Day: August 27, 2021

U.S. President Joe Biden is vowing vengeance on those responsible for Thursday's deadly attacks outside the Kabul airport that killed at least 13 American military personnel and dozens of civilians who had gathered there in hopes of fleeing the Taliban-controlled country. 

"To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this: We will not forgive," Biden said in a nationally broadcast address. "We will hunt you down and make you pay."

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks in a report on its news agency's Telegram channel, hours after suicide bombers had struck two locations along the perimeter of the Hamid Karzai International Airport: near the Abbey Gate and outside a nearby hotel. 

A regional offshoot of Islamic State known as ISIS-Khorasan Province, or ISIS-K, has been blamed for the attacks.

Biden said he had ordered commanders to develop operational plans to strike ISIS-K assets, leadership and facilities, saying, "We will respond with force and precision at our time, at the place we choose and the moment of our choosing."  

Shortly after the president's remark, the White House press secretary amplified his message: "We will hunt down these terrorists and kill them wherever they are."

At least 90 Afghans died in the attack, according to the Afghan news agency Pajhwok. Including the 13 American servicemen, more than 100 people were killed.

Eighteen injured American military personnel were being evacuated from Afghanistan on specially equipped C-17s with surgical units, according to Captain Bill Urban, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command.

A gun battle occurred after the bombings, U.S. General Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, said during a Pentagon news briefing 

It was the deadliest day for the U.S. military in Afghanistan in a decade. That also made Thursday the most somber day of Biden's 7-month-old presidency, prompting the last-minute postponement of Biden's meeting with the visiting Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. During the gloomy afternoon, thunder echoed around the White House as a rainstorm enveloped Washington. 

The loss of life also intensified political flashpoints around the Democratic president, with several Republican members of Congress immediately issuing statements saying Biden bore personal responsibility and calling for him to resign. 

"It's not a day for politics," replied Psaki, when asked about the resignation calls. "And we would expect that any American, whether they're elected or not, would stand with us and our commitment to going after and fighting and killing those terrorists wherever they live, and to honoring the memory of service members."

More than 100,000 people have left Afghanistan on evacuation flights, Biden said Thursday, vowing the evacuations would continue until the August 31 deadline to withdraw all troops.  

"We will get Americans out who want to get out," the president said.

Biden and Psaki said there was no evidence, so far, of collusion between the Taliban, which seized control of Kabul nearly two weeks ago, and ISIS in carrying out the attacks. 

The United Nations and NATO condemned the attacks, as did Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid. 

Speaking about the first blast, a senior Taliban source confirmed to VOA that a suicide bomber had blown himself up in an area holding a large number of people.   

The explosions came hours after Western governments had warned of the threat of a terror attack at the airport and said those gathered in the area should move to a safe location.    

"The overall sense of mission is focused right now at the (passenger) terminal. Lots of Marines and consular officers cared deeply about the Afghans we were helping," said a U.S. State Department official who spoke to VOA on condition of anonymity. 

The U.S. is "trying to carry on with the mission ahead while knowing our security is severely compromised," the official said. "Attacks occurred right at our shift change; otherwise, consular officers might have been casualties, too."  

Many of those wounded Thursday arrived at Kabul's Emergency Hospital, run by an international nongovernmental organization that treats victims of war and landmines. Afghan news channels tweeted pictures of civilians transporting their wounded in wheelbarrows.

Pakistan officials have asked that beginning Friday, hotels across the capital, Islamabad, cancel reservations and keep all rooms at the government's disposal for at least three weeks to accommodate the thousands of foreigners being urgently evacuated from Afghanistan. 

Biden on Thursday issued a proclamation lowering U.S. flags across the country through August 30 "as a mark of respect for the U.S. service members and other victims killed in the terrorist attack."

Minutes later, the flag above the White House was lowered to half-staff.

Source: Voice of America

The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan fails any comparison to Washington’s role in Taiwan because no American troops are stationed on the island and Taiwan’s most likely enemy, China, lacks any physical stronghold there, analysts told VOA this week after Chinese media linked the two situations.

Conversely, they add, the United States is better placed to help Taiwan now with part of its military budget no longer tied up in Afghanistan, and China is probably using its media to discredit Washington.

With the rapid Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and the American troop withdrawal, China’s government-backed, English-language Global Times newspaper suggested on August 16 that Taiwan could suffer the same sudden pullout of U.S. forces as has Afghanistan.

“Now the rapidly changing situation in Afghanistan has even worried some in the island of Taiwan and sounded a warning bell to secessionists there, as it's not the first time the U.S. has abandoned its allies and the so-called alliances, which are made use of only as chess pieces in Washington's global strategy,” the Global Times editorial said.

The Afghanistan-Taiwan comparison doesn’t work, however, political science scholars say.

“There is no U.S. pullout that could be envisioned there, and so there’s no prospect that Taiwan is going to collapse anytime soon,” said Scott Harold, a Washington-based senior political scientist with the Rand Corp. research organization.

“Taiwan is not connected to China by a land border, and there is not an active insurgency going on inside Taiwan,” he said.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban already controlled parts of the country before the United States withdrew. U.S. troops reached Afghanistan in late 2001 to look for al-Qaida operatives after that year’s September 11 terrorist attacks.

In another contrast with Afghanistan, Taiwan’s democratic government is stable and its own military well established, Harold said.

Withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan stops a “drain” of U.S. taxpayer money, he added. The United States had spent $2.26 trillion on the war in Afghanistan as of April, including operations in Pakistan, the Watson Institute of International & Public Affairs at Brown University estimated.

The intents of U.S. engagement in Afghanistan and Taiwan differ markedly too, said Michael Shoebridge, director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Defense, Strategy and National Security program.

“In one way the U.S. and its coalition partners, which include Australia and NATO members, were doing things to Afghanistan, whereas in the Indo-Pacific and in cases like Taiwan, the Americans are working with their security partners and allies for joint interests and ends,” he said.

U.S. officials are bound by the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act to consider defending Taiwan if needed.

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, backed by a political party with an especially guarded view toward China, and former U.S. President Donald Trump deepened relations with a flurry of senior-level visits, U.S. Navy ship passages in the Taiwan Strait and additional arms sales.

U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price told reinforced the U.S. commitment to Taiwan at the department’s press briefing August 19.

“We do have an abiding interest in peace and security across the Taiwan Strait,” he said.

“We consider this central to the security and stability of the broader region, of the broader Indo-Pacific. Events elsewhere in the world, whether that’s in Afghanistan or any other region, are not going to change that.” he told reporters.

China claims sovereignty over Taiwan, though the two sides have been separately ruled since Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists lost the Chinese civil war to Mao Zedong’s Communists and retreated to the island.

Taiwan regards China as a military foe, as Beijing has not renounced use of force to bring Taiwan under its flag. Beijing usually protests any U.S. military aid to Taiwan as well as major strides in political relations.

China, as a longstanding government, should hesitate in casting itself as a Taliban-like aggressor, analysts caution. The Taliban was a rebel insurgency until this month.

“The Chinese Communist Party and Taliban both use military might to obtain their political power, but in terms of political systems the two can’t be so simply compared,” said Huang Kwei-bo, vice dean of the international affairs college at National Chengchi University in Taipei.

“If you want to make that kind of comparison, couldn’t someone say the modern Vietnamese Communist Party is the Taliban?” Huang said. “So, we need to be extremely careful.”

Chinese media, most of which are government-run, probably meant for their Taiwan-Afghanistan comments to discredit the United States as an ally, said Yun Sun, co-director of the East Asia program at the Stimson Center in Washington.

“They are trying to use the case of Afghanistan to sow the seed of doubt among the Taiwanese and also to demonstrate to the international community that U.S. commitment is unreliable,” Sun said.

The United States “abandoned” allies in South Vietnam and eventually evacuated most U.S. citizens in Saigon, the Global Times report says. Two years ago, it adds, U.S. troops withdrew from northern Syria “abruptly and abandoned their allies.” Taiwan, the commentary adds, “is the region that relies on the protection of the U.S. the most in Asia”.

Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Party spokesperson Hsieh Pei-fen said in an August 19 social media statement that the issues in Taiwan and Afghanistan are “different by nature.”

Source: Voice of America