Michael Hughes
AOPNEWS
August 12, 2021
The US military is moving around 3,000 personnel to Afghanistan to evacuate diplomats and ensure the drawdown of forces is secure, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Thursday.
The announcement comes in the wake of reports that U.S. intelligence has predicted that Kabul would fall within a few months. The Biden administration all week had refuted the report and the very notion that the Afghan government was at any risk of being toppled.
“The first movement will consist of three infantry battalions that are currently in the Central Command Area of Responsibility… Those three infantry battalions will comprise approximately 3,000 personnel, and they will be in addition to those troops that are already in Kabul,” Kirby said at a press conference.
Kirby said the first three battalions will deploy to Kabul International Airport within the next 24 to 48 hours, but reassured that the United States would not use the airport as a base to launch airstrikes.
The State Department said the U.S. embassy in Kabul remains open at its current location despite the call to evacuate. The U.S., spokesperson Ned Price said, is in “no way abandoning the people in Afghanistan.”
According to Kirby, once diplomats are extracted the U.S. plans to leave about 1,000 boots on the ground to protect the remaining diplomatic presence in Kabul.
However, Kirby also claimed Washington was not delaying the deadline to remove all troops by August 31. He also vowed that the United States is not considering adding more troops if the situation in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate.
In addition, the Pentagon spokesperson said the U.S. will send 1,000 Air Force troops to Qatar to accelerate the processing of Afghan immigrant special visas.
The U.S. move contradicts assurances the White House and State Department delivered this week that Washington was maintaining its current approach. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that he does not regret his decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan despite the Taliban gains. The White House also said the fall of Kabul is “not inevitable.”
On Tuesday, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said the idea that the Taliban’s ongoing offensive in Afghanistan is unstoppable is not the reality on the ground. Price observed that Afghanistan’s government security forces still total roughly 300,000 strong, greatly outnumbering the Taliban in addition to having U.S. and other international support.
Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is following with deep concern the ongoing hostilities in the Afghan provinces of Herat and Kandahar, and is particularly worried about the shift of fighting to urban areas, his spokesman said on Thursday.
As the U.S. was claiming that the fall of Kabul was not inevitable, Afghanistan’s neighbors have been bracing for the worst scenario. Russia’s defense ministry sounded the alarm that the border with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan is controlled by the Taliban movement and it is important for the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) to be ready for possible infiltration of terrorists.
After talks in Doha on Thursday, envoys from several countries including from the UN in a joint statement warned that they would not recognize any government in Kabul that is taken through military force. The statement was signed by representatives from China, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, the UK, the UN, EU, U.S., Germany, India, Norway, Tajikistan, Turkey and Turkmenistan.
“Participants agreed that the peace process needs to be accelerated as a matter of great urgency on the basis of the negotiations of concrete proposals from both sides,” the joint statement said.
They also expressed concerned about reports of continued civilian casualties, extra-judicial killings and other human rights violations.
The British defense ministry said the UK will send 600 troops to Afghanistan to assist in the evacuation of its citizens and former Afghan employees.
Turkey in the meantime has been vowing to step up its presence to protect the people of Afghanistan, which has been met with violent threats from Taliban leadership.
For some, the situation invokes memories of the fall of Saigon when American diplomats jumped from the embassy roof into helicopters as the Viet Cong finished conquering Vietnam.