Hours after the last American soldier leaving the Kabul Airport on August 31, the Taliban victoriously marched into Kabul’s international airport on Tuesday thus giving them a de-facto control of Afghanistan. Taliban leaders expressed their pledged to secure the Afghan territory, fast reopening of the airport and grant amnesty to its former opponents.
Demonstrating the formal control of the Airport, Taliban leaders were flanked by the gun-wielding fighters as they walked across the tarmac. Their commandos in camouflage uniforms and flaunting victory they posed for photos. To get the airport operation again is just one of the major challenges the Taliban face in governing a war-torn nation that saw phenomenal bloodshed and merely had survived on enormous foreign aid.
A top Taliban leader told a foreign news agency from the Airport that Afghanistan was now free and things would be back to normal soon. He said, ‘The military and civilian side (of the airport) are with us and in control. Hopefully, we will be announcing our Cabinet. Everything is peaceful. Everything is safe. Wasiq also urged people to return to work and reiterated the Taliban pledge offering a general amnesty. People have to be patient, he said. Slowly we will get everything back to normal. It will take time’. However, the Taliban will have to earn international legitimacy and support by meeting their commitments on freedom of travel, counterterrorism, respecting the basic rights of the Afghan people, including women and minorities, and forming an inclusive government, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said.
Blinkin declares that the US engagement with the Taliban will not be on the basis of what a Taliban-led government says, but what it does to live up to its commitments. The Taliban seek international legitimacy and support. Our message is: any legitimacy and any support will have to be earned, Blinken said in an address to the nation hours after the US concluded its mission to Afghanistan early Tuesday.
International community keeps its finger crossed over the announcements of Taliban to keep its commitments to safeguard the Human and basic Rights, political freedom and rights of women and minorities, keeping their past track-record.
On the other hand, never in history has a withdrawal from war been handled so badly or incompetently as by Americans from Afghanistan, former president Donald Trump has said as the United States flew its last military flight out of Kabul bringing back all of its armed forces from the country.
In addition to the obvious, all equipment should be demanded to be immediately returned to the United States, and that includes every penny of the USD 85 billion dollars in cost, Trump said. If it is not handed back, we should either go in with unequivocal military force and get it, or at least bomb the hell out of it. Nobody ever thought such stupidity, as this feeble-brained withdrawal, was possible, he said.
Trump’s successor President Joe Biden had retained Special Representative for Afghan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad to carry out the last mile negotiations with the Taliban. The Biden administration was more focused on hitting an arbitrary targeted date rather than hitting the conditions that will permit the execution of the mission that delivers on behalf of America, alleged former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
