The Taliban closed in on Kabul on Sunday as the Afghan president fled the country and the United States continued in their attempts to safely move embassy personnel.
After about a weeklong military surge that has led to the Taliban capturing nearly all of Afghanistan, President Ashraf Ghani flew out of the country on Sunday morning, Afghan National Reconciliation Council chief Abdullah Abdullah said in a video, paving the way for the Taliban to take control of Kabul.
Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen told Qatar’s Al-Jazeera English that the insurgents are “awaiting a peaceful transfer of Kabul city,” per the Associated Press.
AFGHAN PRESIDENT ASHRAF GHANI FLEES COUNTRY
The Taliban swiftly defeated Afghan forces in various battles across the country, with some Afghan forces fleeing instead of fighting, despite the U.S. and NATO spending billions of dollars over the last two decades to build up and train Afghan forces, as well as continued U.S. aerial support.
On Sunday, the Taliban freed 5,000 Taliban and Islamic State fighters who were in prison at the Bagram air base, according to Politico, which cited Bagram district chief Darwaish Raufi.
To assist in the withdrawal of U.S. diplomats from the country last week, the Biden administration announced the deployment of thousands of troops on Thursday, followed by a second order for additional troops on Saturday. An additional 1,000 troops are being sent to Afghanistan to complement the 1,000 troops already in the country and the 3,000-troop surge previously announced.
U.S. personnel are being moved from the embassy in Kabul to the airport to ensure their operations maintain security and safety.
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Former Commander of U.S. and International Forces in Afghanistan and former CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus called the situation in Afghanistan “Catastrophic … for the United States and the world … a serious mistake (by the US) … an enormous national security setback,” on Friday.
The success of the Taliban in capturing vast amounts of the country flies in the face of what President Joe Biden and his administration have been saying since the announcement of the planned withdrawal, which is currently only two weeks away.
“The likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely,” Biden said on July 8, while Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said, “Kabul is not right now in an imminent threat environment,” on Friday.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken also downplayed the nature of the situation in an ABC interview on Sunday, saying, the U.S. has “done” what “we set out to do in Afghanistan,” which he described as: “to deal with the people who attacked on 9/11. And that mission has been successful.”
He also made another admission in the interview in which he acknowledged the Afghan forces, despite billions of dollars and two decades, “proved incapable of defending the country,” which “happen[ed] more rapidly than we anticipated.”
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The comment comes after many Biden administration officials have said Afghan forces need leadership to capitalize on the advantages the administration says they have, including in sheer size as well as with the U.S.’s aerial assistance and with the Afghan Air Force.
Former U.S. CENTCOM Commander Gen. Joseph Votel told the Washington Examiner previously that the U.S. “may have underestimated the planning capability of the Taliban to really orchestrate what it seems to be a fairly effective campaign to get control of border crossings, of big cities, and to create a lot of pressure and induce panic into the end of the situation.”
