White House admits ‘fair amount’ of US weapons fell
into Taliban hands
17 Aug, 2021 20:03
August 16, 2021. © REUTERS/File Photo
President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan had to admit that a lot of US weapons intended for the Afghan army are now in the hands of the Taliban, brushing off questions of how the US intends to deal with it.
“We don’t have a complete picture obviously of where every article of defense materials has gone, but certainly a fair amount of it has fallen into the hands of the Taliban,” Sullivan said on Tuesday, briefing reporters at the White House as press secretary Jen Psaki looked on.
Obviously, we don't have a sense that they are going to readily hand it over to us at the airport.
Sullivan was also running damage control for the White House on Monday, hours before Biden was brought back to Washington from Camp David to change the narrative about the US withdrawal.
Addressing questions about the scenes of helicopters evacuating US embassy personnel in Kabul, in echoes of Saigon 1975, Sullivan argued that “the helicopter has been our mode of transport from the embassy for twenty years.”
Ghost soldiers
The US has spent over $80 billion over the past 20 years, arming and equipping the Afghan National Army, the fighting force loyal to the US-backed government in Kabul. The US also paid their salaries, allegedly leading to local commanders reporting “ghost soldiers” that didn’t really exist in order to line their pockets.
While Biden and his generals insisted that the ANA was a capable fighting force that could hold off the Taliban, it ended up surrendering without a fight over the past weekend, catching the Pentagon and the White House by complete surprise.
Major General Hank Taylor, an operations chief at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had no answers for reporters who asked at the Pentagon briefing on Monday about the captured weapons. Asked whether the US was doing anything to prevent weapons and equipment from falling into Taliban hands, Taylor said he didn’t have information about such steps.
“I don’t have the answer to that question,” Taylor responded, to the question whether the US was doing anything to destroy the abandoned equipment, including bombing the ANA bases. Taylor and other Pentagon officials actually denied any such US airstrikes have taken place.
Germany’s first Afghan evacuation plane leaves with
only 7 people despite Merkel’s plan to evacuate 10,000
17 Aug, 2021 10:53
for evacuation from Afghanistan after the Taliban's stunning military takeover of the country. © STR / AFP
Germany’s first plane in Kabul since the airport was flooded with desperate Afghans seeking a way out of the country failed to evacuate more than seven people. Berlin’s defense minister blamed chaos on the tarmac for the failure.
On Tuesday, Germany reported that only seven people had successfully been evacuated from Kabul on the A400M transport plane – the first German aircraft to arrive at the airport since the Taliban took control of the capital on Monday. Shortly after the militant group captured the city, thousands flooded the airport in a desperate bid to escape persecution. The overcrowded runway forced the German aircraft to undertake a “breakneck landing,” according to Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer.
“We have a very chaotic, dangerous and complex situation at the airport,” the minister told reporters. “We had very little time, so we only took on board people who were on site.”
Only seven people made it onto the plane before it had to leave quickly, according to a Foreign Ministry spokesperson. The news comes a day after Chancellor Angela Merkel told her party colleagues that Germany plans to evacuate up to 10,000 people from Afghanistan, including lawyers and activists whose lives may be in danger due to the worsening conflict with the Taliban since the withdrawal of US and other Western nations’ troops.
Germany is waiting for US permission to fly a second aircraft in from Tashkent, which it is using as a hub, according to Reuters.
On Monday, Merkel praised the Afghanistan war for preventing Al-Qaeda from repeating its September 11, 2001 attacks on the US, but she also added that “everything else that has followed has not been as successful and has not been achieved in the way that we had planned.”
2015 All over again?
The chancellor’s stated ambition to accept thousands of Afghan refugees caused mixed reactions from within the ruling Christian Democratic Union party (CDU). “For us, it is clear that 2015 must not be repeated,” said Paul Ziemiak, general secretary of the party.
“We won’t be able to solve the Afghanistan question through migration to Germany,” he added, referring to Merkel’s decision in 2015 to accept more than a million refugees mainly from Syria, which damaged the CDU’s popularity.
It damaged a good part of Germany, not just a political party.
Justin Trudeau went one better and claimed that Canada would rescue 20,000 western-friendly Afghans. That was the day before Kabul fell, the same day Trudeau called a federal election. He claimed there were 500 refugees landed in Canada, however, I suspect that was before he made his announcement.
==========================================================================================
Taliban promises peace, amnesty, rights ‘within Sharia law’ &
‘narcotics-free’ Afghanistan in first intl media press conference
17 Aug, 2021 15:43 / Updated 1 hour ago
Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021. © AP Photo/Rahmat Gul
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid made numerous sweeping claims in a Tuesday press conference saying the Taliban is focused on forming a government in Afghanistan, will observe women’s rights and has “pardoned” wartime enemies.
“We have all borders under control,” Mujahid told reporters at the first media conference in Kabul since its takeover by the Taliban. He promised that a government is “seriously” being formed and “it will be announced after completion.”
Amid the ongoing chaos in Afghanistan as the US has struggled to get military allies out of the country as Taliban fighters have moved in on previous strongholds, including the capital city of Kabul, Mujahid said enemies of the Taliban have been “pardoned.”
“We have pardoned everybody for the benefit of stability or peace in Afghanistan,” he said. He added, however, that those who have died in the past few days as the Taliban has reclaimed land hold sole responsibility for their deaths.
“Those whose lives have been lost as a result of fighting for the enemy, this was their own fault. We conquered the whole country in a matter of days,” he said.
Despite this sentiment, Mujahid assured that translators and allies to the US military will not be interrogated or “treated with revenge.”
“Nobody is going to knock on their door and ask them who they have been working for,” he said, adding that many younger Afghanistan citizens are “assets” that should remain in the country.
Mujahid did not give too many specifics about this new “government” being formed, but he did touch on how some issues would be handled, including press freedom. While Mujahid promised the press can remain “free and independent,” it must also work “within our cultural framework.”
The Taliban will not, however, accept “any media practices in our country against Islam and Muslims,” Mujahid later promised.
He similarly said women will have the right to work and study, but only “within our framework,” not specifically explaining what kind of limitations this “framework” will present in this potential new government.
Womens’ rights, Mujahid said, will be “under the system of [Sharia law],” which many in the international community have argued impedes basic human rights. Mujahid made the diplomatic argument on Tuesday that Afghanistan has no “problems with the international community” and only wants their “right to act according to our religious principles” to be respected.
Mujahid also promised a country free of narcotics, but insisted that help would be needed from other countries as Afghanistan needs “alternative crops” to replace the booming poppy fields in the country, which have created a steady stream of opium and narcotics production – something the Taliban has made clear it will be seeking to stop.
The United Nations has responded to the Taliban’s sweeping promises by calling for action on the pledges.
“We will need to see what actually happens and I think we will need to see action on the ground in terms of promises kept,” spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric told the media in New York, following the press conference.
As the Taliban has reclaimed territory, including the capital city of Kabul, some embassies have been evacuated, including the US’, which staff vacated on Sunday. Some countries’ diplomatic staff, including Russia’s and China’s, have made contact with the new de facto Taliban government, however.
European Union foreign ministers met on Tuesday to discuss how best to approach the Taliban, which is seeking international recognition and support as the US’ wartime effort in the country comes to an end.
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, released a statement before the Taliban takeover of Kabul, warning the group it would face “isolation” if it retook the city. The official seemed to have had a turnaround this week, however, recognizing that the Taliban had “won” the military conflict and therefore the EU was obliged to talk to its leaders.
In his previous statement, Borrell said “support” for Afghanistan would be “conditional” on “respect for the fundamental rights of all Afghans, including women, youth and minorities.”
Russia has similarly called for a more inclusive government from the Taliban, but Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said this week that it was in no hurry to recognize the Taliban – still designated a terrorist group by Moscow – as a legitimate authority in the country.
Lavrov did nonetheless recognize Tuesday’s wide-ranging press conference as sending a “positive signal” about Afghanistan’s future.
“What the Taliban are declaring in Kabul, and how they are showing their willingness to respect the opinion of others in practice – that, I think, is a positive signal,” he said.
Well, it certainly sounds better than it might have, although, I'm quite sure women will become invisible again.
========================================================================================
Tucker Carlson rips US government for the handling of Afghanistan
You may not agree 100% with him but he points out some serious problems
and asks some very difficult questions.
No comments:
Post a Comment