the former President Trump I condemned his successor’s handling of the crisis Afghanistan On Friday, as the Taliban continued their brisk pace and US personnel prepared to destroy documents and evacuate the embassy in Kabul.
‘Sad crisis in Afghanistan, completely open and broken border, Crime At record levels, oil prices are going through the roof, inflation is rising, and the whole world has taken advantage of it—do you remember me yet?’ He said in a brief emailed statement.
His administration negotiated with the Taliban last year on the terms of the US withdrawal.
Now the Taliban’s pace of progress has rattled officials, three weeks before President Biden’s August 31 deadline to bring all troops home.
Biden has said repeatedly that he has no regrets about moving ahead on the timetable.
But on Friday, rebels captured four other provincial capitals in southern Afghanistan as they surrounded the capital, Kabul.
The result is a growing humanitarian emergency and frantic efforts to evacuate Western embassies.
“It’s normal procedure to destroy anything sensitive before exiting, but it suggests that things go far beyond what the State Department says,” said a former diplomat in contact with embassy staff.
Critics say it is President Biden’s Saigon moment – drawing comparisons with the chaotic, abusive evacuation of the Saigon embassy in 1975 – and even allies have expressed anger at the way the US has handled the withdrawal.
The UK has already closed its embassy and a skeleton worker is working from a secret location, mostly trying to help its expatriate community leave.
The State Department envoy for talks in Doha, Qatar, has asked the Taliban to leave the US embassy if their fighters capture the Afghan capital, Kabul.
The pink area represents Taliban control while the green area represents government-held territory.
Taliban fighters stand guard inside the city of Ghazni, southwest of Kabul, Afghanistan, on Friday, as they maintain the rapid pace of their progress through the country
Afghan fighters drive a vehicle captured from the Afghan National Army through the streets of Kandahar after capturing the key southern city on Friday. The Taliban complete their annihilation in the south of the country, taking four more provincial capitals in a lightning strike
NATO envoys were also meeting to discuss the rapidly deteriorating security situation and coordinate measures to reduce embassy staff in Kabul, according to Reuters.
It comes as 3000 US troops were about to arrive at the city’s Hamid Karzai International Airport.
Officials took pains to avoid describing the operation as an evacuation as they announced the State Department would reduce its civilian footprint of 4,000 people to a ‘basic diplomatic presence’.
“Our embassy is open and our diplomatic mission will remain open,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said on Thursday.
The move raised new questions about whether Biden was right to announce a full withdrawal, 20 years after the US military and allies pushed the Taliban out of Kabul.
Officials insist they always had contingency plans in place to help American workers leave safely but critics said the result was chaos.
Former President Trump, whose administration negotiated a withdrawal deal with the Taliban last year, said it was now a ‘tragic mess’.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said: ‘The latest news of further collapse of our embassy and the hasty deployment of military forces sound like preparations for the fall of Kabul.
‘President Biden’s decisions lead us to an even worse sequel to the humiliating fall of Saigon in 1975.’
Biden has defended his decision to complete the withdrawal by the end of August, even as the Taliban continue their rapid advance through Afghanistan. On Thursday, he approved the decision to send back 3000 soldiers to avoid the exit of civilian workers.
The Taliban occupy two-thirds of Afghanistan’s districts and were in control of 17 provincial capitals as of Friday, allowing them to lock down in Kabul.
A Taliban fighter stands to protect surrendered Afghan security members in the city of Ghazni, southwest of Kabul on Friday
A Taliban fighter holds a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) by the side of a road in Herat, Afghanistan’s third-largest city, after the US announced Friday it was sending 3,000 troops back to Afghanistan.
Biden was asked by a reporter last month if he saw parallels between the Afghan withdrawal and what happened in Vietnam, when the evacuees had to board helicopters landing on the roof of the embassy.
The president said ‘nothing’, adding that the Taliban was not the same as the North Vietnamese army.
‘There will never be a situation where you see people being lifted from the roof of an embassy to the United States of America from Afghanistan. It is not comparable at all.’
But Rep. Mike Rogers, ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, said the risk had increased since then.
“Weeks ago, President Biden promised the American people that we would not have a Saigon moment in Afghanistan,” he said. ‘Now, we are watching President Biden’s Saigon moment unfold before us.
The turmoil in Afghanistan is no surprise to anyone. Unfortunately, I believe the worst is yet to come.’
It emerged a day earlier that Biden’s envoy had asked the Taliban to leave the US embassy if their forces took over Kabul to halt peace talks in Doha, Qatar.
The pace of Taliban progress since Biden announced he was withdrawing all US troops has taken officials by surprise, as district after district and city after city collapsed with minimal resistance.
The latest significant blow was the loss of Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, where American, British and other Allied forces fought some of the bloodiest battles in the past 20 years.
The economic center of Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-largest city, and Lashkar Gah, the capital of the southern province of Helmand – were the latest to be hit by the insurgency, raising questions about how long the capital, Kabul, would last. Pictured: Taliban fighters in a vehicle by the roadside in Herat on Friday
Hundreds of Western soldiers were killed during the war fighting in the province to drive the Taliban back and give Afghanistan’s central government and military a better chance of holding on.
The Taliban also claimed Kandahar, the country’s second largest city and the movement’s spiritual home, and Herat, a city of about 600,000 people near the Iranian border.
His fighters are now within 50 miles of the capital, fueling fears that the US-backed government could collapse within weeks.
Even the Allies have questioned how Washington is leaving Afghanistan.
British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said the Trump administration has struck a ‘rotten deal’ with the Taliban that allows terrorists to return.
‘I have been very outspoken about it publicly and it is quite a rare thing when it comes to decisions of the United States, but strategically it creates a lot of problems and as an international community, today we It is very difficult for those who are watching,’ he added. sky News.
‘I am deeply concerned that failed states are breeding grounds for this’ [terrorists]. That’s why I felt it was not the right time or decision to make because al-Qaeda will probably come back.’
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