The Foreign Service Journal, October 2021

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2021 17 TALKING POINTS U.S.AIRFORCE/MASTERSGT.DONALDR.ALLEN Evacuation Amid Chaos as Taliban Takes Control O n Aug. 15, the U.S. flag was taken down and U.S. Embassy Kabul shuttered after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled and his government col- lapsed as the Taliban moved into the city, and a chaotic evacuation of Ameri- cans and Afghan allies gained new momentum. In fighting from early July through mid-August the Taliban rapidly took control of most of the country, culmi- nating in the fall of Kabul. Remaining U.S. embassy staff, including the ambassador, relocated to the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, where several thousand U.S. troops were brought back to estab- lish a perimeter to allow continued evacuation processing and flights out for Americans and international and Afghan allies. The airport compound, with check- points toward entrances controlled by the Taliban, was besieged for weeks by tens of thousands of Afghans and other country nationals desperately seeking to leave the country, including inter- preters and others who worked with Western governments and agencies and fear reprisals. Efforts to get an extension from the Taliban on the Aug. 31 deadline for evacuation set by President Biden in April—including CIA Director Williams Burns’ Aug. 23 meeting with Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar in Kabul— proved fruitless. On Aug. 26, a suicide bombing claimed by a branch of ISIS called Islamic State Khorasan killed 13 U.S. troops and more than 170 Afghans, and wounded hundreds more. The Biden administration came under fire over the rapid collapse of Afghan defense forces, the disorderly departure and the large number of U.S. citizens and Afghan allies—at risk from the Taliban—left behind. “Four presidents share responsibil- ity for the missteps in Afghanistan that accumulated over two decades. But only President Joe Biden will be the face of the war’s chaotic, violent conclusion,” the Associated Press wrote in an Aug. 16 news analysis. Biden, addressing the American people on Aug. 16, defended his pos i- tion: “Here’s what I believe to my core: It is wrong to order American troops to step up when Afghanistan’s own armed forces would not. How many more generations of America’s daughters and sons would you have me send to fight Afghanistan’s civil war? I will not repeat the mistakes we made in the past.” There is plenty of blame to go around. There is little doubt that “Who lost Afghanistan?” will be the subject of debate in the coming months and years. The Wall Street Journal reported on Aug. 19 that a July 13 dissent cable— signed by 23 U.S. Embassy Kabul staff- The U.S. Air Force loads passengers aboard a C-17 Globemaster III in support of the Afghanistan evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Kabul, Aug. 24. ers—warned that a pullout could lead to rapid territorial gains of the Taliban and the collapse of the Afghan army, and offered recommendations to speed up an evacuation. As the U.S. was warning of new ter- rorist threats outside the airport ahead of the Aug. 31 deadline, urging people to stay away, it was also beginning to send military and civilian staff out. Some two dozen other countries had also evacuated their own nation- als, as well as Afghans who had assisted in their work. The State Department reported Aug. 29 that it had successfully evacuated “the majority” of its local staff and their immediate families. The United States evacuated more than 123,000 people out of Afghanistan in recent weeks. Approximately 6,000 of them were U.S. citizens. More than 23,000 Afghans deemed to be “at risk” have been relocated to the United States, State Department spokes- man Ned Price told reporters on Sept. 1. “Everybody who lived it is haunted by the choices we had to make and by the people we were not able to help,”