It was impossible to predict the Taliban would retake Afghanistan so swiftly after the withdrawal of international troops, Dominic Raab has said, arguing: ‘No one saw this coming.’
Speaking to the media following his return from holiday, after chaotic and deadly scenes at Kabul airport on Sunday, the UK foreign secretary said US and British troops had stabilised the airport, allowing evacuations to resume
Following the Taliban’s military takeover of the country, westerners continue to leave. Afghans hoping to escape Taliban rule have gathered in Kabul, with many making desperate attempts to flee. There was chaos at the airport, where troops used guns and helicopters to clear the runways, and several people died in frantic last-minute attempts to escape by clinging to departing planes
Continue reading...United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called on the security council to 'use all tools at its disposal to suppress the global terrorist threat in Afghanistan' and guarantee that basic human rights will be respected. Ashraf Ghani left Afghanistan on Sunday as the Taliban took over the country 20 years after they were ousted by a US-led invasion. 'We are receiving chilling reports of severe restrictions on human rights throughout the country,' said Guterres. 'I am particularly concerned by accounts of mounting human rights violations against the women and girls of Afghanistan'.
Former soldiers express anger and heartbreak as service in 20-year war rendered ‘pointless’
As chaotic scenes unfolded more than 4,000 miles away in Kabul, veterans of the 20-year conflict and families who lost loved ones on the battlefield have been asking the stark question: “Was it worth it?”
“There is a generation of Afghans who have been given a taste of what freedom is like, so you never know, but it feels pretty bleak at the moment,” said Andrew Fox, a former major in the Parachute Regiment who served on three tours of Afghanistan and who has spoken openly about the impact of PTSD on his own health.
Continue reading...Analysis: Difficult to predict how China will deal with its volatile neighbour, but Uyghur issue could prove contentious
The US’s hasty departure from Afghanistan has provided much material for China’s propaganda agencies to discredit Washington’s foreign policy. But Beijing is also treading a careful line in navigating an increasingly uncertain security situation in one of its most volatile neighbours.
On Monday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Hua Chunying, said that while Beijing will “continue developing good-neighbourly, friendly and cooperative relations with Afghanistan”, it also urges the Taliban to “ensure that all kinds of terrorism and crimes can be curbed so that the Afghan people can stay away from war and rebuild their homeland”.
Continue reading...The task facing the new head of state will be more challenging than 1996. But who is in the running for a governing role?
Last time the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan – in 1996 – there was never any question of what form of government they would install and who would rule the country. They were filling a vacuum, and Mullah Mohammed Omar, the reclusive cleric who had led the movement since its beginnings two years earlier, took charge.
Then, Kabul was a shattered husk, with a tiny hungry, scared population, almost no economic activity, no telephones and public transport provided by ancient Russian-made cars or 1970s buses once driven from Germany. The Taliban could impose whatever they wanted.
Continue reading...The departure of US forces was followed by a rout of Afghan government forces. Now, after 20 years of western intervention, Afghanistan is back under the control of the Taliban
It began with a steady trickle of military defeats. First Afghan government control was ceded to the Taliban in provincial towns and cities. Then, as the lack of resistance became apparent, bigger cities and regional capitals began to fall. Finally on Sunday the Taliban entered Kabul as the western-backed government fled the country.
The Guardian’s senior international correspondent, Emma Graham-Harrison, tells Michael Safi that it marks a stunning reversal for the Afghan government, which had begun negotiating a deal with the Taliban in recent months. And as deeply flawed as the government in Kabul has been for the past 20 years, it has created space for the education of girls and a free press. All of that is now in grave doubt as Afghans wait to see whether their new Taliban rulers plan to carry on where they left off in 2001. We hear voices from inside Afghanistan including reporter Zahra Joya, who was a child when US forces invaded in 2001 and drove out the Taliban. She describes her fears for what will come next.
Continue reading...Joe Biden defended his decision to withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan even after Taliban forces took Kabul, saying: 'I stand squarely behind my decision.' Striking a defiant tone, the US president admitted the situation in the country had deteriorated faster than anticipated, but said it showed there would never be a good time to withdraw US forces. 'American troops cannot and should not be dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves,' Biden said. 'We gave them every chance to determine their own future; we could not provide them with the will to fight for that future.'
Britain will use all the means at its disposal, including sanctions and diplomacy, to hold the Taliban to account in Afghanistan, foreign secretary Dominic Raab said.
In his first public appearance since the crisis began, Raab said that 'everyone was caught by surprise by the pace and the scale of the Taliban takeover', in which Kabul fell to the Islamist group over the weekend. Britain, which had initially committed 600 members of the armed forces to evacuate British nationals and former British staff, will shortly have 900 troops in Kabul.
Analysis: Joe Biden and Boris Johnson five weeks ago claimed Afghan government would not fall so easily
Joe Biden could not have been clearer: a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was “not inevitable”, the US president said on 8 July. Boris Johnson, the UK prime minister, was equally confident – “there is no military path to victory for the Taliban” – he told MPs earlier that day, five weeks ago.
The president said he trusted “the capacity of the Afghan military”, who were better trained, better equipped and “more competent in terms of conducting war”. The prime minister agreed: “I do not believe that the Taliban are guaranteed the kind of victory that we sometimes read about.”
Continue reading...After their lightning conquest, there is little to indicate the group will moderate their strict Islamic beliefs
The Taliban were born out of the mujahideen fighters who opposed the Russians during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which began in 1979. Founded by Mullah Mohammad Omar, a local imam in Kandahar, in 1994, they were initially formed of a small group of madrassa students who were angry at the depredations of the warlords in the civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. Their influence rapidly spread over the following two years.
Continue reading...Desperate Afghans clung to the side of a moving US military plane leaving Kabul airport on Monday, with at least three people apparently falling to their deaths from the undercarriage immediately after takeoff. Video footage shows hundreds of people running alongside the plane as it moves along the runway of Kabul international airport. A number of people hang on to the side of the C-17A aircraft, just below the wing. Others run alongside waving and shouting
Thousands of Afghans and foreign nationals have surged on to the tarmac at Kabul airport trying to get a place on a flight out of the country, amid chaotic scenes that unfolded as the Taliban took control of the city. Fearful that the Taliban may reimpose the brutal rule they enforced before 2001, Afghans are seeking ways out of the country, lining up at cash machines to withdraw their life savings
Desperate crowds gather at the airport as people try to escape after the Afghan capital fell to the Taliban on Sunday
Continue reading...The Taliban has declared that Afghanistan is under their control after they took over the presidential palace just hours after president Ashraf Ghani fled the country. The Islamist militants encountered no resistance as they took back power two decades after they were overthrown by a US-led invasion. Chaotic scenes erupted at Hamid Karzai International Airport with thousands flooding the tarmac desperate the get a flight out of the country.
Leaders from the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada have reacted to the news that the Taliban has begun taking control of Kabul after a 20-year mission to Afghanistan led by western countries. UK prime minister Boris Johnsons said, ‘we don't want anybody bilaterally recognising the Taliban’, while New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern said conversations over how the new regime is treated will be for some time in the future. US secretary of state Antony Blinken blamed ‘the inability of Afghan security forces to defend their country’ for the quick takeover while Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau said he was ‘heartbroken’ at the news. Australian prime minister Scott Morrison said that fighting for freedom is ‘always worth it whatever the outcome.’
Crowds have packed the tarmac at Kabul airport in a bid to flee the Afghan capital as Taliban insurgents began taking over the city. Insurgents took control of the presidential palace. Al Jazeera showed footage of what it said were Taliban commanders in the palace with dozens of armed fighters. President Ashraf Ghani left Afghanistan. Many Afghans attempted the flee via road or via the airport.
Continue reading...Return to power of movement’s co-founder embodies Afghanistan’s inability to escape history of conflict
Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban leader freed from a Pakistani jail on the request of the US less than three years ago, has emerged as an undisputed victor of the 20-year war.
While Haibatullah Akhundzada is the Taliban’s overall leader, Baradar is its political chief and its most public face. He was said to be on his way from his office in Doha to Kabul on Sunday evening. In a televised statement on the fall of Kabul, he said the Taliban’s real test was only just beginning and that they had to serve the nation.
Continue reading...Analysis: The speed of the fall of the country to the Taliban leaves many questions unanswered
This is what defeat looks like. Embassy burn bins blazing through day and night. The president fleeing. Helicopters and armoured SUVs shuttling foreigners to the airport, amid the anxious bureaucracy of evacuation with its queues and “go” bags at the airport, the few items that you keep packed for when you have to flee.
The speed of the fall of Afghanistan leaves many questions unanswered, not least whether the devastating humiliation for the Afghan government, its military forces and its western backers was in any way avoidable.
Continue reading...Poorly led and riddled with corruption, the Afghan army was overrun in a matter of weeks
The Taliban have 80,000 troops in comparison with a nominal 300,699 serving the Afghan government, yet the whole country has been effectively overrun in a matter of weeks as military commanders surrendered without a fight in a matter of hours.
It is a tale of two armies, one poorly equipped but highly motivated ideologically, and the other nominally well-equipped, but dependent on Nato support, poorly led and riddled with corruption.
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