modest, but vital objectives. Righteous objectives.

KABUL/WASHINGTON, Aug 23 (Reuters) – With thousands of desperate Afghans and foreigners massed at Kabul’s airport in the hope of fleeing Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers, U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to decide as soon as Tuesday on whether to extend an Aug. 31 deadline to airlift Americans and their allies to safety.

Biden warned on Sunday that the evacuation was going to be “hard and painful” and a lot could still go wrong. U.S. troops might stay beyond Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline to oversee the evacuation, he said.

… A Taliban official said foreign forces had not sought an extension and it would not be granted if they had. Washington said negotiations were continuing.

I think they’re keeping Joe in a closet most of the time.

Elite members of the Canadian military’s special forces unit are operating outside the perimeter of the Kabul airport as senior officials warn the situation on the ground is “increasingly dangerous.”

In a telephone briefing with journalists on Monday morning, senior government officials provided an update on Canada’s efforts to evacuate citizens and Afghan civilians from what one called the “volatile” and “chaotic” environment in the capital following the Taliban takeover last weekend.

Taliban fighters are reportedly flogging Afghan civilians in the streets for wearing ‘westernised’ clothing such as jeans as they cement their power in Afghanistan.

Several young Afghans posted on social media they had been beaten and whipped by members of the Taliban for wearing jeans after being accused of disrespecting Islam.

One social media post says the boys were ‘walking with friends in Kabul,’ when they were confronted by Taliban soldiers.

WASHINGTON — The nation’s top national security officials assembled at the Pentagon early on April 24 for a secret meeting to plan the final withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. It was two weeks after President Joe Biden had announced the exit over the objection of his generals, but now they were carrying out his orders.

In a secure room in the building’s “extreme basement,” two floors below ground level, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark Milley, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with top White House and intelligence officials. Secretary of State Antony Blinken joined by video conference. After four hours, two things were clear.

More than 200 former Guantanamo Bay inmates who were released have returned to terrorism following their release – with 151 still at large, according to newly declassified documents.

The declassified Office of National Intelligence report, which is dated December 18, 2020, highlights that 229 former Guantanamo prisoners have reengaged in acts of terrorism and killing Americans since their release.

Data included in the report shows that 125 former prisoners are confirmed to have reengaged in acts of terrorism since their release, while an additional 104 are currently suspected of reengaging.

Ministers today revealed people on the UK’s terror ‘no fly list’ have already tried to infiltrate RAF flights in Kabul – amid fears of an ISIS suicide bomb attack.

Alarm has been raised that troops are ‘having to keep their fingers on the trigger in one hand while holding a baby in the other’ with desperate crowds trying to get away from the Taliban.

Defence minister James Heappey insisted there are ‘people trying to take advantage of this process to get into the UK to cause us harm’.

h/t TB

The brother of an Afghan translator who worked for American forces during the war is being sentenced to death for helping provide security to his brother in yet another sign that the Taliban’s new ‘moderate’ façade has already crumbled.

News of the letter emerges as Vice President Kamala Harris announced that now was not the time to analyze the withdrawal of the Biden administration from the war-torn country, but instead to focus on evacuation.

CNN confirmed the translator, who has not been named, worked with the US Army, and that his brother, also unnamed, had been sentenced to death.