the US should hang it’s head in shame for years to come over this.

You voted for Trump, then you voted for Biden. It says so much…..

Daily mail effort about the ex president leaving in a hurry. Either sloppy reporting (Most likely) poor writing, very small cars or a new helicopter?

Biden has lost it - either he has no contact with reality - or refuses to accept it. Even his own staff are contradicting him within minutes of his speech this evening…

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bid...vorced-reality

The USA hasn’t lost credibility - he obviously hasn’t been briefed on the response even in the UK Parliament, one of their closest allies.

Biden's comments on what's going on in Afghanistan have indeed been bizarre. However on the credibility issue there's only two measures which count, and they're the national security strategies and budgets of US allies and partners. Until either of those are seen to change, emotive rhetoric in Parliament and elsewhere is just that, probably for domestic consumption.

It was mostly historically illiterate rhetoric, too: as if the UK hadn't already been constrained by US strategies for 65 years, as if alliances and treaties hadn't already survived US withdrawal in disgrace from a failed nation-building project, and as if the US had never acted unilaterally on anything. Very surprising for a former PM and the chair of our Foreign Affairs committee to speak as if any of this were new. And when the Kabul shambles is over, Europe will still be reliant on the US for much of its homeland deterrence. Our politicians need to calm down on this.

Fox News? You believe the tripe they produce? Biden may actually believe it was a dead duck. It is a dead duck unless a country south of the Stan was brought to order. It never will be. I see that states sons and daughters treat a major city area I have lived in for the last few months. They treat it as a rubbish dump. The Disunited Nations was the name from my former landlady. She was not wrong.

Did you listen to the speech? I did, and the man is delusional. Fox didn't need to spin any of that - it was simply pathetic ramblings.
Biden actual said we could not possibly have done this any better. He's either a bold faced liar or he's delusional, because there are dozens of ways this could have been done better. His warnings to the Taliban are laughable - what he's proposing - another "strongly worded press release" (if you've not been paying attention, that's a direct quote from the USA UN ambassador :ugh:).

BTW Nimrod, I didn't vote for Biden, or for Trump the time before (I did hold my nose and vote for Trump this time because I could see what was happening to Biden - I figured a bully was better than senile.

It was stated that fuel on ground Kabul is exhausted....

I gather the USAF C17's are getting fuel by means of AAR on the way out. We could do the same -oh no we didn't go for the boom option on Voyager and it is a bit of a tight call to Q our pilots in the time left.

As is being said by both politicians and generals - judge the Taliban in their actions not their words. The killing in the streets is accelerating…

https://www.politico.eu/article/tali...le-journalist/

Taliban kill relative of Deutsche Welle journalist during door-to-door hunt

Taliban fighters hunting a Deutsche Welle journalist have “shot dead a member of his family and seriously injured another,” the German public broadcaster said in a report on Thursday evening.

The militants had been searching door-to-door to find the journalist, who now lives in Germany. Other relatives were able to flee and are now fugitives from the Taliban.

“The killing of a close relative of one of our editors by the Taliban yesterday is inconceivably tragic, and testifies to the acute danger in which all our employees and their families in Afghanistan find themselves,” DW Director General Peter Limbourg said.

“It is evident that the Taliban are already carrying out organized searches for journalists, both in Kabul and in the provinces,” he added.

The Taliban have broken into the homes of at least three other DW journalists. Reports of other journalists who have been shot dead or have been kidnapped have surfaced, according to DW….

The Taliban promised not to carry our reprisals at their first press conference, and are leading a media-savvy PR campaign aiming to show good faith, but multiple reports demonstrate their actions are in direct contradiction to their promises.

A report from the RHIPTO Norwegian Center for Global Analyses, which provides intelligence to the U.N., found Taliban militants are on the lookout for people who worked for NATO and are threatening their families, according to Reuters…..

Dont believe what you hear.

Since it's plain that the evacuation only continues by consent of the Taliban, could there be mileage in chartering civil aircraft to increase capacity, with government indemnity for the inevitable lack of insurance cover? Yes, there is potential for rogue fighters to attempt shoot-downs, but they'd presumably be looking for an 'Allahu akbar' social media moment against a grey military aircraft of the infidel armies. Might one therefore judge that a Qatari livery would be the best defensive aid of all? More capacity equals more 'direct' flights, keeping pax on board during an outbound refuelling stop, which would address the issues being encountered on the ground at al Udeid. (I'd have suggested PIA as another possibility, but they wouldn't really help given their problems with EASA!)

sorry td, comment not aimed at you, but the US.

The US chose Trump and then Biden. I used to visit the States regularly in the run up to Trump’s election. As an outsider it was hard to believe the guy was even running, never mind was about to get elected. And now, you have a walking, talking, senile cadaver for your leader.

Easy_Street,

I don’t think flight capacity into and out of Kabul is the problem, it’s more than adequate. The bottlenecks are before and after.

The Taliban are preventing a lot of those eligible for evacuation - many of whom they are seeking to kill. People just can’t get to the airport.

Once at the airport there are insufficient diplomatic staff to check papers ( one reported major screw up was that, during their embassy evacuation, the Americans shredded all the passports and ID documents that had been submitted to them by those applying for asylum to prevent them falling into Taliban hands - now they and their families don’t have any ID documents fo show at the airport)

There is also a bottleneck at the arrival airports outside Afghanistan. e.g. the US C-17s are shuttling to and from Doha where they have one hangar, with one toilet, to check and transfer evacuees to onward flights. Yesterday it was full with over 2000 evacuees inside and flights had to be suspended for over 8 hours (they are, or had, 20 flights into Kabul a day).

They are trying to arrange other transfer points in the Gulf, in the meantime many flights are now routing direct to Ramstein - reducing load and vastly extending the total turn round time till they get back again.

^^^^ This
I have a good friend out in Kabul now. He is saying the processing is what is the difficult part. All very well brining out soldiers but for some parts its not the best people for the job.

The media-waves are awash with comment on the situation in Afghanistan. If you're prepared to devote 22 minutes of your time, I heartily commend Rory Stewart's analysis of how we got here and the likely consequences.

Not forgetting the multitude of people stuck well-outside Kabul in places like Kandahar and Lashkar Gah - 400 miles+ from the only functional airhead and linked by a road network that has been under Taliban control for months. From recent reports it sounds like these people have been written-off entirely, with a multitude already executed / butchered by the local Taliban.

I understand that; my thought was aimed mainly at addressing the "after" bottleneck in Qatar, although I accept that could just as well be handled by transferring pax directly from one aircraft to another at the 'Deid (wouldn't that be preferable to a holding facility, even if it meant partial loads being flown?). That still leaves the "before" bottleneck. Hopefully those people have some means of communication by which off-airport RVs, authentication and rotary transfer can be arranged; I'm wondering if supporting that activity isn't a better use of inbound C-17 capacity than bringing in more troops?

As for Rory Stewart, his analysis fails to recognise the former government's loss of legitimacy through rampant corruption, and the establishment of Taliban shadow governance throughout the entire countryside. 10% turnout at the 2019 elections and huge, unsustainable ANDSF losses. The Kabul government was going to fall, its leadership was going to escape to safety and the Taliban was going to flip all the regional factions, which is why neither side had any interest in reaching a deal in the Doha talks. The suggestion that the West could have continued to prop up the status quo at low cost is a disingenuous one, and little short of (benign) imperialism.

I have read a report this morning concerning French, British, German SF forces doing operations outside the airport, and Kabul, to rescue groups of evacuees.

The report commented that the USA was complaining about these operations, which they are not letting their own forces perform, on the basis that they were a hinderance in their negotiations with the Taliban over the cut-off date for all evacuation operations.

What the truth of that is, and what negotiations are going on, will doubtless come out in the days to come.

US off-airport activity reported below. I suspect OPSEC likely to remain a factor. I posted this yesterday then had second thoughts and deleted, but since the Germans are being so open then what the hell!

Any uprising against the Taliban takeover.

There are reports that the total number of Taliban troops are about 80,000. They have been stripping forces from elsewhere in the country to rush to Kabul to patrol and hold the capital, that obvious means less elsewhere.

The US and NATO couldn't suppress fighting with far moore troops, air power and intelligence. The Taliban have a very small window in which "shock and awe" will allow them to grab control everywhere and establish their rule. I wonder how long it will be before civil war, as occurred before 2001, is yet again the norm.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/t...ches-kchf706l5

Taliban fighters driven out by uprising over house-to-house searches

Armed groups have driven the Taliban’s Islamist militants out of three districts north of Kabul in the first military assault on Afghanistan’s new rulers since they seized the capital last week.

Anti-Taliban commanders said they had killed about 30 fighters as they took back control of the districts in Baghlan province, some 100 miles north of Kabul, The Washington Post reported. Images posted online showed scenes of jubilation as the national Afghan flag of red, green and black replaced the white Taliban banner over government buildings.

“We have ignited something historic,” a former Afghan soldier who fought in the uprising on Friday was quoted as saying. “As long as we are alive, we will not accept the Taliban’s rule.”

A tweet from a pro-Taliban account promised retribution for the assault and claimed that the Taliban had been betrayed after offering an amnesty. “All those who committed this crime must be killed,” it said, saying that 15 Taliban fighters had died in the fighting. “The doors of conversation are closed.”

The uprising came as Taliban fighters conducted house-to-house searches in the in the Andarab valley after locals had warned them not to enter their homes.

“Taliban fighters did not listen to us,” said the former government soldier quoted by the Washington Post. “They came to our houses and harassed people. In our villages, people are very traditional and Muslim. There is no reason for Taliban to come and teach us about Islam.”

Abdul Rahman, 53, a former commander at Baghlan prison, said: “All people of the valley have risen up against the Taliban. We are not afraid of Taliban fighters.” Afghans posted videos and photos of rifle-toting fighters congratulating one another on their victory and chanting “Allahu akbar” - “God is great”.....

The revolt was evidence of growing defiance of the Taliban and demonstrates the difficulty it faces in trying to subdue a country whose appetite for insurgency has proved the undoing of many a government in Kabul.

Yesterday’s revolt appears to have been unconnected with another anti-Taliban front that emerged in the north last week – the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, led by Ahmad Massoud, who has appealed for US and Western support.

“We have stores of ammunition and arms that we have patiently collected… because we knew this day might come,” Massoud wrote on Wednesday in the Washington Post, adding that he is “ready to follow in my father’s footsteps, with mujahideen fighters who are prepared, once again, to take on the Taliban.”.....