Afghanistan: the most striking images of a week of chaos since the takeover of the Taliban – teller report

Twenty years after their fall, the Taliban retook the Afghan capital on August 15. They arrived at the gates of Kabul, after a lightning offensive that began in May with the start of the withdrawal of American and NATO forces.

In ten days, they seized all the major cities without encountering any great resistance.

On the evening of August 15, former Vice President Abdullah Abdullah announced that President Ghani had decided to leave the country. A Taliban spokesman then ordered his forces to enter areas of the capital abandoned by the Afghan army. Television shows Taliban leaders taking over the presidential palace. “The Taliban have won”, admits Ashraf Ghani on Facebook. The ex-president explains having fled to avoid a “bloodbath”.

On Monday 16, the evacuation of diplomats, other foreigners and Afghans was organized in a hurry. A tide of people rushed to Kabul airport, giving rise to scenes of total anarchy. Faced with the chaos, all flights were suspended for several hours, causing a crowd to get on the planes.

The chaos was such that planes had to take off despite the presence of hundreds of civilians on the runway and the US military was forced to fire to restore calm. At least twelve people died at the airport.

Target of strong criticism, US President Joe Biden has “firmly” defended Monday evening his decision to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan, assuring that Washington’s mission had never been to build a democratic nation there but “to prevent a terrorist attack on American soil”. The United States will continue to engage in “women and girls” Afghanistan, he promised in an address to the nation.

As of August 17, the storefronts of beauty salons in Kabul were covered in black paint to hide the faces of the models. During the five years during which they ruled the country, from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban had imposed their ultra strict version of Islamic law. Women were prohibited from going out without a male chaperone and from working, girls from going to school. Women accused of crimes such as adultery were whipped and stoned.

Six days after Taliban entered Kabul, tens of thousands of Afghans still desperately seek to flee their country via an airlift “hard” which US President Joe Biden has admitted cannot guarantee “the outcome”. Roads paralyzed by crowds, cargo planes stormed: the images of chaos at Kabul airport only reinforce each day the feeling of unpreparedness for the evacuation operation.

Among the countless poignant testimonies, one image particularly moved public opinion, that of Afghans passing a crying baby over the crowd at the airport and giving it to an American soldier. According to the Pentagon, he was treated and then returned to his parents.

Friday, August 20, the US military for its part published several photographs showing its soldiers taking care of children, in the grounds of the Hamid Karzai international airport. Among the many pictures, we see, for example, a heavily equipped marine, wearing his helmet, smiling at a baby he is hugging.

The United States alone is planning to remove 30,000 people. Most of the evacuees are American citizens who are allowed in by the Taliban. But many Afghans, especially those who have worked for the United States and hold special immigration visas (SIVs) for themselves and their loved ones, cannot access the compound secured by more than 5,000 U.S. military personnel. On Friday, the US military had to deploy three helicopters to pick up 169 Americans who were unable to get to the airport from a hotel in Kabul.

An image that caught the attention of many Internet users, comparing it to the “fall of Saigon” on April 29, 1975. “Hard day for the United States”, thus commented one of them relaying a famous snapshot taken during the evacuation by helicopter of civilians out of the American embassy, ​​in Vietnam, in front of the advance of the popular army.

This airlift is “one of the most important and difficult in history”, recognized Friday, in his second televised address in a few days, Joe Biden during a speech at the White House. “I cannot promise what the final outcome will be” nor that there will not be “risk of loss” in human lives, declared the president, assuring that the allies of Washington did not question the “credibility” United States to carry out this operation.