The Fall of Kabul: The Return of the Taliban

To remember:

• Mohammed Omar Afghan mullah (cleric) and mujahid commander who led the Taliban and founded the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in 1996.
• Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second largest city after Kabul, located in the south of the country on the Arghandab River, at an elevation of 1,010 m (3,310 ft).
• 2001 destruction of two giant Buddhas in Bamiyan by the all male group Taliban = lack of respect by the Taliban for historical &  cultural heritage of Afghanistan.
• February 2020, Trump administration + Taliban signed historic deal in Doha, Qatar > 14-month timetable for America & NATO allies to withdraw all of its forces from Afghanistan. > Taliban agreed not to allow al-Qaeda or any extremist group to operate in the areas they control.
• Since 2001 the war forced 2.7 million Afghans to flee their homes mostly to Iran, Pakistan and Europe.
• United States of America Defense Department states > war- fighting costs over the years in Afghanistan total $815.7 billion; from food for troops to fuel; to Humvees, weapons and ammunition; from tanks to amoured vehicles to aircraft carriers to airstrikes.
• Taliban = not strong in area of human rights or women’s right. impose strict limitations on women’s bodies & their human rights + women treated as possession of men
• women are not allowed to dance in public, => bachas (boys), as young as 12, usually orphans or from very poor families, can be made to dance in women’s clothing + they are often sexually abused = bachabaze = playing with boys
  
• Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) = second largest inter-governmental organization after the United Nations, + collective voice of Muslim world to ensure & safeguard their interest on economic socio and political areas

waykam

“Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.”- John F. Kennedy.

We have all seen the stunning and alarming images on our television; hundreds of Afghans both men and women running alongside a U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane as it moves down a runway of the Hamid Karzai International airport in Kabul, Afghanistan. The script was not supposed to end like this. The Taliban have moved with fighting speed to control Afghanistan. The United States of American trained Afghan security forces hardly resisted the Taliban. This military maneuvering by the Taliban has led many to wonder whether or not the United States and her allies miscalculated the capacity and capabilities of the Taliban. Many will view the surrender of Kabul as well as the other provinces in Afghanistan with some suspicion especially since the former president Ashraf Ghani fled before Kabul fell to the Taliban. A significant…

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Taliban conquest of Afghanistan a clock to turn back years

For Afghanistan, the last 24 hours have been a treacherous and sudden change in the times. Everything from the Taliban’s siege of the capital, Kabul, to Taliban control of all areas of Kabul, to President Ghani’s departure from Afghanistan, every development goes down in history.

After 9/11 2001, America persuaded the West to get on board to fight al-Qaeda and the Taliban. With all their might, they tried to prepare the Afghan army to fight terrorists on its own. After more than 20 years, all the work done, lots of money spend, and the many deaths did not seem to have changed much, except for the greater freedom of the citizens, which remained endangered by the many restrictions imposed on the people by the Taliban.

It is only logical and understandable that Joe Biden wanted to pull the plug on the endless well because it had already caused so many deaths while not much had changed in terms of substance. As soon it was made public that the U.S.A. would start a withdrawal of its troops, the Taliban very easily conquered one territory after the other.

According to the latest news from foreign media, Taliban spokesman Mohammad Naim told Al Jazeera on the 15th of August 2021, that the war in Afghanistan is over and the form of the regime will soon become clear. As Afghanistan’s second largest city, Kandahar is not only the economic, cultural and transport hub of southern Afghanistan, but also considered the most important city and “spiritual home” for the Taliban, therefore Taliban officials were proud to say on the 16th, that the southern Afghanistan Kandahar International Airport has been fully controlled by the Taliban. They even went to promise that Afghanistan’s domestic and international flights are expected to resume within three days.

On Mother’s Day, August 15, former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai said on television and social media that people had not to worry and that Afghanistan had formed a “coordination committee” to prepare for a peaceful transition of power, and to be responsible for maintaining security, law and order. Members of the Coordinating Committee would include Karzai, Abdullah and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the leader of the Islamic Party of Afghanistan and a former prime minister. The committee called on Afghan government forces and the Taliban to avoid conflict and chaos. But a few hours later thousands of Afghans who had fled to Kabul airport, on the tarmac of Hamid Karzai International Airport, Afghanistan’s national airport, 16 kilometres from the centre of Kabul, could see their head of state fleeing, boarding a very large Boeing 747.
Why couldn’t the other seats there be filled with some of the many who also tried to flee?

It became a real chaos at that airport.

The same day, Mujahid announced on social media that Taliban militants had entered the city “to keep the population safe and maintain social order” as Afghan security forces in Kabul had given up their responsibilities and dispersed.
Ghani said in a statement on social media that day that he faced a difficult choice, and that his action was to safe as many Afghans as he could. In order to avoid the killing of the people, he decided to leave Afghanistan, to go first to Tajikistan.

The U.S. military on the 15th used a number of helicopters from the embassy in Afghanistan to evacuate personnel, its embassy compound on the same day rose a plume of smoke. Some sources said it was the “urgent destruction of sensitive documents” by U.S. diplomats.

NATO said in a statement the same day, NATO will continue to maintain its diplomatic presence in Kabul, and to provide assistance to keep Kabul airport running.

I wonder how much work they shall invest to safeguard all those people, who in the last 20 years helped them in getting certain goods, having them to communicate with Afghanis, translating for the troops as well as for the press. What I could see from television reporting was that it more looked that the West abandons all those people who helped them in the past. A real shame!

At the moment it looks like the Taliban has conquered the country and soon shall be planning to bring back the sharia law as well as taking away the right for young women to study and to do a proper job. Possibly Afghanistan shall come back to be a country in the Middle ages, with the oppression of women and the impossibility of religious freedom.

Duizenden op de vlucht voor Taliban

Twintig jaar heeft men geprobeerd om Afghanistan tot een democratisch land te laten opgroeien. Miljarden zijn er door het westen geïnvesteerd. Maar als men in iets gaat investeren moet het ook positieve resultaten opleveren. En dat kan men zeker niet zeggen van Afghanistan, dat we een bodemloze put leek te zijn.

Na 9/11 2001 heeft Amerika het Westen zo ver gekregen om mee in de boot te stappen om al-Qaeda en de Taliban te bestrijden. Met man en macht hebben ze geprobeerd het Afghaanse leger voor te bereiden om zelf zelfstandig terroristen te lijf te gaan.

Sinds Biden de terugtrekking van de Amerikaanse soldaten ernstig liet doorvoeren kwam er weer grote chaos in het land en leek de Taliban in één twee drie het land te veroveren. Begrijpelijk lokte dat veel onrust uit zo wel in het westen als in het land zelf, waar zeer veel mensen hun toevlucht gingen zoeken in de hoofdstad. Maar daar zouden ze moeten ondervinden dat het precies is alsof het Westen hen nu in de steek laat.
Het is schandalig te merken dat tolken en zij die pers en geallieerden bijstonden nu plotseling alleen staan en dat er voor hen geen voorzieningen zijn getroffen om hen veilig naar het westen over te brengen.

Het ministerie van Buitenlandse zaken heeft de laatste dagen ook tientallen vragen van Belgen binnen gekregen, die momenteel problemen ondervinden in Afghanistan.

“De situatie in Afghanistan is op 24 uur tijd helemaal veranderd”,

zegt Buitenlandse Zaken. De FOD kreeg de afgelopen uren 47 vragen van Belgen ter plaatse en een twintigtal familieleden. Contactpunt is de ambassade in Islamabad (Pakistan). Op de televisie konden wij ook zien hoe in België wonende Afghanen hier telefonische noodoproepen krijgen van hun radeloze familieleden. De angst zit er bij zeer velen in.

Chaos op de luchthaven van Kaboel

De duizenden Afghanen die naar de luchthaven van Kaboel gevlucht waren, konden wel hun president op een zeer grote Boeing 747 zien stappen. Waarom konden de andere zitplaatsen daar niet opgevuld worden met een deel van de velen die ook probeerden te vluchten?
Op ooggetuigebeelden is te zien hoe mensen vechten om bij vliegtuigen te komen om te worden geëvacueerd. Duizenden mensen zijn op het tarmac van Hamid Karzai International Airport, de nationale luchthaven van Afghanistan, 16 kilometer vanaf het centrum van Kabul, doorgedrongen, in een poging hun land te ontvluchten. In die chaos is het niet verwonderlijk dat er al meerdere doden zijn gevallen, want iedereen tracht zijn hachje te redden en is enorm ontgoocheld hoe zij geen verdere hulp schijnen te krijgen van de Westerse mogendheden.
Een getuige vertelt aan persagentschap Reuters dat hij de lichamen van vijf mensen heeft gezien terwijl die in een auto geladen werden. De Amerikaanse krant Wall Street Journal heeft melding gekregen over drie mensen die werden doodgeschoten. Mogelijk zijn er ook mensen vertrappeld in de mensenmassa.

Te nemen verantwoordelijkheid

De geallieerden moeten nu hun dankbaarheid voor de hulp die zij kregen van vele Afghaanse burgers. Koks, vertalers en andere medewerkers moeten nu beloond worden voor hun werk, door hen de beveiliging aan te bieden die zij nodig hebben. Zo te zien is de enige veilige oplossing, hen zo vlug mogelijk uit het land te halen.

Het is aan de Westerse mogendheden er nu nog voor te zorgen dat die medewerkers hun hoofden niet over de grond zullen rollen.