Last Team Out of Kabul: Surrounded by the Taliban

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citation needed] Just five days before the Taliban reached Kabul, another estimate suggested the capital would last "30 to 90 days",. Since March, we reached out 19 times to Americans in Afghanistan, with multiple warnings and offers to help them leave Afghanistan — all the way back as far as March. Afghan National Reconciliation Council chairman Abdullah Abdullah denounced Ghani's fleeing of the country, stating that "The former president of Afghanistan left Afghanistan, leaving the country in this difficult situation. A US drone strike aimed at presumed Islamic State members suspected of planning a suicide bombings at the Kabul airport killed a family of 10 civilians in an adjacent car, including 7 children and an employee of a US aid organization.

Secretary of State Blinken is leading the continued diplomatic efforts to ensure a safe passage for any American, Afghan partner, or foreign national who wants to leave Afghanistan. Instead, his national security advisor and chief of presidential security pressured him to escape the city by plane and fly to Khost, still within the country.British parliamentary Foreign Affairs Select Committee chairman Tom Tugendhat stated that the collapse was "the biggest single policy disaster since Suez". After 20 years of war in Afghanistan, I refused to send another generation of America’s sons and daughters to fight a war that should have ended long ago. For now, I urge all Americans to join me in grateful prayer for our troops and diplomats and intelligence officers who carried out this mission of mercy in Kabul and at tremendous risk with such unparalleled results: an airma- — an airlift that evacuated tens of thousands to a network of volunteers and veterans who helped identifies [identify] those needing evacuation, guide them to the airport, and provided them for their support along the way. American Sniper meets Make Your Bed in these life lessons from decorated United States service members and New York Times bestselling authors Robert O’Neill and Dakota Meyer—an in-depth, fearless, and ultimately redemptive account of what it takes to survive and thrive on battlefields from Afghanistan and Iraq to our daily lives, and how the perils of war help us hold onto our humanity. The former president is also against the interventionist policy of his country, describing it as a "horrible decision" to have intervened in the Middle East and that it has not improved the situation in the last 20 years.

Other government, military or anti-Taliban officials also fled to India, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.In July 2021, the US intelligence community concluded that the government of Afghanistan would collapse between six and 12 months after the departure of American troops. American retaliation followed soon and three days later, out of fear of a bloody repetition, the US wrongfully targeted a white car with a drone strike, killing 10 civilians including seven children.

A month before the Taliban arrived in Kabul, American president Joe Biden had rejected the comparison, stating that "the Taliban is not the North Vietnamese Army. Marie Colvin, described as "the greatest war correspondent of her generation", was killed in a rocket attack in February 2012 while reporting on the desperate suffering of civilians inside Syria's besieged Homs.

During the months after the fall of Kabul, there have been some protests against Taliban decision-making. When the SEALs send their elite, they send SEAL Team Six—a secret unit made up of the finest soldiers in the country, if not the world. Their first attempt to reach the airport ran into a firefight between Afghan government forces and the Taliban and had to be aborted to ensure the safety of their Japanese clients. The Afghans who were permitted to leave were those with proper credentials; [86] many held Special Immigrant Visas or other US visas.

The airlift was the largest non-combatant evacuation mission in US military history, with US military personnel taking 79,000 civilians through the airport and out of Afghanistan over the 18-day mission.

One of the first to come out of the famed Underwater Demolition Team 21, he was an initial member—a "plank owner"—of America's deadliest and most elite fighting force, the U. The fighters began raising their flag throughout the city and pressuring police to hand over their weaponry. After the fall of Kabul and the Islamic Republic, a surge in refugees trying to escape from the Taliban was to be expected.