5,200 US Troops Secure Kabul’s Airport, “Will Stay as Long as It Takes to bring Home all Americans,” Biden Said

By Yehudit Garmaise

     Although only 2,500 to 3,500 American troops were deployed in Afghanistan last week before President Joe Biden ended the U.S.’s 20-year-long engagement in the country, now 5,200 U.S. troops are controlling Kabul’s international airport to keep it secure, manage air-traffic control, and oversee ground operations, Western officials said.

     In the last 24 hours, 13 C-17 military cargo jets landed in Kabul with yet more troops and equipment, U.S. Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor told reporters.

      In addition, carrying 2,000 passengers, 12 more jets have taken off to add the total of 7,000 U.S. citizens, embassy personnel, and Afghans who had worked for the U.S. government, who have been evacuated since Saturday.

     U.S. troops will stay as long as it takes, President Joe Biden said Wednesday, to evacuate the up to 40,000 American civilians, who were left behind after troops who were, in what is now considered by most to be a regrettable debacle, evacuated before civilians.

     Although the atmosphere of Kabul’s airport, which is called Hamid Karzai, has improved from the chaos and desperation that resulted from the Taliban’s march through Kabul on Sunday, thousands of Afghans continue to surround the airport, urgently pushing to be evacuated, reported the Wall Street Journal.

      Many Afghanis, many of whom lack the required documents to be allowed to board a flight, nevertheless, hopelessly crowded the airport’s gates, trying to take any chance they can leave the country that is now ruled by the Taliban.

      “Maybe I only have a 1% chance of getting on a plane but I’m trying,” said one Afghani who was desperately trying to leave the embattled country. “The Taliban will kill us. They are only behaving a bit so far because the Americans are here.”

       The Taliban, which means “students” in the Pashto language, because the group emerged from students in Muslim seminaries in the early 1990s in northern Pakistan, were, and perhaps still are, paid from sources in Saudi Arabia.

     The students came under the sway of a movement that preaches an uncompromising, hardline, and extremist version of Sunni Islam that involves a great deal of violence and many restricted freedoms.

     Following the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan in 1989, the Muslim seminary students sought to use Sharia law, the Islamic code of law, to restore peace and security to the country, in which civil war raged until the Taliban ascended to power in the late 1990s and maintained a brutal, repressive, and violent regime until 2001, when American forces invaded Afghanistan to find and stop the terrorists who masterminded 9/11.

    During its previous reign, the Taliban was notorious for brutal tactics such as, cutting off the hands of alleged thieves, carrying out public executions on a regular basis, and killing any journalists, particular female reporters, who were critical of their regime.

     In fact, women were legally not allowed to work, go to school, or leave their homes without being completely covered by head-to-toe burquas and without being accompanied by male relatives.

     Although Taliban leaders have issued statements that they have “reformed” to reassure Afghans and Westerners who fear their usual revenge attacks, violent rule, and restricted freedoms, especially for women, many of the actions of the Taliban are sending a different, more frightening message.

     Last month, for instance, after capturing the Malistan district of the southern Ghazni province, Taliban fighters, looking for people who had worked with the Afghani government, went door-to-door: killing at least 27 civilians, wounding 10 others, and looting homes, according to the semi-official Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, the Wall Street Journal reported.

     Although most Afghanis remain in their homes, scared to come out amidst the upheavals, on Wednesday, three Afghani cities saw hundreds of anti-Taliban peaceful protesters, some who waved giant versions of the flag of the democratic republic that was just ousted by the Taliban.

     Those protesters, whoever, were met with gunfire and beatings from the Taliban, who killed at least two people, injured several others, and imposed a daytime curfew in Khost, Afghanistan.

     As Thursday is Afghanistan’s national independence day, which marks the end of British rule of the country 102 years ago, even more Afghanis have been flooding the streets in several cities.

     However, the Taliban have replaced the Republic of Afghanistan's flag, which is red, green, and black, with their own white flag that is emblazoned with Islamic scripture.

(Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)