[WATCH] Biden: “I stand squarely by my decision after 20 years” of Afghan support, US withdraws

  • The US spent more than $83 billion in weapons, equipment and training, yet districts fell, so did military air bases in Afghanistan.

Analysts blame Trump’s administration for Afghan fall. Both the UK and Biden’s US both withdrew support for fallen Afghan, with Talibans making away with arms ammunition.

At the airport in Herat, multiple videos show that the Taliban managed to seize and operate one of the Afghan Air Force’s Soviet-era Mi-17 helicopters. It is unclear whether the insurgents knew how to fly the helicopters or were relying on pilots who switched sides.

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In the days leading up to the fall of Afghanistan’s capital, the Taliban seized many well-known provincial capitals.

In Herat, Taliban insurgents driving police vehicles they captured surrounded the entrance to the citadel, the historic heart of Afghanistan’s third-largest city.

The insurgents’ arrival in Kabul, like elsewhere, seemingly came without a fight.

Videos showed fighters on trucks and motorcycles fanning out through the city, sometimes to cheers and applause.

They eventually reached the presidential palace, abandoned by President Ashraf Ghani, who fled earlier in the day. An Al Jazeera correspondent accompanied fighters into the palace for a rambling live broadcast.

Taliban commanders said they were now in charge of the capital’s security and desired no conflict with the United States.

American military transport helicopters spent Sunday criss-crossing the sky over Kabul, ferrying personnel from the embassy and other U.S. citizens to Hamid Karzai International Airport, which quickly became the de facto base of operations for many Western governments.

Anthony Mejia, an American helicopter maintenance contractor, filmed his own nighttime evacuation and posted it on Instagram.

US officials said that all of the embassy’s roughly 4,000 staffers had made it to the airport by Monday morning in Kabul. But it was unclear what would happen to the thousands of Afghans who had worked for the U.S. government and were applying for special visas to live in the United States.

At the airport, videos showed Afghans lining up for flights out of the country.

“Every 15 minutes, a US plane flies and a second lands,” a man filming one video said. “There is chaos while people are entering the plane ”

But amid these military evacuations, thousands of Afghan civilians flooded Kabul’s airport in a desperate effort to flee the country on Sunday and Monday. At multiple points gunfire was heard, but it’s not clear who was responsible.

 

Tolu Afolayan

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Tolu Afolayan

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