US lowers flag at Kabul embassy as Taliban seize power

KABUL, Aug 16, 2021, SCMP. The Taliban were in control of Afghanistan on Monday after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country and conceded the insurgents had won the 20-year war. The United States lowered the flag on its embassy in Kabul and has relocated almost all staff to the airport, where US forces were taking over air traffic control, US officials said, according to the South China Morning Post.

“We are completing a series of steps to secure the Hamid Karzai International Airport to enable the safe departure of US and allied personnel from Afghanistan via civilian and military flights,” the Pentagon and State Department said in a joint statement on Sunday.

“Almost all” personnel from the embassy have relocated to the airport including the acting ambassador, Ross Wilson, who remains in touch with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, a State Department spokesperson said.

“The American flag has been lowered from the US embassy compound and is now securely located with embassy staff,” the spokesperson said.

The shuttering of the US embassy, which was one of the largest in the world, comes nearly 20 years after the United States returned following the defeat of the Taliban regime (Taliban is banned in Russia).

With stunning speed, the Taliban retook the country in little more than a week after President Joe Biden began the final withdrawal of troops, closing America’s longest war.

President Ghani fled the country on Sunday as the Islamist militants entered the city, saying he wanted to avoid bloodshed.

“The Taliban have won with the judgement of their swords and guns, and are now responsible for the honour, property and self-preservation of their countrymen,” Ghani said in a statement posted to Facebook, his first since fleeing.

European nations, including France, Germany and the Netherlands, also said they were working to get citizens as well as some Afghan employees out of the country.

The Chinese embassy in Kabul signalled on Sunday that it had been contact with the Taliban and would be staying put. Russia said it saw no need to evacuate its embassy for the time being. Turkey said its embassy would continue operations.

The United States has sent 6,000 troops to the airport to fly out embassy personnel as well as Afghans who assisted the United States as interpreters or in other support roles and now fear retribution.

Their mission will be “focused solely on facilitating these efforts and will be taking over air traffic control,” the joint statement said.

On Monday “and over the coming days, we will be transferring out of the country thousands of American citizens who have been resident in Afghanistan, as well as locally employed staff of the US mission in Kabul and their families and other particularly vulnerable Afghan nationals,” it continued.

The Taliban declared the war in Afghanistan was over.

“Today is a great day for the Afghan people and the mujahideen. They have witnessed the fruits of their efforts and their sacrifices for 20 years,” Mohammad Naeem, the spokesman for the Taliban’s political office, told Al Jazeera TV.

“Thanks to God, the war is over in the country.”

Naeem said the type and form of the new regime in Afghanistan would be made clear soon, adding the Taliban did not want to live in isolation and calling for peaceful international relations.

Al Jazeera earlier showed footage of what it said were Taliban commanders in the presidential palace with dozens of armed fighters.

At Kabul airport, hundreds of Afghans waited for flights, some dragging luggage across runways in the dark, while women and children slept near security corridors.

Witnesses on social media have complained about disruptions to commercial flights as priority was given to the US airlifts out of Kabul.

Even as CH-47 helicopters shuttled American diplomats to the airport, and facing criticism at home over the administration’s handling of the withdrawal, Blinken rejected comparisons to the 1975 fall of Saigon.

“This is being done in a very deliberate way, it’s being done in an orderly way,” Blinken insisted on ABC’s This Week.

In a statement on Sunday, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell blamed Biden for what he called a “shameful failure of American leadership”.

“Terrorists and major competitors like China are watching the embarrassment of a superpower laid low,” McConnell said.

Naeem said the Taliban would adopt a policy of non-interference in others’ affairs in return for non-interference in Afghanistan.

“We do not think that foreign forces will repeat their failed experience in Afghanistan once again.”

John Kirby, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said the evacuation was following plans developed and rehearsed months ago.

“One of the reasons we have been able to respond as quickly as we have these past few days is because we were ready for this contingency,” Kirby said.

To many, however, the evacuations, and last-ditch rescue attempts by Americans and other foreigners trying to save Afghan allies, appeared far from orderly.

An Italian journalist, Francesca Mannocchi, posted a video of an Italian helicopter carrying her to the airport, an armed soldier standing guard at a window. Mannochi described watching columns of smoke rising from Kabul as she flew. Some were from fires that workers at the US embassy and others were using to keep sensitive material from falling in Taliban hands.

She said Afghans stoned an Italian convoy. She captioned her brief video: “Kabul airport. Evacuation. Game Over”.

US C-17 transport planes were due to bring thousands of fresh American troops to the airport, then fly out again with evacuating US embassy staffers. The Pentagon was sending an additional 1,000 troops, bringing the total number to about 6,000, a US defence official said on Sunday.

The Pentagon intends to have enough aircraft to fly out as many as 5,000 civilians a day, both Americans and the Afghan translators and others who worked with the US during the war.

But tens of thousands of Afghans who have worked with US and other Nato forces are seeking to flee with family members. And it was by no means clear how long Kabul’s deteriorating security would allow any evacuations to continue.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres urged the Taliban and all parties to “exercise restraint” and said the rights of women and girls, who suffered under the previous Taliban regime, must be protected.
The UN also said the Security Council would meet over Afghanistan on Monday.

Agence France-Presse, Associated Press, Reuters