We watch, powerless, as Afghans’ despair grows.

All I can do is rant in place.

Rather like imperiled Afghans have been advised by Canadian authorities to shelter-in-place.

How’s that for useless guidance?

No more evacuation flights, not a prayer that those who have most to fear from the Taliban — the terrorists speak from both sides of their mouth, when not pulling lame assurances of amnesty out of their arse — will get out of Afghanistan either before American forces depart the Kabul airport by an arbitrary and self-imposed Aug. 31 deadline or afterward.

Unless the frantic diaspora manages to make its way across overland border routes into Pakistan.

Which is not a place where anti-Taliban civilians can expect kindness, not from a government that whelped the militants through its powerful intelligence service.

Foreign Affairs Minister, Marc Garneau, on Friday, urged those who are trapped, “Don’t lose hope!”

Easy enough for us to say, from the other side of the planet, while thousands upon thousands of desperate Afghans find egress blocked, faced with Taliban checkpoints, many torn between identifying themselves as blessed with exit documents and keeping that information secret … even as they brace themselves for more suicide bombings, more bloodshed orchestrated by ultra-terrorist factions, more dead children in the arms of wailing parents.

“This is heart-wrenching, given the security situation on the ground,” Garneau continued at the press conference. “Let me be clear: We will not stop looking for other paths to bring these people home.”

Presumably he meant Canadian citizens and permanent residents still stuck in Afghanistan because “home” is a concept that doesn’t apply to fleeing Afghans.

They’re terrified of remaining in their own homes, particularly those who worked as interpreters during Canada’s 13-year combat deployment, plus hundreds upon hundreds more who continued to serve as crucial civilian allies in the training missions that extended Canadian involvement.

The horrendous suicide bombing attack outside Hamid Karzai International Airport on Thursday showed how fraught with danger the coalition airlift is, precisely as President Joe Biden had warned, and why he won’t keep American troops there a minute longer than planned.

At least 13 U.S. troops, three Britons, one a teenager, and 160 Afghans were killed in the assault by someone — it was a single person, not two bombers as originally reported — chose to meet his maker in a flash of mayhem, for which ISIS-K has claimed responsibility.

Somehow that individual, wearing a suicide vest, would have had to be waived through both a Taliban and a British vetting checkpoint before coming face to face with U.S. Marines and blowing himself to kingdom come.

The calamity was a deep humiliation for America — humiliation piled upon humiliation — and a disastrous security failure. Thirteen men lost their lives, not for their country, not just for their nationals, but for Afghans, who always pay the greatest price.

In a 24-hour period ending at 3 a.m. Friday, 12,500 people were evacuated on 35 U.S. military and 54 coalition flights. Since Aug. 14, the U.S. has evacuated and facilitated the evacuation of about 105,000.

Canada has evacuated 3,700. What has Canada done? It pulled up stakes militarily on Thursday after the last Canadian-arranged mercy flight left Kabul; shuttered its embassy 11 days before that, which ground to a stall efforts to process Afghans who’d applied for exit visas, bewildered by the unnecessary red tape only latterly cut to the bone; and waited, unforgivably, for months to extract Afghans — this, even as Canadian Forces commanders, past and present, were scrambling to rescue former allies unilaterally, while Ottawa scarcely raised a finger to help.

Yes, nobody anticipated the Taliban would overrun the country so swiftly. But everybody could see it coming.

There was no reason to create chaos out of urgency, especially by Washington, but by Canada too.

Immigration Minister Mario Mendicino revealed Friday that the Canadian government had secured 500 seats on a U.S. flight for refugees the day previously. Which is 500 Afghans removed from the maelstrom at the airport, and that’s grand. But also the end of the air bridge line for Canada and the many who believed, wrongly, that they would be spirited away from the hell they’re living. And dying.

It is unclear if that last flight out was on a U.S. military aircraft or a civilian plane.

“We will continue to work with the United States and others to establish air bridges wherever we can, even beyond the anticipated withdrawal of the coalition on Aug. 31,” declared Mendicino, pointing out that staff at embassies and consulates in regional countries are working around the clock to keep the bucket brigade moving.

“We will be ready in all of the countries they may possibly come to, to receive them at our consulates and embassies,” Garneau said. “So this is something that will occur in the coming weeks and months, but, at the moment, we’re asking people to stay put, because there are a lot of things going on at the moment and we’ll keep in constant contact with them.”

Except the Afghan friends and colleagues I spoke with on Friday had not received any updates from Canadian officials and haven’t been able to get through on the hotline.

So they hunker down in safe houses, those who weren’t able to reach the airport, waiting forlornly for a helping hand that was extended only so far, desperate for any bit of information.

“I could not get out of Kabul,” my longtime fixer said in the wee hours Friday. “Still, there is a hope. The American University of Afghanistan decided to take all its students and Alumni out. We have a short time and they are working to organize transportation and flight. I am not sure if they can make it.”

More alarming are the calls to cellphones that have gone unanswered since the suicide bombing. Are they alive? Are they hurt? Are they sheltering in place?

Oh, let us not forget that Canada’s efforts to accelerate evacuations includes a “temporary public policy” measure to waive fees for immigration documents for Afghans.

For the love of God, one might have assumed that had been implemented weeks ago.

It’s infuriating to realize that we’ve actually been charging Afghan evacuees for the privilege.

As of Friday, the United Kingdom said there was only one more British evacuation flight left and, by Saturday, their crisis contribution to the air bridge would be over. The last Dutch evacuation flight left Kabul on Thursday. The French have rolled up operations, as have the Germans, the Danes — that’s nearly all the 13 participating nations, leaving only the Americans and a small Turkish force, although there are no more flights to Turkey.

Only Turkey and the United Arab Emirates were operating civilian service to Kabul after the central government collapsed. The Taliban have asked Turkey for technical help to operate the airport after Tuesday’s deadline for all foreign troops to pull out, an ultimatum they insisted applied equal to Turkish troops. Reuters reported Friday that Turkey will not assume that burden unless the Taliban agree to a Turkish security presence, which means soldiers.

It’s stunning to watch all this pandemonium unfold in 2021 — it’s as if we’ve been plunged back into Dunkirk in 1940 — held to heel by a pack of ignorant, barbarian terrorists. (They must have had logistical support from outside elements that enabled their end to end sacking of Afghanistan.)

The greatest powers on Earth cannot protect one airfield, cannot twist Taliban arms to allow for transit convoys, cannot quell the crisis. Such impotence is maddening and surely most of all to the coalition military forces that fought and died in Afghanistan.

The Taliban have no more capacity to control such a vast country, with its multiple ethnic and religious factions, its tribal divisions, its warlords, than did the coalition.

But they don’t have formal rules of engagement either, so they can terrorize and slaughter and confine at will. They broke Afghanistan. They can’t fix it.