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18 Aug, 73 tweets, 31 min read
Very consistent pattern of reports about #Taliban behaviour that we have now. Needless to say it does not match what the Taliban have been presenting in these first few days in the interview with a female journalist (who has now been purged) or in their press conferences.
State Department seeding the ground for a recognition of the Taliban regime.
Kinzinger is clearly correct: it was a disaster to give up Bagram before the end of the mission
This is excellent by @ShayKhatiri on the way the US created an Afghan army that was in key respects reliant on American support, from the military and from contractors, and this support was withdrawn virtually overnight, with no time to transition
Britain's military chief also makes the point that the US pulling logistics and air power from the Afghan army so suddenly left it basically incapable of functioning
Unsure of the relevance of US economic sanctions against a country without an economy. Be more effective to #SanctionPakisan, though.
The failure, despite months of warning, to prepare to take our Afghan allies out of the country is the most shameful part of all this.
Possibly the most awful response of any government so far
#Taliban have set up checkpoints to the airport, meaning anyone who tries to get there is announcing themselves as someone the Taliban wants to kill. Large numbers of people with travel documents can't get to the airport and flights are leaving half-empty
The Biden administration's messaging, atop its policy, has has been a shambles, but even by these standards they need to make Jake Sullivan be quiet. He has managed to make everything disastrously worse every time he has spoken in the last few days.
#Qatar took the #Taliban "negotiators" - the men who got the #US to release jihadists and buy time for the Taliban to prepare this final offensive - back to #Afghanistan on an official plane, as if they are the government
Popular resistance to the Taliban in Jalalabad
Popular resistance to the Taliban in Asadabad
Rather touching. Found someone who thinks the Biden administration is in control of events.
#Taliban says the sunlit uplands are visible
CAGE's Moazzam Begg advocating mass murder in Afghanistan.
At least someone cares
#Taliban stage managing the public views, but the terror is already underway away from the cameras.
The first place this story about Ghani taking a large amount of cash with him appeared was in the Russian media. Doesn't mean it isn't true. Means caution is needed since nobody even know where Ghani is right now.
Situation seems to be stabilising ... for now
Tajikistan recognises the resistance
Show of force from the Afghan resistance in Panjshir
Think the people who doctored that clip and slandered Clarissa Ward should apologise now. And those insisting the Taliban has turned over a new leaf should just stop being so bloody silly.
This is actually far worse from Sir Nick Carter than the quotes would suggest. I am really quite shocked a British military official, let alone the top one, could talk about the Taliban in this way.
#Afghanistan's fallen president, Ashraf Ghani, has surfaced in the #UAE.
The New #Taliban, same as the Old Taliban
Should be interesting
Military, including Milley, warned that if the 2,500 #US troops withdrew things could collapse quickly. Even Blinken and Jake Sullivan worried it would lead to attacks on Embassies and the Afghans who worked with us. But #Biden was ideologically committed. wsj.com/articles/biden…
Confirms the point I made here: Biden absolutely knew what he was doing; there was no "intelligence failure". telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/1…
How short are memories in the modern world ...
#Britain's ambassador in #Afghanistan stepped away from the chaos for a second to explain what our mission in the country is doing, working to get our own people and as many Afghans as possible who need to be evacuated out.
Jihadists sense opportunity, and with good reason
Ahmad Masud, leader of the last pocket of anti-Taliban forces, the "National Resistance Front", said his troops will fight for Panjshir, but they know they will be overwhelmed, asks the West: "we need more weapons, more ammunition and more supplies" washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
#Taliban: "There will be no democratic system at all because it does not have any base in our country. We will not discuss what type of political system should we apply in #Afghanistan because it is clear. It is #sharia law and that is it." reuters.com/world/asia-pac…
Awful
The inescapable factor in the #Afghanistan mess is #Pakistan, but #America/allies are culpable - in the corruption, the illegitimacy, and all the other charges now being thrown at the Afghans to salve our consciences about abandoning them. @CChristineFair: cchristinefair.medium.com/the-unwinnable…
#TTP ("Pakistani Taliban") senior leadership in #Afghanistan to congratulate the #Taliban on its victory
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley said that since the 14 April withdrawal decision a "deliberate and responsible drawdown" has been conducted, and the US is "not going to leave (Afghan allies) behind", before qualifying the US will get out "as many as possible".
Milley says twice nobody could have seen such a rapid collapse in #Afghanistan - there was "nothing" to indicate it and neither he "nor ... anyone else" predicted this - and then dodges the question asking how this can be so when the offensive began months ago in Kandahar etc.
Pretty shocking from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, saying, "It's obvious we're not close to where we want to be" in terms of numbers evacuated but he will "get everyone that we can possibly evacuate, evacuated" and go "until the clock runs out or we run out of capability."
Austin says the US can't go to retrieve Americans in Kabul, so the US is reliant on the Taliban to let its citizens and Afghans with documents through their checkpoints to get to the airport.
#Austin reiterates that the US is reliant on #Taliban goodwill in letting people get to the airport to get out of #Afghanistan.
Austin says the US can do individual rescue missions in Kabul for Americans who are "in extremis condition or circumstance" but "we don't have the capability to go out and collect up large numbers of people".
There were questions about #Bagram at the Austin/Milley presser, too; no decent answers. But the headline is going to be the #Biden admin conceding it is relying on the #Taliban's cooperation to get *#Americans* out, and likely will not get them all out by the Aug. 31 deadline.
#Biden was asked about the Afghans who fell from the departing U.S. planes and angrily interrupts, "That was four days ago, five days ago".

Asked if there was *anything* that could have been handled better, Biden says: "No".
Incidentally, it was two days ago, but that is the least of what's wrong with that response.
#Biden personally and his whole team have made this far worse - for themselves, never mind America or the Afghans - than it had to be. Their statements show them as far more incompetent and far more cruel than would be demonstrable if they had just been quiet.
This sounds exactly like the liberals in the weeks after the Shah left his country and the Islamic Revolution took over. There was no reason to be deceived in 1979, and there is no reason with the Taliban now.
This does sound about right from the United Nations
As expected. What a horrific, needless disaster
Honestly, if I was them, I would stop speaking, too.
Something the administration spokesman and surrogates might acknowledge.
This is what the Defense Secretary calls a "dynamic" situation
#Biden tonight *seemed* to say that the #US would not be limiting its evacuation operation by time, but ... the administration has said a lot of things in the last few days.
If you can't trust the Taliban ...
Have a feeling this will be a majority sentiment
The #Taliban is already beginning its atrocities but it is preparing for much worse.
As it ever was: #Pakistan ran the #Taliban out of its diplomatic facilities the last time
For all the attacks on our effort in #Afghanistan, it really did make life a lot better for millions, gave them hope in a different life, and now we've handed them back to barbarians and endangered ourselves for no good reason. Just so desperately sad.
Said this earlier today. It is entirely possible Ghani took some large amount of money with him - but we do not know that. The "evidence" so far is from sources that are self-evidently suspect.
Doubt it. This fiasco will haunt the Biden administration, and not just for what they allowed to happen but for how they've responded to it. Their statements the last few days have been damning, both callous and inept simultaneously.
Beyond a joke
The Biden administration messaging seems, simply, to reflect their view of reality. They do seem to genuinely think that "international consensus" is a real thing and once attained it is a forcefield that will compel rampaging jihadists and their Pakistani puppet masters.
The massive, neglected element in the #Taliban takeover in #Afghanistan is that they are a wing of #Pakistan's (deep) state power. This is often denied - sometimes in bad faith, sometimes through ignorance. So here's an evidence compilation and explainer: kyleorton.co.uk/2021/08/17/pak…
👀
There is continued popular resistance to the #Taliban - and there is still time.
Trying—and Failing—to Save the Family of the Afghan Who Saved Me newyorker.com/news/daily-com…
Between the Pence op-ed in the @WSJ yesterday claiming the "deal" Trump signed with the Taliban, this, and the administration's messaging, it has been a truly awful week for "strategic communications"
It truly is, though the Biden administration doesn't seem to be doing that much more for Americans - it is relying on (and for now mostly has) the compliance of the Taliban in letting Americans leave.
Jihadists watch jihad work and conclude jihad is the way to go
To say that a statement from the UN and a continued effort on a political solution are the responses makes the Biden administration look delusional or dishonest, and in either case weak and ineffective.
#Russia quite fine with the #Taliban victory. Take note "pivot to great power competition" people.

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More from @KyleWOrton

Kyle Orton Profile picture
15 Sep
In Sept. 1971, the KGB's Oleg Lyalin defected from the London Embassy and told the British government about the really alarming (and some quite bizarre) "special actions" the Soviets had been planning on the West, precipitating the mass expulsion Soviet spies in Operation FOOT.
The interesting thing is that this meant the West was quite well aware, from near the beginning of Andropov's renewed campaign, that Soviet terrorism was a very real phenomenon, and yet down to the end most in the West considered it a "conspiracy theory"
The KGB recruitment of Wadi Haddad of the PFLP in 1970 was the turning point: his Palestinian group was given weapons that even Eastern Bloc states hadn't received and given tasks as various as kidnapping CIA officers and assassinating Soviet defectors.
Read 7 tweets
Kyle Orton Profile picture
15 Sep
#Pakistan's claim to be a victim of terrorism rests on groups like #TTP ("Pakistani Taliban"), but it was the Army/ISI who created the jihadist emirate in North Waziristan where this group was formed, with the active and ongoing assistance of the ISI's loyal Haqqani Network. ImageImage
#pt: "The Foutainhead of Jihad", pp. 164-5.
The #Haqqani-run enclave in North Waziristan, operating with the full backing of #Pakistan's ISI, not only nurtured the #TTP the Pakistanis would later portray as a mortal foe, it of course supported the "Afghan" #Taliban and was where #Al_Qaeda organised many post-9/11 plots. ImageImage
Read 9 tweets
Kyle Orton Profile picture
14 Sep
#IS established itself in "Af-Pak" by building off the Afghan Salafist community that took root in eastern areas via the Arab presence there beginning many decades ago. The Salafis had some second thoughts, but the #Taliban is now pressuring them, too. trtworld.com/opinion/the-dy…
#pt: The Taliban made an approach to IS-Centre in 2015 to ask that ISKP not be used to open another jihadist front, since this would distract from the war with the West. No dice. IS didn't even bother to reply.
#pt: The original Pakistani, mostly TTP, leadership of #ISKP was killed off quite quickly and replaced with Afghan Salafis. The current leader, though, Dr. Shahab al-Muhajir, seems to be a former Haqqani Network operative, and has peeled away other parts of that network.
Read 4 tweets
Kyle Orton Profile picture
13 Sep
The lengths the #KGB went to in trying to destroy #Solzhenitsyn even after he had been expelled from the Soviet Union are extraordinary, and not entirely irrational: they understood the danger he posed to them.

<Mini thread drawn from "The Sword and the Shield", pp. 312, 317-21>
Andropov first tried to expel Solzhenitsyn in autumn 1971, but Brezhnev listened to interior minister Nikolai Shchelokov, who said the great writer should be co-opted rather than persecuted. Andropov did not forget this, and later witch-hunted Shchelokov until he killed himself.
In late 1973, after Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov wrote an open letter that encouraged Congress to override the Nixon-Kissinger administration by passing Jackson-Vanik that linked Soviet trade privileges to human rights, Brezhnev said the KGB should have cracked down from the start.
Read 9 tweets
Kyle Orton Profile picture
9 Sep
#Pakistan's ruler from 1999 to 2008, General Pervez Musharraf, wrote in his memoir: "It is true that we had assisted in the rise of the #Taliban after the Soviet Union withdrew from #Afghanistan" (p. 202). Image
Even after #Pakistan's General Musharraf disparages the "obscurantist" nature of the #Taliban and the "peace of the graveyard" they brought, he writes: "Nevertheless, we still supported them, for geostrategic reasons", to minimise Indian influence in #Afghanistan (p. 203).
Musharraf tries to create a narrative where #Pakistan was not engaged with the #Taliban at inception, even though the Saudis and UAE were (p. 201-11), which is absurd, and that the ISI had lost its "leverage" over the Taliban after it came to power (pp. 203, 209), equally absurd.
Read 9 tweets
Kyle Orton Profile picture
5 Sep
"Though Mr. Biden reversed other Trump policies, he was inclined to go through with the Afghan [withdrawal] ... The military argued for keeping 2,500 troops ... Bagram air base was central to the military's plans" for drones and special forces. wsj.com/articles/insid…
On 8 May, "The Pentagon wanted a discussion on an emergency evacuation of the embassy and how to plan to remove Afghans at risk, but White House officials asked that those issues be removed from the agenda"

Again, Biden cannot say he didn't know. Biden chose to leave the Afghans
Even Jake Sullivan thought closing Bagram Airbase was a bad idea, and in June there was a pause for four days. But Biden insisted on doing all this with 650 troops in Kabul, so the Pentagon could only protect either Bagram or HKIA, and Biden went with the latter.
Read 7 tweets

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