Taliban round up ex-gov staff and whip women and children trying to flee at Kabul airport
Taliban begin rounding up ex-government staff and whip and attack women and children trying to flee at Kabul airport despite promise to be ‘moderate’: Pentagon watchdog says warlords are now offering safe haven to al-Qaeda
The White House has declared victory over Al Qaeda as U.S. troops depart from AfghanistanBut on Tuesday a Pentagon watchdog reported that the Taliban was ‘providing safe haven for the terrorist group in Afghanistan’The assessment will raise concerns that the country could again be used to launch attacks against the USAnd with Americans and their allies racing for the exits, experts warned that Washington’s human intelligence ability had been severely eroded The UN reported recently that Al Qaeda’s ailing leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was living in the countryOn Tuesday the Taliban held a press conference and attempted to present themselves as a moderate governing forceSpokesman Zabihullah Mujahid held his first news conference since taking Kabul on Sunday and said they would honor women’s rights – within sharia law Video from Kabul shows heavily-armed militants driving around the city firing their guns, amid reports of activists and government workers being hunted down
The Taliban on Tuesday used whips and sharp objects to beat back women and children desperate to enter Kabul airport, forcing crowds to run away in terror.
One man was photographed with tears streaming down his cheeks, his face contorted in anguish as he saw his fellow Afghans being whipped.
The Taliban then opened fire to drive the masses back from the site.
Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman, claimed on Tuesday ‘there is a huge difference between us and the Taliban of 20 years ago’ – when female Afghans were beaten in the street or publicly executed, denied work, healthcare and an education, and barred from leaving home without a male chaperone.
The Taliban has also said women will have to wear hijabs but not burkas.
Yet despite their claims to have moderated their position, there was no sign of that on Tuesday.
Reports suggested the militants were going door-to-door, rounding up those who had worked with the Afghan armed forces or government. Video obtained by Fox News showed a convoy of Taliban fighters roaring down a street, then opening fire in Kabul.
A child covered in blood is carried away with his father after the Taliban used whips on the crowd trying to get in to Kabul airport on Tuesday
The Taliban turned on the crowd at Kabul airport on Tuesday, driving the hundreds back from the airport perimeter as they pushed to flee the country
An Afghan woman is seen lying on the ground after the Taliban used whips and sharp objects to drive people from the airport
A man cries as he watches fellow Afghans get wounded after Taliban fighters use gunfire, whips, sticks and sharp objects to maintain crowd control over thousands of Afghans who continue to wait outside Kabul airport for a way out
Afghans run from the airport after the Taliban began using whips and sharp objects to repeal the crowd, before opening fire on those hoping to flee
Taliban fighters patrol the streets of Kabul on Tuesday and man checkpoints set up across the city
Pictured: Zabihullah Mujahid, chief spokesman for the Taliban, speaks during a press conference in Kabul on Tuesday, August 17, 2021. For years, Mujahid had been a shadowy figure issuing statements on behalf of the militants
Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid answers press members questions as he holds a press conference in Kabul, Afghanistan
A group of women began protesting on Tuesday, demanding the extremist group does not ‘eliminate’ women from society but were not approached by Taliban fighters until the afternoon
Taliban fighters stand guard before their spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid arrives for his first news conference in Kabul on Tuesday
During the press conference on Tuesday, Mujahid did not detail what restrictions would be imposed on women, although he did say it would be a government with ‘strong Islamic values’.
Mujahid claimed: ‘We are committed to the rights of women under the system of Sharia. They are going to be working shoulder to shoulder with us. We would like to assure the international community that there will be no discrimination.’
The Taliban denied it was enforcing sex slavery, and claims that such actions are against Islam. During the 1990s, the regime established religious police for the suppression of ‘vice’, and courts handed out extreme punishments including stoning to death women accused of adultery.
During their press conference in the capital city, the Taliban insisted girls will receive an education and women will be allowed to study at university – both of which were forbidden under Taliban rule in Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001 before the US-led invasion.
The terror group also claimed they want women to be part of the new government after female Afghans staged a protest outside a local Taliban HQ in Khair Khana district, a suburb of north-west Kabul, while chanting ‘honour and lives are safe’ and ‘join voices with us’.
However, women and girls remain the most at risk under the new regime, with gangs in conquered areas allegedly hunting children as young as 12 and unmarried or widowed women they regard as spoils of war – ‘qhanimat’ – being forced into marriage or sex slavery.
The spokesman suggested that the Taliban intended to put the last 20 years behind them, claiming that the group is ‘not going to revenge anybody, we do not have grudges against anybody’.
‘We want to make sure Afghanistan is not the battlefield of conflict anymore. We want to grant amnesty to those who have fought against us,’ he said.
Yet footage from within Kabul showed the Taliban driving around in their pickup trucks and opening fire.
Some reports said they were going door-to-door to hunt down opponents.
And it also emerged on Tuesday that the Taliban is already offering ‘safe haven’ to Al Qaeda, according to a Pentagon watchdog report – published just a day after President Biden said the war in Afghanistan had succeeded in ensuring the country could not be used to launch attacks against the U.S.
The revelation will bring fresh questions about why Biden was intent on pushing through the U.S. withdrawal so fast.
And with U.S. troops and diplomats heading for the exits, who is left behind to provide intelligence on the deadly terrorist group?
The new report by the Lead Inspector General for Operation Freedom’s Sentinel – the name of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan – said terrorist networks including ISIS had made the most of the Department of Defense’s drawdown.
‘As the DoD restructured its counterterrorism mission to locations outside of Afghanistan, ISIS—Khorasan exploited the political instability and rise in violence during the quarter by attacking minority sectarian targets and infrastructure to spread fear and highlight the Afghan government’s inability to provide adequate security,’ it said.
‘Additionally, the Taliban continued to maintain its relationship with al Qaeda, providing safe haven for the terrorist group in Afghanistan.’
Footage obtained by Fox News showed Taliban fighters driving through the streets of Kabul and opening fire. It was unclear whether they were firing in the air or aiming for people. Reports have claimed they are going door-to-door hunting down opponents
The Taliban fighters, flying their white flag, were filmed surreptitiously from a balcony in Kabul on Tuesday
A man claiming to be a member of Al Qaeda is pictured in Yemen in 2009. The terrorist group is likely to be granted safe haven by the Taliban, according to a Pentagon watchdog report published on Tuesday
President Biden has repeatedly declared victory in the U.S. mission to ensure Al Qaeda could not use Afghan soil to launch attacks on the U.S. But a new report says the Taliban is offering safe haven to the terrorist group
Taliban fighters pose on October 14, 2001, near Jalalabad in Afghanistan. Twenty years after their regime was topped by U.S. and allied forces they are back in power
Taliban fighters stand guard in a vehicle along the roadside in Kabul on August 16, 2021, after a stunningly swift end to Afghanistan’s 20-year war, as thousands of people mobbed the city’s airport trying to flee the group’s feared hardline brand of Islamist rule
Osama bin Laden plotted the 9/11 terror attacks from Afghan soil, triggering the 2001 invasion by U.S. troops.
He was finally hunted down and killed by Navy Seals in neighboring Pakistan 10 years later.
Disrupting his network in Afghanistan has been a key part of the U.S. and NATO mission.
But with the Taliban retaking power, analysts are assessing what it means for Al Qaeda and the threat it poses to the West.
A peace deal signed by the Trump administration in Doha, the capital of Qatar, last year required the Taliban to stop giving safe haven terrorist groups.
Yet, the Taliban’s upper echelons are filled with figures who have fought alongside Al Qaeda or hosted their operatives. For example, Sirajuddin Haqqani, one of the Taliban’s deputy leaders and the son of a close friend to Bin Laden, is known to be a key conduit to the terror group.
As the Taliban advanced rapidly across Afghanistan, undoing billions of dollars of work that was meant to build a new democracy, officials have repeatedly seized on the eradication of Al Qaeda in the country as justification for leaving.
‘We went to Afghanistan almost 20 years ago with clear goals: get those who attacked us on September 11th, 2001, and make sure Al Qaeda could not use Afghanistan as a base from which to attack us again,’ said Biden on Monday, after being forced to leave Camp David to address the crisis.
‘We did that. We severely degraded Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.’
Biden is seen talking to his national security team from Camp David at the weekend. Officials insist they will hold the Taliban to the terms of a peace deal signed in Doha last year, when they promised not to host terrorist groups
The top ranks of the Taliban include the likes of Sirajuddin Haqqani, who leads the Haqqani network, and who is believed to have close ties with Al Qaeda. This rare photograph is taken from an FBI most wanted poster
Other officials say they intent on holding the Taliban to the Doha deal.
‘We have a proven ability to fight terrorism effectively without having a large military footprint on the ground – and we will hold the Taliban accountable to not allowing Al Qaeda to have a safe haven in Afghanistan,’ National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told ABC’s Good Morning America.
Terrorism experts scoff at the idea that the Taliban is no longer operating with Al Qaeda or that the terrorist group has been defeated.
‘The recent narrative of a degraded or defeated or decimated group – pick your D word, they’ve used – is delusional,’ said Bill Roggio, editor of the Long War Journal which tracks Al Qaeda activity in the region.
‘They’ve been there, operating alongside the Taliban the whole time. This narrative has persisted because the only way to pursue a US exit out of Afghanistan was to downgrade Al Qaeda’s presence.’
He said Pentagon assessments had long been works of fiction, putting the Al Qaeda presence at about 50-100 fighters – despite reporting that 40-80 operatives were being killed each year.
‘The intelligence services are clueless or lying,’ he said.
Roggio added that the chaotic departure of diplomats, contractors and troops – not to mention Afghans who had worked for the U.S. – would severely erode Washington’s ability to gather intelligence on Al Qaeda.
The Pentagon declined to comment on the report and instead directed inquiries to the White House and to the Pentagon Office of the Inspector General.
Taliban fighters ride a newly acquired police pickup truck outside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul after their whirlwind advance across the country
Hundreds of people gather outside the international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021, as they try to flee the Taliban takeover
The White House did not immediately respond and a spokesman for the Pentagon Office of the Inspector General said it had nothing to add to the report.
A recent United Nations report said Al Qaeda’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was ‘living but ailing in Afghanistan.’
‘Al Qaeda is present in at least 15 Afghan provinces, primarily in the eastern, southern and south-eastern regions,’ it said. ‘Its weekly Thabat newsletter reports on its operations inside Afghanistan.’
And an offshoot, Al Qaeda in the Indian subcontinent operates under Taliban protection from Kandahar, Helmand and Nimruz Provinces.
In the aftermath of the Taliban takeover, Nathan Sales, former US ambassador-at-large, said Al Qaeda was one of the big winners.
‘The Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan is the best news Al Qaeda has had in decades,’ he wrote in a briefing paper for the Atlantic Council.
‘With the Taliban back in charge of the country, it is virtually certain that al-Qaeda will reestablish a safe haven in Afghanistan and use it to plot attacks on the United States.’
The Biden administration blame game begins: Chaos as the White House, Pentagon and State Department all look to blame each other for the debacle in Afghanistan
U.S. officials are engaged in cross-agency recriminations as they grapple with failures of intelligence, execution, and imagination that preceded the sudden collapse of Kabul and the chaotic evacuation underway.
Biden, in his speech to the nation on Monday, pointed to the May 1, 2021 U.S. withdrawal deadline that former President Donald Trump‘s administration negotiated with the Taliban – as well as the failure of U.S. trained Afghan forces to fight.
‘Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country. The Afghan military collapsed, sometimes without trying to fight,’ Biden said. ‘If anything, the developments of the past week reinforced that ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan now was the right decision.’
Biden administration officials are pointing fingers at various agencies who failed to properly plan for or anticipate the sudden Taliban takeover of Kabul
He stood by the determination to pull out as the ‘right decision.’
Diplomats have said they were relying on intelligence assessments that the collapse of Kabul was less than imminent – although the Intelligence Community briefed lawmakers in July about the ‘accelerating’ pace of Taliban gains.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said at a Pentagon press conference late last month, even amid Taliban gains across provinces: ‘And there is a range of possible outcomes in Afghanistan. … A negative outcome – a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan – is not a foregone conclusion.’
That estimation of the Afghan government’s strength also influenced the White House position, as President Biden publicly announced a total withdrawal of U.S. forces by Sept. 11th, then moved up the date by weeks.
A White House official singled out Milley’s public assessment, calling it ‘utter bunk,’ CNN reported.
‘We have noted the troubling trend lines in Afghanistan for some time, with the Taliban at its strongest, militarily, since 2001. Strategically, a rapid Taliban takeover was always a possibility,’ said a senior intelligence official Sunday.
Defense officials have said they prepared for worst-case scenarios, and have expressed frustration that State Department officials didn’t speed evacuation actions.
Pentagon spokesman Adm. John Kirby, a former State Department spokesman under President Obama, said the administration did plan for Taliban gains.
He spoke to CNN Tuesday about the chaotic departure flights from Hamid Karzai airport that reportedly left eight people dead.
‘Could we have predicted every single scenario and every single breach around the perimeter of the airport with only a couple of thousand troops on the ground?’ Kirby said. ‘Plans are terrific and we take them seriously, but they are not and never have been perfectly predictive.’
Former Donald Trump national security advisor John Bolton told the network Tuesday that both Trump and Biden made the strategic mistake of withdrawing from the 20-year war.
This image distributed Courtesy of the US Air Force shows the inside of Reach 871, a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III flown from Kabul to Qatar on August 15, 2021
Pentagon assessments of the durability of Afghan national forces are also coming under scrutiny. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the military had planned for contingencies involving a Taliban takeover
‘It’s been a catastrophe and I’m afraid it’s going to get worse. I think Biden does bear primary responsibility for that although you see now fingers being pointed saying Trump didn’t leave us with any plans. We’ll have to see how that shakes out,’ he said.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken testified in June that he didn’t expect an ‘immediate deterioration in the situation’ as the U.S. undertook its drawdown.
“Whatever happens in Afghanistan, if there is a significant deterioration in security — that could well happen, we have discussed this before — I don’t think it’s going to be something that happens from a Friday to a Monday,’ he said – although what ultimately unfolded was a sudden Taliban takeover in a matter of days.
A foreign policy ally said Biden’s advisors would never have let him take off for Camp David last Friday, as the president did, had they anticipated the sudden collapse, the Washington Post reported.
