MILITARY
Taliban vallen Kabul binnen – VS evacueren per helikopter (1)
August 15, 2021 - Taliban fighters have entered the outskirts of the Afghan capital Kabul, further tightening their grip on the country as panicked workers fled government offices and the United States evacuated diplomats from its embassy by helicopter.
In scenes reminiscent of the United States’ humiliating withdrawal from Saigon at the end of the Vietnam conflict in 1975, Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopters evacuated embassy staff after militants captured the nearby city of Jalalabad on Sunday (August 15).
The fall of Jalalabad came just hours after the insurgents seized the northern anti-Taliban bastion of Mazar-i-Sharif -- furthering a stunning rout of government forces in just ten days.
Three Afghan officials told The Associated Press that the Taliban were in Kabul’s Kalakan, Qarabagh and Paghman districts.
The insurgents now control one of the main highways into landlocked Afghanistan. Pakistani authorities on Sunday also closed the nearby Torkham border post, leaving Kabul airport the only way out of Afghanistan that is still in government hands.
U.S. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has warned that America’s retreat from Afghanistan risks the nation “careening toward a massive, predictable, and preventable disaster.”