Afghanistan

[bill_g]

You are correct.

[Kendra]

A long threaded tweet on the history of Afghanistan and the Taliban. I highly recommend it!

https://

twitter.com/tomiahonen/status/1427237414112792576

TY.

[AndyinPA]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-polic ... ghanistan/

The Biden administration on Sunday froze Afghan government reserves held in U.S. bank accounts, blocking the Taliban from accessing billions of dollars held in U.S. institutions, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The decision was made by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and officials in Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, the people said. The State Department was also involved in discussions this weekend, with officials in the White House monitoring the developments. An administration official said in a statement, “Any Central Bank assets the Afghan government have in the United States will not be made available to the Taliban.” The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss government policy not yet made public.

Cutting off access to U.S.-based reserves represents among the first in what is expected to prove several crucial decisions facing the Biden administration about the economic fate of that nation following the Taliban takeover. Afghanistan is already one of the poorest countries in the world and is highly dependent on American aid that is now in jeopardy. The Biden administration is also likely to face hard choices over how to manage existing sanctions on the Taliban, which may make it difficult to deliver international humanitarian assistance to a population facing ruin, experts say.

[neeneko]

The Biden administration on Sunday froze Afghan government reserves held in U.S. bank accounts, blocking the Taliban from accessing billions of dollars held in U.S. institutions, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Craaaap. I was really hoping that the US would not go down the 'you embarrassed us so we are going to try to ruin you' route. It never works and just pushes countries into the sphere of influence of our adversaries.

I know it involves eating humble pie, but I would so much rather the US be pragmatic and recognize the new government and offer some conditional foreign aid.

[Jim]

The Biden administration on Sunday froze Afghan government reserves held in U.S. bank accounts, blocking the Taliban from accessing billions of dollars held in U.S. institutions, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Craaaap. I was really hoping that the US would not go down the 'you embarrassed us so we are going to try to ruin you' route. It never works and just pushes countries into the sphere of influence of our adversaries.

I know it involves eating humble pie, but I would so much rather the US be pragmatic and recognize the new government and offer some conditional foreign aid.

Seems to me that's what they're doing...holding onto their money and using it to get certain concessions from the Taliban.
And I don't think the Taliban are going to be too eager to mess with us and lose their power again.

[neeneko]

Seems to me that's what they're doing...holding onto their money and using it to get certain concessions from the Taliban.
And I don't think the Taliban are going to be too eager to mess with us and lose their power again.

Yeah, if they hold it as a bargaining chip I can see that. I am worried though that they will take, say, the Iran route, and simply hold it as long as the government they do not like is in power.

Though as a bargaining chip, it could be easy to overplay. I agree the Taliban probably does not want to aggravate the US _too_ much since that might result in another 'this time we will make sure' invasion. But when it comes to simply having the capital to keep the country solvent, I imagine China, Saudi Arabia, or maybe even Russia are sitting in the wings offering to 'help out'.

[Slim Cognito]

As crass as it sounds, I'm glad this is happening now, and not next summer, or summer 2024. I've become very jaded. I think it's a defense mechanism.

[neeneko]

As crass as it sounds, I'm glad this is happening now, and not next summer, or summer 2024. I've become very jaded. I think it's a defense mechanism.

I imagine the timing of both of those elections factored into the US response.

[Foggy]

We have guided missiles and misguided men. ~ MLK Jr.

[raison de arizona]

[Uninformed]

An example of the reporting in the UK by the BBC (and others).

“Three ways this Afghanistan crisis really hurts Biden”:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-58252174

[Luke]

Almost gave him a topic, he was at Lindell's event and a Lin Wood acolyte. He's running some kind of strange "STRIKEBACK FOR FREEDOM train" with Clements, Wood and other guys. If he keeps it up, he'll get a topic. He has a Telegram channel, and since he apparently served in Afghanistan putting his comments about it here.

Seth Keshel, [15.08.21 12:14]
(1/4) Many have asked me for my thoughts on the current situation in Afghanistan. Since it figures so critically in my background and analytical qualifications, I will give them here in this space. Be mindful that this will be a long post and may break into multiple sections.

I was assigned to the 4th Combat Aviation Brigade out of Fort Hood, TX, as a second lieutenant fresh out of Military Intelligence Officer Basic Course in 2009. I took up my role as the Assistant S-2 (Intelligence Officer) in one of the brigade’s two Attack battalions (Apaches). The S-2 serves as an advisor to the commander (in this case, a battalion is commanded by a lieutenant colonel). The assistant S-2 is clearly the new guy learning under the more experienced primary S-2, typically a captain or senior first lieutenant.

The brigade was just returning home from a deployment to Iraq when I arrived, but thanks to the troop surge coming in Afghanistan, was quickly spun up for a new deployment under a new brigade commander (one of the greatest leaders I’ve ever known), Col. Dan Williams. Notice of the deployment came in Dec 2009 when the colonel told me “poppy fields in June” at a brigade dining event. I had just been promoted to 1st lieutenant at this time.

By April, our brigade was divided into multiple task forces (with the task forces now holding three types of helicopter – Apache, Chinook, Blackhawk, but not Kiowa). I was shifted to another battalion-sized task force that was going to be missing its S-2 for the first few months of the deployment due to personal reasons. He was a captain, and had experience in the Iraq tour the unit completed in 2009. I was fortunate to have been trained by a brilliant officer, 1LT/CPT Wightman - a great guy with whom I've never agreed with politically. He helped me immensely to develop critical S-2 skills.

I had the same analytical skill then as I do now – but without the combat experience and day-to-day know-how that comes with “soldiering.” That is why God made NCOs (non-commissioned officers). For several months, my intelligence section operated with three people, when we were allotted eight on paper. 1LT Keshel, SSG Head, and SGT Millhouse. SSG Head (now retired SFC) was an infantryman by trade who transitioned to MI (Military Intelligence) MOS. As the NCO in charge, his job was mainly to lead our analysts and perform essential administrative functions, but due lacking manpower and the demand of 24 hour operations, he was pressed into a more analytical role than his position would typically entail. One of his duties was getting me straight. He laughs still when we talk about the first rocket that landed near us on Kandahar, the first full day in Afghanistan. He didn’t move from his bunk. I followed the entire drill, including hitting the deck and then going to a bunker. The next time a rocket hit, I didn’t move either. You never forget that level of embarrassment. Over the course of several months, SSG Head got me set up for success, right around the time our captain came in country.

My dad died in September, three months in. I went home for his funeral, and when I got back the captain (CPT Kolano) was back. We are the same age – he graduated college a year ahead of me and therefore was ahead of me in career progression. We had both been 1LTs at the same time, and he made CPT a year before I did, going into this deployment. One drawback of battalion staff sections is that officers often hold the same rank, and become friends, and then have to report one to the other. Of course there is basic professionalism, meaning that no one will undermine the one who outranks them – but it’s not always easy. CPT Kolano and I didn’t really get along personally during our deployment, but fortunately we actually became real friends when we returned and were sent to the Captains Career Course together in Arizona. He is still in, a Major – one of the better intelligence minds I met in the Army – a strategist, workaholic, and fitness nut. We gelled pretty well about halfway through the tour

Seth Keshel, [15.08.21 12:14]
(2/4) He would run day operations and briefings, and I would create and disseminate the intelligence summaries that influenced operations in all of RC-West. It was the most widely disseminated intel summary in all of the region, which is the size of Georgia. I would handle deliberate operations missions briefings in the middle of the night and brief pilots in the early morning hours before we traded posts. All in all, I spent about 4 of my 12 months as the primary S-2 in his absence, and 8 as the Assistant S-2, working a cross shift that included the night hours.

It was late in 2010 that I began reading “Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare” by Marston and Malkasian. After shooting out the intel summary and eating midnight chow, I would go to the back office, and when free, would read that book to the hum of our generators. The book assembles a series of historical vignettes outlining failed counterinsurgencies throughout recent history. The bottom line was clear – counterinsurgency doesn’t work – unless it is conducted on an island. Navies can be used to patrol islands and keep enemy fighters, weapons, and supplies out. The forces on the island can then be used to separate insurgent factions from peaceful factions. And once separated, the insurgents can be eradicated. It sank in like the stone on Goliath’s forehead. Immediately, given that I was paid to think strategically, I abandoned all hope that we would ever win the war in Afghanistan. Since I was already in an aviation brigade, I thought at the “30,000’” level just as I see the political landscape today. It was at this time, looking at upcoming deployments going as far out as eight years, that I started to see the hopelessness in making this my career. Now I’m very glad I began to feel that way.

Our unit got to the point to which Apaches were using $70,000 hellfire missiles to destroy $50 repeater towers on mountainsides made of duct tape and PVC pipe. One time, we had to shoot TWICE! Our pilot teams were hamstrung by our own lawyers – having to call for clearance to fire at enemy fighters who were clearly engaging our ground troops and causing needless casualties. A couple of our pilots were permanently grounded and lost their wings because they had to fire in defense of ground troops, and accidentally fragged some with danger close engagements. Coalition “partners” in our region were giving away communications equipment to the Taliban in exchange to not be attacked. Guess who was getting attacked.

Counterinsurgency (COIN) exists in a textbook at Fort Huachuca. They preach it like it is gospel. If you point out that the only successful modern counterinsurgencies take place on islands, or in antiquity, when every living and breathing thing in a given nation is put to the sword, you get scoffed at. In the textbook, we have our successful decades long COIN operation when the nation (in this case, Afghanistan) is able to provide its own security. The Afghan National Army (ANA) and Afghan National Police (ANP) were the two primary entities tasked with learning to stand up and take their own bullets so we didn’t have to.

Want to know what they were busy doing in my 2010-11 tour? They were going out on patrol and selling ammunition to the Taliban and other terror cells. Then they would return to their duty stations and claim that they expended however many rounds they sold off and get replenished – and the cycle continued. One time, I went for a run when I wasn’t on shift, just so I could stay in some sort of decent physical condition. I carried my rifle with me and ran with it like a private at Marine boot camp, primarily because you never want to be *that guy* that loses his weapon in a combat zone, but also because we shared our base with pit vipers, wild dogs, and most notably, Afghans. Keep in mind, these are the ANA/ANP that are supposedly on our side, but one of the biggest threats to coalition forces in the entire country, right behind IEDs, was getting shot in the back of the head at dinner by the ANA or ANP. Most senior

Seth Keshel, [15.08.21 12:14]
(3/4) officers who have died in Afgh in the past decade have been killed by friendlies, either in cold blood, or in coordinated suicide attacks using people on our bases (contractors, ANA, ANP, etc).

On that run, I went out a few miles and found myself lost (lieutenant, okay) – a few turns around some jersey barriers and HESCO baskets later, I found myself on the ANA camp. I don’t hide very well, and I saw a bunch of pointing going on - I am guessing at the giant American officer surrounded by miniature Afghans – and I booked it out of there. These are our “allies.” These are the people responsible for guaranteeing the future safety and security of Afghanistan, at least according to the textbook. It was in these months in the transition from 2010 to 2011 that I realized counterinsurgency was hopeless. My mind began to think about life not in the military, giving my best years and risking myself for something so futile. I’ve told the story before in an article about my future assignment to Alaska when I read “Liberty Defined” by Ron Paul, which cemented in my mind the need to find a new career. I put in my papers to leave just three months after reading the chapter pertaining to endless war.

On the current issue itself – the mission in Afghanistan died of a Stage IV cancer that had first been discovered in 2001. As useless as he is, and with his means of occupying the White House being what they are, this is not the complete fault of Joe Biden. It is the summation of 20 years of useless war in a place called THE GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES. A “graveyard,” for goodness sakes, and we thought we would turn out different? Most veterans before the internet became the all-powerful self-education tool it is believed in the mission to get even after 9/11. That was my inner drumbeat when I was signing up. We didn’t think about the history – we thought about the imagery – all the G.W. Bush phony patriotism and feeling like we needed to have his back when the media did their thing. We didn’t realize the lies of the fake political system and the fake neo-con patriotism – the same patriotism that leads the military bases in Afghanistan to have three contractors for every one soldier standing in the chow line, and occupying the phone tent when you want to use that 15-minute window to call home. It is indeed a military industrial complex.

What is old is new. The more things change, the more they stay the same. The British tried for many years to pacify Afghanistan, centuries ago. Abject failure. The Russians wasted a decade there and were sent running like scalded apes. We spent two decades there. You could potentially make the case for “justified warfare” for a year after 9/11, with valid intelligence on targets. But once the targets became hunted, the ones with strategic value left. Why do you think it is that we killed Bin Laden in Pakistan? The Pakistanis acted surprised that he was there. But they knew. Blood is thicker than water. That is why Karzai said a decade ago that he would side with the Pakistanis over America in a war. I remember commenting at that time that if I were President, I would have every single American soldier home by December, and let them figure it out.

Why all the issues? The nation is and has always been run by warlords. Vacuums continue to open and be occupied by the one with the most guns. These are savages. These are people who stone women for learning how to read – yet our idiot leftists and their media lapdogs have the audacity to liken traditional Americans to the Taliban. What a disgusting insult.

The warlords do not share Western beliefs and values. They, thanks to their fundamentalist belief systems, do not recognize the dignity of the individual. We have rights in this country because we were founded on the simple belief that man is made in the image of God, and therefore deserves dignity. With dignity comes rights. We enshrined them in our founding documents. The people of Afghanistan are viewed as serfs to be ruled.

The convenient excuse of extending rights

Seth Keshel, [15.08.21 12:14]
(4/4) and liberty to Afghanistan was a lie. It is the military industrial complex speaking. We have domestic problems here that could have been addressed for the entirety of the Afghan war, without the loss of life, limbs, eyesight, blood, and treasure in a second Vietnam. This is why neo-con warlords like John McCain, Jeff Flake, Dan Crenshaw, Adam Kinzinger, G.W. Bush, and others, must be roundly ridiculed, mocked, despised, and rejected.

The military is a great place for a boy to become a man. I am glad that I served because I have the foundation of resiliency, determination, and realism that I otherwise would never have developed. Veterans are great employees because they can be in the right place, at the right time, and the right uniform. Discipline, personal pride, and fitness (physical and ideally, mental) are hallmarks modern veterans have.

Those veterans will attest to what I’m saying. None of what I wrote is to detract from the bravery of veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. One of my best friends was a Marine combat engineer (Captain) who has had his life ruined by that stupid war. He is brave, led his men with valor, at the cost of concussing himself permanently and undergoing the emotional trauma that has caused great personal hardship. He reminds me of my Dad – who dealt with his issues from Vietnam in ways that often caused great pain to others, against his own desires.

In summary – though I have wandered – there was never a way to win a war in Afgh if we view “victory” as the locals being able to govern their own country. That was a lie used by the military industrial complex to engage in a war that is two decades long. We were astonished that we were serving there ten years after 9/11. Now that number is twenty years. I was new in my career when I showed up there, with just 2 years of service. If I were still in today, I’d be a Major, a couple years from Lieutenant Colonel, with 13 years of service. No results.

The only way to win it was to destroy everything that breathes and start over. I do not endorse that method because there are many innocents in Afghanistan, and there is no public will to do that, fortunately. That is how things were done in the days of Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan. But since Afghanistan is the size of Texas, bordering 6 nations, there are few strategic targets worth eliminating now. We are eliminating pawns, 19 year olds paid a hundred bucks and given an AK-47 and a couple Chinese rockets to fight for their own country. The knights, rooks, and bishops are hiding out in Pakistan or Iran, funneling money, explosives, and other weaponry into country to maim and kill coalition forces. Our leaders knew this all along but continued. Trump knew this, but knew that if he pulled the plug immediately, he would be blamed for exactly what you see going on right now – the same scenes from “Blackhawk Down” with our equipment and unit regalia being paraded down dusty roads, to our humiliation as a nation. Trump did what he could to empower our Generals to make the kinetic decisions to get as much done as possible, and he dwindled troop levels down enough to pave the way for a withdrawal – but two decades of horrific decision making has its consequences.

I hope this sheds light on the true picture in Afghanistan. It was doomed to fail, and now you see it all coming to fruition.

As Herve Villechaize (died by suicide in 1993) would say, "The Train! The Train!"

Keshel.JPG (56.68 KiB) Viewed 1154 times

[Dave from down under]

Malayan Emergency - a success not on an island…

So perhaps he is wrong about other things..

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malayan_Emergency

[raison de arizona]

Robert Reich
@RBReich
·
Aug 18, 2021
Don’t say that nobody won the war in Afghanistan.

If you invested $10,000 in defense stocks when the war began, your stocks would now be worth almost $100,000.

Defense contractors and their shareholders. That’s who won the war in Afghanistan.

[tencats]

Taliban “Islam” versus the Islam of the Prophet Muhammad and the Qur’an
Juan Cole 08/18/2021
https://www.juancole.com/2021/08/taliba ... ammad.html

How Islamic is the Islamic State?
All you have to do is think about the manifestations of Christianity. You have your Kentucky snake handlers and your QAnon militants, some of whom carried guns at the Capitol insurrection. Then you have your mainstream Presbyterians and Congregationalists. You have your Order of the Solar Temple cult inside Catholicism. And then you have mainstream American Roman Catholicism. And we haven’t even gone into Evangelicalism in Brazil or all the different ways Christianity is practiced in sub-Saharan Africa. There, you have millions of ordinary Catholics and Protestants but also the virulent Christian terrorist organization, the Lord’s Resistance Army. If we go back in time, you have your Protestant Peasants War in the early 1500s in Germany. You get the picture.

In my view, the Taliban resemble the Ku Klux Klan. New York Times journalist David Sanger complained when I said that, saying that the Taliban took over a whole country and the KKK is a fringe. But I’d just like to point out that the KKK had enormous influence in the Democratic Party in the 1920s and that it took over the state of Indiana for a while in the 1920s, having the governor, a majority of the state assembly, and 250,000 cadre members. And today’s KKK was an important constituency for Trumpism and influential on the former guy’s policies.

What I would say about the Taliban is that they are an outlier in the Muslim world. The old Taliban had been formed in seminaries of the Deoband school of Islam. I think of Deobandis as sort of like Haredim or ultra-Orthodox among Jews. The school developed in British colonial India and was a way for Indian Muslims to assert their identities against British Christian rule and the Hindu majority. It is a sectarian movement and the vast majority of Indian Muslims rejected it. Its seminaries in northern Pakistan attracted Saudi funding, and so some seminaries mixed Deobandi teachings with some ideas from the hard line, rigid Saudi Wahhabi movement. But the Taliban were also the result of the chaos and violence of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Many were orphans. They were misogynists, knowing few women. They were militant in a country of then 16 million where a million had died and three million had been wounded and 7 million displaced.

Mainstream Sunni Muslims in Egypt (population 100 million) or Turkey (pop. 82 million) do not agree with most Taliban practices and beliefs. In fact, almost no one outside Afghanistan shares many beliefs or practices with the Taliban. They are an Afghan (and to some extent northern Pakistan) phenomenon, and even most Afghans and Pukhtun Pakistanis don’t share their views.

I could go on but you get the picture. Are the Taliban a kind of Muslim? Sure. Are they true to basic Qur’anic values? No. They have substituted later oral traditions for the Qur’an and have interpreted the latter in a militant way born of anti-colonial sentiment.

Read it all at https://www.juancole.com/2021/08/taliba ... ammad.html

The Great Washington Ponzi Scheme in Afghanistan comes Crashing Down
Juan Cole 08/13/2021
https://www.juancole.com/2021/08/washin ... shing.html

The United States lost the Afghanistan War a long time ago

[Kendra]

Since we no longer have a dedicated Stephen Miller thread on the new board:

Afghan vet
@mattczeller
tears into Stephen Miller for saying Afghan refugees don't deserve to come here:

"As far as I’m concerned, he personally is as complicit as the Taliban in these people’s deaths. He should be held accountable for war crimes!"

[Uninformed]

“Newspaper headlines: MPs condemn US president, and Johnson 'humiliated'”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-58264267

[Volkonski]

[raison de arizona]

“Newspaper headlines: MPs condemn US president, and Johnson 'humiliated'”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-58264267

Um.

America first?

[tencats]

Pakistan’s hand in the Taliban’s victory
August 18, 2021 at 12:00 a.m. EDT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/20 ... n-victory/

As the Taliban swept across neighboring Afghanistan, some Pakistanis saw it as a reason to celebrate. Islamist organizations in a number of Pakistani cities doled out sweets to locals. On social media, some people crowed over the failure of the U.S. war effort and nation-building project next door. “Afghanistan is presently witnessing a virtually smooth shifting of power from the corrupt Ghani government to the Taliban,” tweeted Raoof Hasan, a special assistant to Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, mocking the assessments of Western experts on South Asia. He added that “the contraption that the US had pieced together for Afghanistan has crumbled like the proverbial house of cards.”

Khan himself made a curious remark at an event Monday in Islamabad. Commenting on the cultural dangers inherent in English-language education for Pakistani society — and the “mental slavery” it supposedly imposes — he seemed to point to the fundamentalist Taliban as an exemplar of a kind of empowering authenticity. Afghans, Khan said, “had broken the shackles of slavery.”

For now, Khan’s government has refrained from recognizing the new Taliban overlords as the legitimate government in Kabul. The prime minister, who has been a vocal opponent of the American “war on terror” in the region and blames it for stoking a parallel Pakistani Taliban insurgency, stressed the “importance of all sides working to secure an inclusive political solution,” according to local news reports Tuesday. He and his allies cast Pakistan as a victim of cycles of regional unrest and conflict, exacerbated by the interventions of foreign powers like the United States. “We under no circumstances are prepared to see protracted instability that in the past has caused spillover into Pakistan,” national security adviser Moeed Yusuf said in an interview this month. “Pakistan has suffered all of these 40 years.”

Such rhetoric would probably stick in the craw of the Afghan leaders of the defeated Western-backed government. For years, they bemoaned the support afforded to the Afghan Taliban by Pakistan, particularly by the country’s military establishment and its affiliated intelligence apparatus, known as the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI. In January 2020, during a World Economic Forum roundtable with journalists, including Today’s WorldView, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani scoffed at Pakistani claims that the Afghan Taliban was no longer operating from safe havens in Pakistan. “One can also say that the Earth does not revolve around the sun,” he said.


Leaders of a Pakistani political party distribute sweets in Quetta, Pakistan, on Aug. 13 to celebrate the Taliban’s capture of major cities in Afghanistan.

[Luke]

POLITICO Tick-tock:

‘This is Actually Happening’: Inside Biden’s Five Days of Panic Over Afghanistan
Inside the Biden team's five-day scramble as Afghanistan collapsed.
By ALEXANDER WARD, LARA SELIGMAN, ANDREW DESIDERIO, ALEX THOMPSON and BRYAN BENDER
08/20/2021 04:30 AM EDT

President Joe Biden and his inner circle were in an ebullient mood.

It was Wednesday morning, Aug. 11, and they were basking in the glow of back-to-back legislative wins. The day before, the Senate had passed a bipartisan $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. And in the early hours of Wednesday morning, they witnessed the advancement of a $3.5 trillion framework to finance Democrats’ social agenda.

Watching the Senate vote tally in front of a television screen in the president’s private dining room, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris pumped their fists in triumph. The linchpin of their domestic agenda had begun to fall into place.

Biden was looking forward to his summer vacation set to begin in a few days, including some downtime at Camp David and at his house near the beach in Delaware. Meanwhile, many senior and mid-level West Wing staffers were also prepping for some time off, setting their “out of office” email replies. “It’s a ghost town,” a White House official said, describing the scene in the West Wing before people were later called back.

But as the White House was taking a giant victory lap over its domestic accomplishments, a disaster was looming on the other side of the world in Afghanistan.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/ ... ion-505600

[RTH10260]

what a mess - UK (and USA)

Guards at Kabul embassy told they are ineligible for UK protection
Exclusive: 125-strong team hired through outsourced contractor given informal notice they no longer have jobs

Amelia Gentleman
Thu 19 Aug 2021 19.11 BST

More than 100 guards at the British embassy in Kabul have been told they are not eligible for UK government protection because they were hired through an outsourced contractor, the Guardian has learned.

Most of the 125-strong team of security personnel, employed by the global security firm GardaWorld, have been given informal notice that they no longer have jobs guarding the embassy, several said.

The guards, some of whom had been working for the UK embassy for over a decade, described feeling abandoned by British officials and their employer. Many have been forced into hiding, fearing for their lives.

Meanwhile, more than 100 guards doing the same work for the US embassy, under a separate GardaWorld contract, have been evacuated and others were receiving support from the US embassy, according to a senior Afghan national GardaWorld employee in charge of human resources.

On Saturday night, at the end of a long shift helping British diplomats get to Kabul airport so they could flee after the fall of the Afghan capital to the Taliban, several British embassy guards said they were told by phone that since the embassy was now closed their services would no longer be required. They were asked to hand back computers, body armour and radios.

One guard said he was told by a British expat GardaWorld operations manager on Friday that his contract was going to be terminated. “He said: ‘There won’t be a GardaWorld project any more with the embassy; your jobs are gone.’ He himself left Afghanistan the following morning … No one asked whether we are safe or not. No one asked whether our lives are in danger or not.”

Oliver Westmacott, the president of GardaWorld’s Middle East operations, said formal termination letters had not been sent out but added: “The reality is on Saturday when the contract was demobilised, we sent people home. We are going to honour people’s salaries, certainly up until the date that they stopped working, and we have every intention of giving people a final gratuity payment or severance.

“We need to get agreement from our clients, namely the British Foreign Office, as to what the notice period is going to be, otherwise we are materially out of pocket.” On Thursday night one guard said they had been informed their pay would continue for now.


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... protection

[Uninformed]

“Guards at Kabul embassy told they are ineligible for UK protection”:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... protection
“More than 100 guards at the British embassy in Kabul have been told they are not eligible for UK government protection because they were hired through an outsourced contractor, the Guardian has learned.”


In the “I’ve got a bridge for sale” department”; from the BBC:
“Raab defends delegating key call to Afghan counterpart”
UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has defended his decision to delegate a call to his Afghan counterpart to a more junior minister.
It was agreed a call would take place but the Afghan foreign minister was "unable to because of the rapidly deteriorating situation", he said in a statement.
Mr Raab said he delegated the call because "I was prioritising security and capacity at the airport on the direct advice of the director and the director general overseeing the crisis response".”
He has insisted that "the government's approach to prioritise security at the airport was the right one".

[AndyinPA]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/former-pence ... 25391.html

WASHINGTON, DC

A former national security official blamed the Trump administration and Stephen Miller's "racist hysteria" for impeding the visa application process for Afghans who worked with the US.

Olivia Troye worked as the homeland security and counterterrorism adviser to Vice President Mike Pence. In a Twitter thread Friday, she blasted the Trump administration for its handling of the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) programs that provide a path to US residency for locals who worked with the US government in Afghanistan.

"There were cabinet mtgs about this during the Trump Admin where Stephen Miller would peddle his racist hysteria about Iraq & Afghanistan. He & his enablers across gov't would undermine anyone who worked on solving the SIV issue by devastating the system at DHS & State," Troye wrote.

[p0rtia]

Olivia Troye rocks.

@oliviatroye