Part 2 of 3: Update on the SIV evacuation
4. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers entered into an agreement with the Dulles Expo Center to provide temporary layover location to accommodate Afghans at risk as they await follow-on transportation to Fort Bliss, Texas, or Fort McCoy, Wisconsin. Since the end of July, the cumulative number of people moved out of Afghanistan is greater than 18,000.
(a) At one stage, U.S. evacuation flights under Operation Allies Refuge, was paused for 6-7 hours earlier because there was "no room" in Qatar. Flights have now "resumed," because UAE has agreed to allow 5,000 in-transit evacuees to be hosted on top of the US facilities in Qatar, which hit capacity limits. In addition, Ramstein Air Base in Germany is prepared to also house Afghanistan evacuees.
(b) Things are so bad at the gates that the Americans and German are forced to use helicopters to COLLECT SIV evacuees to by-pass the stampede at the gates that is killing people in the crush. The Pentagon said 3 helicopters was sent to a hotel rescue 169 Americans, who were unable to get into the airport. “The Spanish defence secretary said on Friday that one Afghan family taken out by Spain had left behind a daughter they lost in the airport crush.”
(c) American, German, Italian and Turkish soldiers are showing they care more than their country’s politicians but things have gotten so bad for those outside the gates that the military are retrieving bodies who died from the stampede. Hydration prevents deaths and the soldiers are giving out water. But they also cannot let people in without a valid departure visa.
5. Due to bottle necks in the system being set up under Operation Allies Refuge, the US government is failing at 2 of the 3 key concerns at HKIA, as listed by Secretary Austin:
(i) the safety and security of the security forces and the people they are trying to evacuate (as people are dying in a stampede at the gates);
(ii) maintaining security at the airport itself; and
(iii) increasing the flow of aircraft and people out of Kabul (but the bottleneck in Qatar, forced flights to be paused and made things worse at the gates).
6."The failure in Afghanistan was actually a political one," War Studies Fellow at King's College, Dr Mike Martin explained. He also says the way in which western powers left Afghanistan "effectively gave this house of cards a shove and it collapsed."
(a) At this stage, I have to stop assuming that the Biden administration is capable of competence — the adults are not back — further, there seems to be a competition to see if the current bunch can beat Trump’s bunch at incompetence.
(b) I just don’t believe Biden when he said there is no interest for United States to keep its force in Afghanistan now that al Qaeda is gone. The Haqqani Network, which is closely allied with al Qaeda, is playing a big role in Kabul right now; and as most know, the Haqqanis are in the drug trade and are also intertwined with al Qaeda.
(c) Keeping in mind that President Trump withdrew all but 2,500 American troops. Stephen Miller a senior adviser to former President Donald Trump, teamed up with “enablers” to undermine anyone trying to get the allies out. “Stephen Miller would peddle his racist hysteria about Iraq & Afghanistan,” tweeted Troye. She described Pence as “fully aware” of the problem.
(d) Further, in 2018, President Trump got Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar released from prison. As Trump’s former national security adviser, H.R. McMaster said: “Our secretary of state [Mike Pompeo] signed a surrender agreement with Taliban. This collapse goes back to the capitulation agreement of 2020. The Taliban didn’t defeat us. We defeated ourselves.” In 2020, Trump's Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo met with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. In 2021, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar is set to become the President of Afghanistan under Taliban rule.