Kabul

At the time of the Afghanistan withdrawal, Biden administration officials said behind closed doors that secretary of state Antony Blinken and national security advisor Jake Sullivan “don’t give a fuck” about rescuing Americans from the clutches of the Taliban. The admission came on a late August 2021 phone call held between the Department of Defense and congressional Democrats, based on The Spectator’s review of contemporaneous text messages. During the conversation, a Pentagon official acknowledged in response to frustration from Democrats that two of the senior-most officials working on the evacuation — Blinken and Sullivan — were indifferent to the plight of their fellow Americans.

Escondido, California “I will fight till my last breath to get the truth,” said Coral Briseño, the mother of Humberto Sanchez, who was killed in Afghanistan during the Biden administration’s chaotic withdrawal. Her son told her that if he didn’t come back, he wanted her to tell his story.  Briseño and her fellow Gold Star family members had their first opportunity to address the nation in a hearing that was aired live on Fox News — but completely absent from CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS.  The field hearing marked the first time the group of parents addressed the public as one. The chaotic exit from Kabul, marred by suicide bombings and people falling off of planes, was praised by everyone from the president to his top military brass as historically successful.

The Biden administration is using every tool at its disposal to paint a rosy picture of Afghanistan as a terrorist-free state as the two-year anniversary of its disastrous withdrawal approaches. But a coalition of Afghan generals, diplomats and civil servants is writing to Congress to explain that in reality, “today’s Afghanistan under the Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies, is again the greatest terrorist safe haven in the world.

I almost feel sorry for John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman tasked with tidying up after the icky messes deposited about the landscape by Joe Biden.  Let me emphasize the adverb “almost.” Kirby’s job is unenviable. Basically he has to lie and pretend that his boss and that excruciating, illiterate muppet of a press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, make sense. It’s always a horrible goulash that Kirby has to contend with. He has my sympathy for that.  But yesterday, when Kirby stood before the press to answer questions about the administration’s report on Ameirca’s humiliating flight from Afghanistan in August 2021, his performance was not just cringe-making. It was infuriating.

Hibatullah Akhundzada is a secretive man who is only occasionally heard and seldom seen. But on May 1, the Taliban’s supreme leader was delivering a sermon in Kandahar’s central mosque, bragging about his organization’s supposed successes. “Congratulations on this victory, freedom and success,” said the reclusive Akhundzada, surrounded by armed bodyguards. Nine months after the Taliban captured Afghanistan and forced the hapless Ashraf Ghani to flee the country in a helicopter, its chief official remains content with relishing the past. But truth be told, the Taliban has nothing to brag about.

The Taliban Cultural Commission sounds a contradiction in terms but for all foreign journalists it’s the first stop in the new Afghanistan. There, in a dusty office on the first floor of the old Ministry of Information, I was handed a letter which allowed me to go anywhere in the country, except Kabul airport or military installations. In a neighbouring office I met Anamullah Samangani, a Taliban commander from the northern province of Samangan. He’s an Uzbek, resplendent in crisp white shalwar kameez, black waistcoat and black and white silk turban. He told me he has read one of my books. ‘Do you feel safe in Kabul, have you had any difficulties?’ he asked. He assured me that the new Taliban just want to be friends.

The bomb attacks at Kabul airport were what US and allied commanders overseeing the mass evacuation had most feared. In so far as they could be, they were prepared. They had, it appears, received very specific intelligence — perhaps based on a trial run by the bombers — that such attacks were in the offing. They warned people to stay away from the airport. Guards were doubtless on extra-high alert. And yet the perpetrators got through. More than 60 civilians were killed along with 13 US marines. Dozens more were injured and taken to already overburdened hospitals in Kabul. The carnage of 26 August was the costliest day in the last stages of the West’s Afghan war.

They say the city you most fondly remember is the one you grew up in. In my case that’s Kabul. I spent my formative years in the Afghan capital in the mid-1960s. It was a very different time and Afghanistan a very different country. But the Kabul that’s imprinted on my mind belongs to that decade. It was a happy city. No other description does it justice. Of course, it was poor, conservative and hierarchical but people were always smiling. They were warm, welcoming, courteous and generous. This was most obvious in their attitude to children. Everyone called me ‘bacho’. When Mummy took me out, shopkeepers would slip Hershey’s chocolates or spearmint gum into my hands and then seal my lips with their fingers.