Earlier, media reports suggested that the former Afghan president had left the country on a jet soon after resigning from his post. He took this step in the wake of Taliban forces surrounding the capital and demanding a peaceful transfer of power from the government.

Former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has stated that he chose to resign earlier in the day in order to prevent the Taliban from "massacring" people in Kabul, as they had purportedly been planning to attack the city. He stressed that despite leaving his post and the country, he continues to "serve my nation".

In his statement, Ghani said that from now on, the Taliban will be responsible for the "honour, wealth and preservation" of Afghanistan's people. The ex-president added that the terrorist group had won a "trial of sword and guns", but could not win the hearts of the Afghan people.

Media reports earlier suggested that upon resigning from his post, Ghani left for Tajikistan on his plane, only to travel to an unspecified third country later. The president left as Taliban troops surrounded Kabul, demanding that the government peacefully transfer its power to the group in full, despite initial reports of forming an interim Cabinet.

The Taliban has since seized the majority of the city’s districts, including the presidential palace. Reports suggest that the movement will soon proclaim the re-establishment of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan - a regime that the Taliban installed after winning the civil war in the 1990s, and which was later overthrown by the US invasion in 2001.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/asia/202108151083612626-afghan-president-ghani-claims-he-resigned-to-prevent-bloodshed-as-taliban-sought-to-attack-kabul/

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From the New York Times editorial...

The rapid reconquest of the capital, Kabul, by the Taliban after two decades of a staggeringly expensive, bloody effort to establish a secular government with functioning security forces in Afghanistan is, above all, unutterably tragic.

Tragic because the American dream of being the “indispensable nation” in shaping a world where the values of civil rights, women’s empowerment and religious tolerance rule proved to be just that: a dream.

This longest of American wars was code-named first Operation Enduring Freedom and then Operation Freedom’s Sentinel. Yet after $83 billion and at least 2,448 American service members’ lives lost in Afghanistan, it is difficult to see what of lasting significance has been achieved.

It is all the more tragic because of the certainty that many of the Afghans who worked with the American forces and bought into the dream — and especially the girls and women who had embraced a measure of equality — have been left to the mercy of a ruthless enemy.

The Biden administration was right to bring the war to a close. Yet there was no need for it to end in such chaos, with so little forethought for all those who sacrificed so much in the hopes of a better Afghanistan.

Numberless Afghans who had worked for years alongside American troops, civil society groups, aid organizations and journalists, including the many who had worked with The New York Times, abruptly found themselves in mortal danger on Sunday as the Taliban swept into Kabul as leaders of the Afghan government, including President Ashraf Ghani, headed for the airport.

It was tragic, too, because with the bitter political divide of today’s America, efforts to draw critical lessons from this calamitous setback have already been enmeshed in angry recriminations over who lost Afghanistan, ugly schadenfreude and lies. Within hours of the fall of Kabul, the knives were already out.

Read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/15/opinion/afghanistan-taliban.html

You can be sure that should Trump still be president, this editorial would be very different. Trump would be the evil responsible for ALL the present mess and Hell as well... I would think that Trump would have made far less of a mess of this "retreat"... Biden is an idiot who has been in politics for far too long and the Mass Liberal media has been disgraceful with their Biden glorification... Time has come to the door of reality and blame Bush, Blair and Howard for the lack of planning beyond the invasion of Afghanistan...

Thousands of Afghans rushed into Kabul's main airport, some so desperate to escape the Taliban that they held onto a military jet as it took off and were seen apparently plunging to their deaths.

• At least seven people have been killed during chaos at Afghanistan's main airport
• Afghans are fleeing following the Taliban's takeover of the country
• US troops fired in the air to deter people trying to force their way onto a military flight

At least seven people died in the chaos on Monday, US officials said, as America's longest war ended with its enemy the victor.

The crowds of people rushing the airport came as the Taliban enforced their rule over the wider capital after a lightning advance across the country that took just over a week and dethroned the country's Western-backed government. 

US soldiers killed two armed men at Kabul's airport after a top Pentagon general met with the Taliban in Doha to urge them not to attack as thousands sought to flee Afghanistan, a defence official said.

A US official said troops fired in the air to deter people trying to force their way onto a military flight.

The aircraft was set to take American diplomats and embassy staff out of the fallen city.

Video released on social media showed dozens of people running alongside a US military transport plane as it taxied along the runway before take-off.

Others were seen clinging to the plane's side.

Other videos appeared to show at least two people falling from a similar plane while it was in the air after taking off.

There was no official confirmation of that incident.

Three bodies could be seen on the ground near what appeared to be an airport side entrance, in another video posted on social media.

Another witness said he had seen five bodies.

All evacuation flights from Kabul were temporarily halted to clear people who had converged on the airfield, according to a US defence official.

Speaking hours after the chaos at the airport, US President Joe Biden said scenes of desperate Afghans clinging to US military planes were "gutwrenching".

He said he stands squarely behind his decision to pull troops out, and he would not repeat "the mistakes of the past" by fighting in a conflict that was no longer in the interests of the US.

Read more:

 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-16/afghanistan-taliban-deaths-kabul-airport-evacuation/100381874

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Imagine for a tiny half a second that Trump is president overseeing the same shit as Joe Biden... Would you believe the media would be so soft on the President? Even the NYT, seems to be searching for apologies for mentioning the mess of the "retreat"? Instead of "Biden stands behind Afghan withdrawal, despite ‘hard and messy’ final days." we would be getting "TRUMP FUCKED UP!", would not we?... 

Biden’s military sang the same song. General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated last month that a Taliban victory in Afghanistan was “not a foregone conclusion,” and the intelligence community was apparently caught with its pants down too, having reportedly given the Taliban between six and 18 months to take over the country, then tightening that timeline to a still-generous 30-90 days, per multiple media reports. 

So whose fault is it? With some Americans still on the ground in Kabul and the State Department apparently unable or unwilling to help them, officials in Washington have started to point fingers. First up was Biden, or whoever writes his official statements. In a release on Saturday, Biden blamed former president Donald Trump for cutting a peace deal with the Taliban last year that left the militants “in the strongest position militarily since 2001.”

Biden was slated online for passing the buck to Trump, as he boasted during his campaign that “unlike this president, I’ll do my job and take responsibility. I won’t blame others.”

“I won’t blame others” pic.twitter.com/TT70VAreof

Biden told reporters last month that the US’ intelligence agencies hadn’t predicted the collapse of the Afghan government. However, spokespeople for these agencies came out to correct the record on Monday. An anonymous source in Congress told ABC News that the intelligence agencies had been predicting “a swift and total victory” by the Taliban, and that the Biden administration had “disregarded” this information. Former acting CIA director Michael Morell blamed the executive branch for the failure in Afghanistan, tweeting on Sunday that “of all the players over the years, the intelligence community by far has seen the situation in Afghanistan most accurately.”

This is so Washington DC…always trying to save face, never taking any responsibility https://t.co/66euzvSdgC

Yet every intelligence community assessment that leaked out gave Kabul months, not days, to hold out against the Taliban. Morell and his ilk may be engaged in some post hoc face-saving, but the administration isn’t around to take them to task over it. Biden himself remains cloistered away in the presidential retreat of Camp David and after a weekend of silence is set to address the nation on Monday afternoon. Vice President Kamala Harris has also remained shtum, while Press Secretary Jen Psaki chose Sunday to take a week’s vacation.

Tragic scenes from Kabul airport – where hordes of Afghans clung to American planes as they left the tarmac on Sunday – have been used by Republicans to bash Biden, and Trump’s supporters have claimed that such chaos would never have unfolded under his leadership. 

Kabul now. This is Biden’s Saigon. Never would have happened like this under DJT. #BuildBackBetter#BidensVietnampic.twitter.com/rgQe3U9klG

The Taliban saw how quickly Trump exterminates ISIS. This debacle would not have happened under Trump.

However, that idea is largely fanciful, and the stuff of speculation. Taliban leadership could well have deemed Trump too unpredictable, and held back to avoid angering the man who once dropped the ‘Mother of All Bombs’ on Islamic State militants and threatened to rain “fire and fury” on North Korea, but they could just as easily have called his bluff and pressed into Kabul. Either way, droves of Afghans would likely have mobbed the airport regardless, seeing the chance of a seat on an American plane as preferable to life under Taliban rule.

In reality, the withdrawal was likely always going to be chaotic. At every moment of its two-decade war and occupation, the United States prosecuted its mission with extreme incompetence and mind-blowing waste. Spending $88 billion on an army that surrendered instantly to the Taliban is just the latest example. A trove of Pentagon documents released in 2019 revealed that US officials routinely misled the public on the war, as incompetence reigned behind the scenes.

Military brass and political leaders in Washington often didn’t know who the enemy in Afghanistan was, couldn’t tell commanders on the ground what to do, had nobody who could speak certain Afghan languages, got ripped off by locals and wasted billions of dollars on pointless infrastructure projects, and hired warlords for security, who promptly attacked Americans to justify more funding for security, among a litany of other failures. 

Given the bungling and waste involved in staying in Afghanistan, a disorganized retreat from Kabul is likely the best outcome any US administration could have hoped for. Yet even as the political players in Washington ramp up the blame game, the chances of any general, adviser, policy wonk, or intelligence chief facing serious consequences for promoting and overseeing the failed two-decade war are extremely slim.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/usa/532221-biden-trump-blame-afghanistan/

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