AFGHANISTAN’S embattled president left the country on Sunday, joining his fellow citizens and foreigners in a stampede fleeing the advancing Taliban and signaling the end of a 20-year Western experiment aimed at remaking Afghanistan.
The Taliban entered the capital early yesterday and an official in the militant group said it would soon announce the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan from the presidential palace a return rich in symbolism to the name of the country under the Taliban government ousted by US-led forces after the 9/11 attacks.
According to AP, the official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media. One of its units shared pictures of the Palace interior seemingly intact, but empty and abandoned by Afghan officials on an official Telegram account.
A video posted on social media a few hours before showed fighters arriving at the Presidential Palace in Kabul . The group’s spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said earlier that its forces would begin entering areas of the city where the government officials and security forces had abandoned their posts.
The militants had moved into a city gripped by panic, where helicopters raced overhead throughout the day to evacuate personnel from the US 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.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has since disclosed that he left the country in order to avoid bloodshed, as the Taliban entered the presidential palace in Kabul. According to Reuters, Ghani left in order to avoid clashes with the Taliban that would endanger millions of Kabul residents, he said in a Facebook post his first comments since leaving the country.
He, however, did not disclose details on his current location. Senior US military officials say Kabul’s international airport has been closed to commercial flights as military evacuations continue.
The suspension of commercial flights cuts off one of the last avenues to escape the country for Afghans fearful of Taliban rule. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing operations.
This was just as Afghans fearing that the Taliban could reimpose the kind of brutal rule that all but eliminated women’s rights rushed to leave the country as well, 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 their thousands in parks and open spaces throughout the city.
Though the Taliban had promised a peaceful transition, the US Embassy warned Americans late in the day to shelter in place and not try to get to the airport, where it said there were reports of gunfire. The embassy also suspended its own operations.
Still, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken rejected comparisons to the US pullout from Vietnam, as many watched in disbelief at the sight of helicopters landing in the embassy compound to take diplomats to a new outpost at Kabul International Airport. “This is manifestly not Saigon,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”
The American ambassador was among those evacuated, said officials who spoke condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss ongoing military operations. He was asking to return to the embassy, but it was not clear if he would be allowed to. As the insurgents closed in Sunday, 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.
“God should hold him accountable.”
In a stunning rout, the Taliban seized nearly all of Afghanistan in just over a week, despite the billions of dollars spent by the US and NATO over nearly two decades to build up Afghan security forces. Just days earlier, an American military assessment estimated it would be a month before the capital would come under insurgent pressure.
Albania and Kosovo have accepted a US request to temporarily take in Afghan refugees seeking visas to enter the United States, the country two countries said on Sunday.
Also, Pope Francis called for dialogue to end the conflict in Afghanistan so that its people can live in peace, security and reciprocal respect. Francis made the appeal in his noon address as Taliban insurgents entered the capital Kabul and the United States evacuated diplomats from its embassy by helicopter.
“I join in the unanimous worry about the situation in Afghanistan. I ask you to pray along with me to the God of peace so that the din of weapons ends and that solutions can be found around a table of dialogue,” he said to pilgrims and tourists in St. Peter’s Square.
“Only this way can the martyred population of that country men, women, elderly and children return to their homes and live in peace and security in full reciprocal respect,” he said.
The fall of Kabul marks the final chapter of America’s longest war, which began after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks masterminded by al-Qaida’s Osama bin Laden, then harbored by the Taliban government.
A US-led invasion dislodged the Taliban and beat them back, though America lost focus on the conflict in the chaos of the Iraq War. For years, the US has been looking for an exit for the war. Washington under then-President Donald Trump signed a deal with the Taliban in February 2020 that limited direct military action against the insurgents.
That allowed the fighters to gather strength and move quickly to seize key areas when President Joe Biden announced his plans to withdraw all American forces by the end of this month. On Sunday, the insurgents entered the outskirts of Kabul but initially remained outside of the city’s downtown.
Meanwhile, Taliban negotiators in the capital discussed a transfer of power, said an Afghan official.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of the closed-doors negotiations, described them as “tense.” President Joe Biden authorized an additional 1,000 US troops for deployment to Afghanistan, raising to roughly 5,000 the number of US troops to ensure what Biden called an “orderly and safe drawdown” of American and allied personnel.
US troops will also help in the evacuation of Afghans who worked with the military during the nearly two-decade war.
The last-minute decision to re-insert thousands of US troops into Afghanistan reflected the dire state of security as the Taliban seized control of multiple Afghan cities in a few short days.
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