There’s a price to be paid for stupidity and incompetence in government. And Afghans who helped the U.S. during the occupation are paying it.
Two days ago, the Taliban promised a general “amnesty” for all those who collaborated with the U.S. military and the Afghan national government. The only people who believed that besides Biden administration officials were liberals and 5-year-old children.
In truth, the Taliban’s idea of “amnesty” is quite different from how you or I would define the term. A report from the Norwegian Center for Global Analyses — an organization that provides intelligence to the UN — paints a much more accurate picture of how the Taliban defines “amnesty.”
“There are a high number of individuals that are currently being targeted by the Taliban and the threat is crystal clear,” Christian Nellemann, who leads the Norwegian Center, told the BBC. “It is in writing that, unless they give themselves in, the Taliban will arrest and prosecute, interrogate and punish family members on behalf of those individuals.”
He warned that anyone on the Taliban’s blacklist was in severe danger, and that there could be mass executions.
Foreign powers are continuing efforts to get their nationals out of Afghanistan. A Nato official said on Friday that more than 18,000 people have been evacuated in the last five days from Kabul airport.
Some 6,000 more, among them former interpreters for foreign armed forces, are on standby to be flown out late on Thursday or early Friday.
The world got a taste of Taliban “amnesty” when reports began coming in over the last month of the Taliban executing surrendering Afghan soldiers. Now, policymakers’ worst nightmares are being realized as the Taliban shrug off the veneer of civilized behavior and revert to their roots as terrorist thugs.
Ryan Rogers, a retired Marine sergeant, told Fox News Thursday that the interpreter he worked with during the bloody 2010 battle of Marjah in Helmand province is currently trapped in Kabul, prevented from reaching the airport as Taliban fighters seek out and murder former Afghan commandoes and interpreters.
“He told me yesterday they hung three [Afghan National Army] commanders that they had found,” he said. “And that close to the place that he’s hiding, they’re going house-to-house and that they sent a transmission out saying they had plans for the people that operated with America.”
Rogers told Fox News, “I said, hey, did you see any of this stuff with your eyes? He said yes. They’re not showing this stuff because the people are cheering, but they’re scared to death, and they’re hanging these people. And he said they’re going house to house and their priorities are Afghan National Army Special Forces, the police special forces and the interpreters.”
So far, the U.S. evacuation isn’t going very well.
U.S. Air Force C-17 evacuation flights leaving Kabul airport nearly half empty: Pentagon
— Lucas Tomlinson (@LucasFoxNews) August 19, 2021
Comparing what’s going on in Afghanistan with the evacuation of Saigon isn’t very accurate. It’s worse.
This horrific photograph
(📷Omar Haidari via @Reuters) should haunt Joe Biden & Boris Johnson for the rest of their terms in office. A baby passed up by frantic family to US military at Kabul airport. Imagine how desperate you have to be to do this? What fate awaits that child? pic.twitter.com/Xej2NtBCSe— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) August 20, 2021
What makes the situation in Afghanistan so perilous for the 10,000 Americans trapped in Kabul is that no one — even among the Taliban — appears to be in charge. The Taliban has always been a loosely structured organization, riven with factions and defined by leadership rivalries.
The terrorists don’t do organizational flow charts, which makes dealing with the Taliban a hit or miss proposition.
So when one faction announces a broad and inclusive amnesty, it’s entirely possible that another faction can go door-to-door and take revenge on its enemies. At the moment, it’s an open question as to whether the Biden administration is even dealing with the right Taliban terrorists.
Can we believe Taliban assurances that Americans can have “safe passage” to the Kabul airport? It’s a life-or-death gamble that few are apparently willing to take.
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