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Global Reactions, Fear As Taliban Seize Power In Afghanistan(pix) by JesusChristLord: 3:24pm On Aug 16, 2021
Global reactions, fear as Taliban seize power in Afghanistan by JesusChristLord

.Thousands flee Afghanistan after Taliban takeover

AP and Atlantic reports

Reviewed by Adeze Ojukwu



The Taliban swept into Afghanistan’s capital Sunday after the government collapsed and the embattled president joined an exodus of his fellow citizens and foreigners, signaling the end of a costly two-decade U.S. campaign to remake the country.

Heavily armed Taliban fighters fanned out across the capital, and several entered Kabul’s abandoned presidential palace. Suhail Shaheen, a Taliban spokesman and negotiator, told The Associated Press that the militants would hold talks in the coming days aimed at forming an “open, inclusive Islamic government.”

Earlier, a Taliban official said the group would announce from the palace the restoration of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the formal name of the country under Taliban rule before the militants were ousted by U.S.-led forces in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, which were orchestrated by al-Qaida while it was being sheltered by the Taliban. But that plan appeared to be on hold.

Kabul was gripped by panic. Helicopters raced overhead throughout the day to evacuate personnel from the U.S. Embassy. Smoke rose near the compound as staff destroyed important documents, and the American flag was lowered. Several other Western missions also prepared to pull their people out.

Fearful that the Taliban could reimpose the kind of brutal rule that all but eliminated women’s rights, Afghans rushed to leave the country, lining up at cash machines to withdraw their life savings. The desperately poor — who had left homes in the countryside for the presumed safety of the capital — remained in parks and open spaces throughout the city.

Though the Taliban had promised a peaceful transition, the U.S. Embassy suspended operations and warned Americans late in the day to shelter in place and not try to get to the airport.

Commercial flights were suspended after sporadic gunfire erupted at the Kabul airport, according to two senior U.S. military officials. Evacuations continued on military flights, but the halt to commercial traffic closed off one of the last routes available for fleeing Afghans.

Dozens of nations called on all parties involved to respect and facilitate the departure of foreigners and Afghans who wish to leave.

More than 60 nations released the joint statement distributed by the U.S. State Department late Sunday night Washington time. The statement says that those in power and authority across Afghanistan “bear responsibility — and accountability — for the protection of human life and property, and for the immediate restoration of security and civil order.”

The nations’ statement also says that roads, airports and border crossings must remain open, and that calm must be maintained.

Many people watched in disbelief as helicopters landed in the U.S. Embassy compound to take diplomats to a new outpost at the airport. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken rejected comparisons to the U.S. pullout from Vietnam.

“This is manifestly not Saigon,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”

The American ambassador was among those evacuated, officials said. He was asking to return to the embassy, but it was not clear if he would be allowed to. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing operations.

As the insurgents closed in, President Ashraf Ghani flew out of the country.

“The former president of Afghanistan left Afghanistan, leaving the country in this difficult situation,” said Abdullah Abdullah, the head of the Afghan National Reconciliation Council and a longtime rival of Ghani. “God should hold him accountable.”

Ghani later posted on Facebook that he left to avert bloodshed in the capital, without saying where he had gone.

As night fell, Taliban fighters deployed across Kabul, taking over abandoned police posts and pledging to maintain law and order during the transition. Residents reported looting in parts of the city, including in the upscale diplomatic district, and messages circulating on social media advised people to stay inside and lock their gates.

In a stunning rout, the Taliban seized nearly all of Afghanistan in just over a week, despite the billions of dollars spent by the U.S. and NATO over nearly 20 years to build up Afghan security forces. Just days earlier, an American military assessment estimated that the capital would not come under insurgent pressure for a month.

The fall of Kabul marks the final chapter of America’s longest war, which began after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. A U.S.-led invasion dislodged the Taliban and beat them back, but America lost focus on the conflict in the chaos of the Iraq war.

It is sad indeed not just for US, Afghanistan but for other terrorised countries including Nigeria, Caneroun, Nigeria and Chad.
Atlantic Council experts in a report published few hours ago, said ‘The Taliban has completed its lightning advance across Afghanistan by taking control of the country’s capital—all but guaranteeing a long-feared national takeover.’

They raised several poignant questions in the analysis tagged:Taliban has taken Kabul. Now what? Published on their portal at https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/experts-react-the-taliban-has-taken-kabul-now-what/

Certainly, this invasion, though unexpected, has set the world reeling with reactions and strategies, to manage the dangerous development.

Excerpts are below:
With President Ashraf Ghani reportedly having fled the country and the United States rushing to evacuate its personnel from Kabul as Afghan leaders work to form a transitional government, reality is setting in.

After two decades and some $2 trillion spent, Washington’s nation-building effort appears to have failed.

That will likely have far-reaching consequences not only for Afghanistan, but also for American foreign policy and the world at large.

Our experts, many of whom have spent many years in the trenches on Afghanistan policy, are sending their reactions as these historic developments unfold. This post will be continuously updated as more come in and we track this fast-moving story.

‘A debacle in many acts’
The decision to withdraw was defensible, and like many who fought there, I supported it. There was a vast chasm between the Afghanistan that was talked about in policy circles and the flimsiness of the institutions we were building on the ground.

But the execution of that decision was appalling—even more so for an administration that has been praised for its professionalism and expertise. There are many victims of this poor planning: interpreters who will never escape, Afghan soldiers who are attempting to hide, and the women and children who are now left without a future.

By April of this year, however, the United States was also well past any decision points that would have altered the outcome of the war in a strategic way. Over the past two decades, none of the three troop surges—one in each prior administration—had a demonstrable, lasting effect on either the battlefield or the Afghans themselves. They are a wary people: As my former commander, John R. Allen, used to note, they have been in a civil war for the past forty years. They hedge their bets. We did not go into Tora Bora; we neglected Afghanistan for Iraq; and we failed to force Pakistan to sever ties with the Taliban.

We built an Afghanistan in our own image, not theirs.

Our single worst failure came at the beginning, with our attempt to create a strong, multiethnic central government with control over the entire country—something which had never existed before in Afghan history. A more realistic, if pessimistic, strategy would have been to reinforce ethnic militias to create a strong Kabul and north, then rely on local allies and traditional leaders to keep the Taliban out of surrounding provinces. Through a constant practice of give-and-take, in which local power centers are alternately bought off and bullied by the central government, something resembling lasting stability may have been achieved. It would have ben a stability bought at the cost of our more aspirational goals, certainly, but also a stability which would not have melted away in a week.

Instead we are left with nothing: no government, no counterterrorism, no pluralism, no women’s rights. Only a mob scene at Kabul airport, and disgrace.

—Andrew L. Peek is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs. He was previously the senior director for European and Russian affairs at the National Security Council and the deputy assistant secretary for Iran and Iraq at the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.



After the insurgents entered Kabul, Taliban negotiators discussed a transfer of power, said an Afghan official. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of the closed-door negotiations, described them as “tense.”

It remained unclear when that transfer would take place and who among the Taliban was negotiating. The negotiators on the government side included former President Hamid Karzai, leader of Hizb-e-Islami political and paramilitary group Gulbudin Hekmatyar, and Abdullah, who has been a vocal critic of Ghani.

Karzai himself appeared in a video posted online, his three young daughters around him, saying he remained in Kabul.

“We are trying to solve the issue of Afghanistan with the Taliban leadership peacefully,” he said.

Afghanistan’s acting defense minister, Bismillah Khan Mohammadi, did not hold back his criticism of the fleeing president.

“They tied our hands from behind and sold the country,” he wrote on Twitter. “Curse Ghani and his gang.”

The Taliban earlier insisted that their fighters would not enter people’s homes or interfere with businesses and said they would offer “amnesty” to those who worked with the Afghan government or foreign forces.

But there have been reports of revenge killings and other brutal tactics in areas of the country the Taliban have seized in recent days. Reports of gunfire at the airport raised the specter of more violence. One female journalist, weeping, sent voice messages to colleagues after armed men entered her apartment building and banged on her door.

“What should I do? Should I call the police or Taliban?” Getee Azami cried. It wasn’t clear what happened to her after that.

An Afghan university student described feeling betrayed as she watched the evacuation of the U.S. Embassy.

“You failed the younger generation of Afghanistan,” said Aisha Khurram, 22, who is now unsure of whether she will be able to graduate in two months. She said her generation was “hoping to build the country with their own hands. They put blood, efforts and sweat into whatever we had right now.”

Sunday began with the Taliban seizing Jalalabad, the last major city besides the capital not in their hands. Afghan officials said the militants also took the capitals of Maidan Wardak, Khost, Kapisa and Parwan provinces, as well as the country’s last government-held border post.

Later, Afghan forces at Bagram Air Base, home to a prison housing 5,000 inmates, surrendered to the Taliban, according to Bagram district chief Darwaish Raufi. The prison at the former U.S. base held both Taliban and Islamic State group fighters.




In the capital, a tense calm set in, with most people hiding in their homes as the Taliban deployed fighters at major intersections. There were scattered reports of looting and armed men knocking on doors and gates, and there was less traffic than usual on eerily quiet streets. Fighters could be seen searching vehicles at one of the city’s main squares.


Many fear chaos, after the Taliban freed thousands of prisoners and the police simply melted away, or a return to the kind of brutal rule the Taliban imposed when it was last in power. They raced to Kabul’s international airport, where the “civilian side” was closed until further notice, according to Afghanistan’s Civil Aviation Authority. The military was put in control of the airspace.

Videos circulating on social media showed hundreds of people running across the tarmac as U.S. soldiers fired warning shots in the air. One showed a crowd pushing and shoving its way up a staircase, trying to board a plane, with some people hanging off the railings.

In another video, hundreds of people could be seen running alongside a U.S. Air Force transport plane as it moved down a runway. Some climbed onto the side of the jet just before takeoff. That raised questions about how much longer aircraft would be able to safely take off and land.


Massouma Tajik, a 22-year-old data analyst, described scenes of panic at the airport, where she was hoping to board an evacuation flight.

After waiting six hours, she heard shots from outside, where a crowd of men and women were trying to climb aboard a plane. She said U.S. troops sprayed gas and fired into the air to disperse the crowds after people scaled the walls and swarmed onto the tarmac. Gunfire could be heard in the voice messages she sent to The Associated Press.

Shafi Arifi, who had a ticket to travel to Uzbekistan on Sunday, was unable to board her plane because it was packed with people who had raced across the tarmac and climbed aboard, with no police or airport staff in sight.

“There was no room for us to stand,” said the 24-year-old. “Children were crying, women were shouting, young and old men were so angry and upset, no one could hear each other. There was no oxygen to breathe.”

After another woman fainted and was carried off the plane, Arifi gave up and went back home.

The U.S. Embassy has been evacuated and the American flag lowered, with diplomats relocating to the airport to aid with the evacuation. Other Western countries have also closed their missions and are flying out staff and nationals.

Afghans are also trying to leave through land border crossings, all of which are now controlled by the Taliban. Rakhmatula Kuyash, 30, was one of the few people with a visa allowing him to cross into Uzbekistan on Sunday. He said his children and relatives had to stay behind.

“I’m lost and I don’t know what to do. I left everything behind,” he said.

The speed of the Taliban offensive through the country appears to have stunned American officials. Just days before the insurgents entered Kabul with little if any resistance, a U.S. military assessment predicted it could take months for the capital to fall.

The rout threatened to erase 20 years of Western efforts to remake Afghanistan that saw more than 3,500 U.S. and allied troops killed as well as tens of thousands of Afghans. The initial invasion drove the Taliban from power and scattered al-Qaida, which had planned the 9/11 attacks while being sheltered in Afghanistan. Many had hoped the Western-backed Afghan government would usher in a new era of peace and respect for human rights.



“The speed of the Taliban’s final advance suggests less military dominance than effective political insurgency coupled with an incohesive Afghan political system and security force struggling with flagging morale.”


Source: AP, Atlantic Council Experts


https://devcomradar.org/global-reactions-fear-as-taliban-seize-power-in-afghanistan/


Captions of pictures below:

Taliban fighters take control of Afghan presidential palace after the Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 15, 2021. (AP/Zabi Karimi)


Afghans crowd at the tarmac of the Kabul airport. AFP Photo


Families are staying at makeshift camps in Kabul after fleeing the violence. Getty images

Re: Global Reactions, Fear As Taliban Seize Power In Afghanistan(pix) by Codepain: 3:41pm On Aug 16, 2021
I wish the new government in Afghanistan well. You reflect the wishes of Majority of your people.
May Allah grant Hamas victory too and all those striving in his cause.

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