The Last 24 Hours of Developments in Afghanistan ~~ dmorista

 ~~Written by and posted for dmorista ~~

The Taliban has decided, as of this morning August 15, 2021, to enter Kabul, rather than to continue standing by along the outskirts of the city.  What exactly does this mean??  Are the Taliban ready to begin fighting against the 6,000 - 8,000 American Troops (plus 600 U.K. troops) sent into Kabul in the last few hours.  These are serious issues, particularly for the Afghans who worked with the U.S., U.S. and U.K. troops sent there, the civilian population of the city, and the ground troops of the Taliban as well.  It seems unlikely that the Taliban is spoiling for a final fight with the Americans and British.  Perhaps the high command of the Taliban feels they cannot hold their forces back in their moment of triiumph, and the foreigners will just need to do what is necessary to avoid conflicts.

So the latest reports are that the Taliban has taken every Provincial Capital City and has now advanced to the outskirts of Kabul. They have the city completely surrounded and now have quit waiting.  The short lived delay was no doubt the result of an agreement with the U.S. to allow the Americans to evacuate their own personnel and some of their Afghan employees. The situation in Kabul is disastrous for the American led occupation, the end is near.

Maps 1 & 2 Below show the extremely rapid rate of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan from the disintegrating Client State of Afghanistan.  They show the changes in just the past 24 hours.  As recently as yesterday the Client Government of Afghanistan still had some control over ⅓ of the country, as shown in Map 1.

(Source: “Map of the Status of Afghanistan’s provinces”, Bill Roggio, FDD’s Long War 

Journal, at < https://www.longwarjournal.org/mapping-taliban-control-in-afghanistan >)

However by the morning of Sunday, August 15 the Client Government only controlled 3 provinces, all under “high levels of threat”, and the Taliban had begun to triumphantly enter the Capital city of Kabul, the last stronghold and redoubt of the Client State.

(Source: “Map of the Status of Afghanistan’s provinces”, Bill Roggio, FDD’s Long War 

Journal, at < https://www.longwarjournal.org/mapping-taliban-control-in-afghanistan >)

There has not been a photo or video clip to emerge that has the cachet of the Vietnamese waiting in line to board a Huey Helicopter at the CIA Deputy Chief of Mission’s Apartment building in Saigon in 1975.  But the real situation is at least as chaotic and in fact the logistical problems are more severe.  In Vietnam there were numerous Naval ships, aircraft carriers and air assault ships, standing by offshore to which helicopters could fly directly and unload passengers.  Afghanistan, in contrast, is a landlocked interior country.  There is no analogous place where aircraft carriers and air assault ships can wait for a helicopter shuttle operation.  The only option in Kabul is to move the people, that the U.S. wants to evacuate, to the Kabul Hamid Karzai International Airport and fly them out of the country from that airport.  Land borders are now all closed and are tenuous and hazardous at the best of times.

Flying in and out of Kabul’s airport has never been particularly hazardous due to any Taliban or other insurgent ability to fire ground to air missiles or to assault the actual airport grounds.  It is 4 miles from the U.S. Embassy to the Kabul Airport.  Reports are that the evacuation is being carried out by helicopter from the Embassy to the Airport.  There are no reports of the use of ground transportation to move people out of Kabul to the airport, that could certainly be a more efficient and large-scale process, but perhaps is seen as too hazardous to be utilized.  The closest analog situation, in recent U.S. Imperial History was the operation moving people in and out of Baghdad International Airport; during the years of the heyday of the U.S. occupation and the ongoing functions at the U.S. Embassy and military headquarters in the Green Zone there. 

Flying in or out of Baghdad Airport involved riding in an airliner ascending or descending in a steep corkscrew to minimize the exposure to anti-aircraft missiles. After disembarking from the airliner, VIPs were provided with helicopter transportation from the Baghdad Airport to the Green Zone.  But most personnel arriving had to move through the 10 miles of hostile Baghdad urban territory, and heavy traffic, in convoys escorted by military or mercenary units driving Humvees or other types of vehicles.  A comparison of the Kabul and Baghdad situations is shown in Maps 1 and 2 below.

The U.S. evacuation operation can be ended any time that the Taliban chooses to take over the Kabul Airport.  Even an assault on the airport would stop all landings and takeoffs.  The reality is that the Taliban wants the U.S. to move all Americans out of Afghanistan, to make sure there are no unfortunate incidents between Americans and Taliban.  Once all the Americans are gone, along with the Afghans fortunate enough to be among the first Afghans evacuated, the tenure of any sort of extended evacuation of Afghans only would seem to be pretty tenuous.

Apparently the President of the Client State of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, has already left the country.  And there are reports of numerous Provincial leaders who left the embattled cities as the Taliban took them over and fled to the Kabul Airport to leave Afghanistan for greener pastures.  We have to wonder if there will be a similar incident to the flight of President Thieu of S. Vietnam; whose escape plane was losing altitude and the pilot came out to the passenger compartment and forced him (reportedly at gunpoint) to throw out the significant amount of gold that he was taking with him.  Gold of course is very heavy. Huge amounts of money were made over the last 20 years in the Heroin and Poppy trade in Afghanistan.  Money from the drug trade is mostly safely stashed in Swiss and Cayman Islands’ or American banks; or that has already been used to purchase trophy ho/ormes and condos in New York, London, Paris, Dubai, Abu Dabi, and Tokyo.  But the Afghan Client State’s army had most of its funds stolen and the ground troops often did not have the weapons they were supposed to have or were not provided their pay and/or food.  Famously the roster of troops in the Client State Army included huge numbers of “ghost soldiers” who either did not exist at all, or were poor men who showed up now and then to be counted and to receive some small payment, but whose pay and funds for equipment was deposited in high command bank accounts.