Last Team Out of Kabul: Surrounded by the Taliban

Product Information

And let me be clear: We will continue to support the Afghan people through diplomacy, international influence, and humanitarian aid. Their two-fold mission–Personnel Recovery (PR) and Unconventional Warfare (UW) involved flying in terrain and weather previously not thought possible. On 19 August, 125 guards of the Embassy of the United Kingdom, Kabul were told by telephone they no longer had jobs and were ineligible for UK protection because they were employed through a contractor, GardaWorld, unlike guards at the US embassy who were evacuated.

The previous administration’s agreement said that if we stuck to the May 1st deadline that they had signed on to leave by, the Taliban wouldn’t attack any American forces, but if we stayed, all bets were off. Shrouded in mystery and equipped with exotic weaponry, SOG operators suffered casualty rates in excess of 100 percent for three successive years. British prime minister Boris Johnson blamed the United States for the Taliban's rapid takeover of Afghanistan. Furthermore, several social media companies, including Facebook and YouTube, announced that they would continue to ban Taliban content from their platforms. m. local time, the Taliban claimed to have taken over the Arg, which was left vacated by President Ghani earlier that day.

The bottom line: Ninety [Ninety-eight] percent of Americans in Afghanistan who wanted to leave were able to leave. On 1 May 2021, the Taliban and allied militant groups began a widespread offensive shortly after a significant portion of US troops withdrew from Afghanistan.

Two weeks later, secretary of state Antony Blinken said it was several thousand US residents and one hundred US citizens. The Taliban has made public commitments, broadcast on television and radio across Afghanistan, on safe passage for anyone wanting to leave, including those who worked alongside Americans. The Australian government had initially announced the same for their embassy guards, but backtracked a day later and granted them visas. Taliban fighters, however, were sighted parading their flag and weapons and taking selfies next to Kabul landmarks. Even though it was already in place before the Taliban rule, it has increased since the fall of Kabul.Those evacuated included about 6,000 Americans, [28] [29] the vast majority of whom were dual US-Afghan citizens.

During the skirmishes, the Taliban were reported to have killed around 150 IS-K militants, including the former chief Mawlawi Zia ul-Haq (also known as Abu Omar Khorasani). And most of all, after 800,000 Americans serving in Afghanistan — I’ve traveled that whole country — brave and honorable service; after 20,744 American servicemen and women injured, and the loss of 2,461 American personnel, including 13 lives lost just this week, I refused to open another decade of warfare in Afghanistan. He claims he first planned to take a car to the Ministry of Defense headquarters within Kabul, but the car never arrived.

Brian Castner served three tours of duty in the Middle East, two of them as the commander of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit in Iraq.