Western Morning News (Saturday)
Scramble to evacuate as Taliban surge
RAPID Taliban conquests across Afghanistan have prompted the US, the UK and other countries around the world to pull official staff out of the country.
Washington is rushing 3,000 fresh troops to Kabul airport to help with a partial evacuation of the US embassy in the capital and to be on standby and speed airlifts for Afghans who worked with the American military.
The State Department said the embassy would continue functioning, but the decision to bring in thousands of additional troops is a sign of waning confidence in the Afghan government’s ability to hold off the Taliban surge.
Those advances, and the partial embassy evacuation, increasingly isolate the nation’s capital, home to millions of Afghans.
“This is not abandonment. This is not an evacuation. This is not a wholesale withdrawal,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said. “What this is is a reduction in the size of our civilian footprint.”
President Joe Biden, who has remained adamant about ending the US mission in Afghanistan at the end of this month, gave the order for the additional temporary troops on Thursday after conferring with
national security officials. Washington also warned Taliban leaders directly that the US would respond if the Taliban attacked Americans during the temporary US military deployments.
The UK’s Ministry of Defence will send about 600 troops to Afghanistan on a short-term basis to help British nationals leave the country.
Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg and 30 national ambassadors are meeting in Brussels, according to an official.
“Allies are constantly consulting on the situation in Afghanistan,” the official said, adding that Mr Stoltenberg was “in regular contact with allies and the Afghan authorities”.
“Nato is monitoring the security situation very closely. We continue to co-ordinate with the Afghan authorities and the rest of the international community,” the official said.
He added that the organisation continued to have a “diplomatic presence in Kabul. As the security of our personnel is paramount, we will not go into any operational details”.
Canadian special forces will deploy to Afghanistan to help the country’s staff leave Kabul, a source told the Associated Press, without specifying how many.
Australia is working urgently to evacuate the last Afghans who helped its troops and diplomats, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said yesterday.
Australia shut its Kabul embassy in May and withdrew the last of its troops in June as US and Nato forces pulled out of the Afghan conflict after 20 years.
Mr Morrison said that since April Australia has resettled 400 Afghans and their families who would be in danger from the Taliban.
Danish broadcaster TV2 quoted foreign minister Jeppe Kofod as saying that Denmark’s staff at the embassy in Kabul were being evacuated. And Germany’s foreign minister says his country is reducing its embassy staff in the capital to “the operationally necessary, absolute minimum”.
Last night, PM Boris Johnson called an emergency Cobra meeting to discuss the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. Defence Secretary Ben Wallace earlier said he feared multinational terror network al Qaida, the group behind atrocities such as the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre in New York, would “probably come back” as Afghanistan destabilised once again.
Taliban insurgents are now estimated to hold more than two-thirds of Afghanistan and continue to press their offensive, having taken the country’s second and third largest cities, Kandahar and Herat, as part of a week-long blitz. Afghan officials said yesterday that the Taliban had captured Lashkar Gah, the capital of the southern Helmand province, giving them a further scalp as US and UK forces pare back their presence in time for withdrawal on September 11.