An Afghanistan update

Guards at the gate at the Bagram air base

Can they defend it from the Taliban?

Do their guns even have more than a 

couple rounds of ammunition?

News reports of the US withdrawal and its impact continue to be nearly all negative. By now, it is clear that the US presence will be washed away as the Taliban comes in and replaces the inept kleptocratic government in place now. The open question is whether there will be a major civil war or the Taliban will just take over with most of the bloodshed limited to Afghan military resistance and US collaborators. 

The one positive development is an increase in US government concern for getting collaborators out of the country before the US withdrawal is complete. How that will play out is unclear. There isn't much time left for that to happen, maybe about two weeks is about all that's left before the US is completely gone.

The New York Times reports on the final US withdrawal from the Bagram air base.

American troops and their Western allies have departed the U.S. military base that coordinated the sprawling war in Afghanistan, officials said on Friday, effectively ending major U.S. military operations in the country after nearly two decades.

The American exit was completed quickly enough that some looters managed to get into the base before being arrested, Afghan officials said.

The fear that Kabul could fall to the Taliban relatively soon haunted the administration’s debate over the decision to pull out of the country. But Mr. Biden suggested that even though the United States still retained the ability to conduct airstrikes if things went bad, no reversal of the withdrawal was on the table.

“We have worked out an over-the-horizon capacity,” he said, talking about air assets based in other places, “but the Afghans are going to have to do it themselves with the air force they have.”  

Some U.S. intelligence estimates predict that the Afghan government could fall to its rivals, the Taliban, in from six months to two years after the Americans complete their withdrawal. The Taliban are inching closer to Kabul after having taken about a quarter of the country’s districts in the past two months.

As discussed before, the US military assessment is that  the Afghan air force will completely cease to be operational within a few weeks of the US departure. It is 100% reliant on US military and civilian personnel to keep its aircraft operational. 

It's not clear what Biden is talking about. Maybe it's just lies. If it is, Biden hurts himself and the opposition to the growing power of already powerful Republican corruption and fascism. That is a needlessly self-inflicted wound from the Democratic circular firing squad that's now in place and idiotically blazing away at itself.

Another NYT article, As Afghan Forces Crumble, an Air of Unreality Grips the Capital, continues in about the same vein.

With his military crumbling, President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan fired a crucial part of his command structure and brought in a new one. He created a nebulous “supreme state council,” announced months ago, that has hardly met. And as districts fall to the Taliban across the country, he has installed a giant picture of himself outside the airport’s domestic terminal.

As the last troops and equipment trickle out of Afghanistan, an atmosphere of unreality has settled over the government and Kabul, the capital. 

Americans have not been a visible presence in the city for years, so the U.S. departure has not affected surface normality: Markets bustle and streets are jammed with homeward-bound civil servants by midafternoon. At night, the corner bakeries continue to be illuminated by a single bulb as vendors sell late into the evening.

But beneath the surface there is unease as the Taliban creep steadily toward Kabul.

“There’s no hope for the future,” said Zubair Ahmad, 23, who runs a grocery store on one of the Khair Khana neighborhood’s main boulevards. “Afghans are leaving the country. I don’t know whether I am going to be safe 10 minutes from now.”

The security blanket that the United States provided for two decades haunts the Afghan government’s actions, inactions and policies, fostering an atrophying of any proactive planning, in the view of some analysts. If there is a plan to counter the Taliban advance, it is not evident as the government’s hold on the countryside shrinks.  

“The environment is extremely tense,” said Omar Zakhilwal, a former finance minister, noting what he called an atmosphere of “semi-panic” in the government.

“It’s beyond a crisis,” he said, adding: “The mismanagement has led us to where we are today.”

Of course there is no plan to counter the Taliban. The Afghan government is an incompetent kleptocracy. Its only competence was looting the country. This mess feels awfully familiar. Feels just like Vietnam. That sad reality comes despite politician, e.g., George Bush, promises early on that Afghanistan would be short and nothing like Vietnam. That was just more empty rhetoric and/or lies from ignorant, arrogant, incompetent self-deluded politicians. 

One can only feel sorry for Afghan people who don't want the Taliban back and fear for those who tried to help us.