EXCLUSIVE: An Australian man was beaten bloody by the Taliban in Kabul today as he tried to reach the airport , in defiance of Biden's order to leave mercy flights alone.
www.dailymail.co.uk
US voices concern at reports of violence against women and children trying to pass through Taliban checkpoints, as evacuations continue
www.theguardian.com
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www.independent.co.uk
If the taliban had truly changed, they would allow people to leave of their own free will. But we all knew it was complete and utter BS. They want enslavement through violence. Same old, and absolutely disgusting. To anyone supporting the taliban, go pound sand.
1. How was it verified that the ones described as Taliban are actually Taliban? Many have reported violence against fleeing Afghans by Afghan Army units stationed at the airport. To what lengths has the mainstream media gone to verify their sources, and verify reports of these events? Your sources have a clear agenda to advance, in particular the Daily Mail, and they are doing exactly that.
2. Use of violence has been broad and bipartisan, but deadly force has been the strategem of US troops in particular. They have been firing live ammunition and using tear gas, chemical irritants and stun grenades to disperse crowds. It is known that a minimum of eight people have been killed by them as a result, and the number is almost certainly higher. Why do you ignore that, but then focus on unclear reports of beating? Is getting beaten by Taliban worse than being killed by US soldiers in your estimation? Why do you direct your outrage at the beatings, but not at the killings, and not least the killings carried out for the past twenty years, which will now become less frequent now that the Taliban have acquired power?
3. Conditions at the airport are dire. In most areas, there is not an empty square meter. Already people have been trampled and injured. Were all Afghans who wanted to gain access to the airport allowed to do so, it is inevitable that there would be more violence and injury than there has been thus far. It is important that the Taliban control the influx of evacuees lest there be a repeat of the earlier incident where some overran the runway and were killed as an American military jet took off.
4. If the Taliban are not letting anyone into the airport as you claim, how can ~80k people, and about ~18k in the last 24 hours, have been evacuated so far? How does that work? If they're not letting them leave, they are doing an awfully poor job of stopping them.
5. Most don't have papers or Visas. How can they leave if they don't have these? The US State Department is turning back many who don't have the papers, and are giving priority to those with US passports and Green Card holders, but even these have reported being turned back at times. These are all reports of US officials, not the Taliban, turning away civilians. So are the US to be accused of not allowing people to leave of their own free will too? Be consistent.
"On Monday, a State Department official said that some former Afghan military interpreters or other close U.S. allies, a designated priority group for evacuations, were being turned away from the airport by American officials in order to give priority to U.S. passport and Green Card holders in recent days... Mr. Zeller is one of many U.S. veterans who have mobilized to help their former Afghan colleagues get out of the country. On Sunday night, Mr. Zeller said, veterans and contacts in Afghanistan organized an operation to bring to the airport some 500 S.I.V. holders who were considered at high risk of Taliban reprisals. They were able to get the Afghans inside the airport, he said, but were turned back at what he described as a State Department checkpoint." [Source]
"Amid the scramble to evacuate, many Afghans have essentially been pushed to the back of the queue."We are currently prioritizing American citizens and legal permanent residents for entry," John Johnson, public affairs officer for the US Embassy in Kabul, told CNN on Monday. "Due to a deteriorating security environment we are asking all others not to come to the airport at this time -- the gates remain closed." " [Source]
Hope has turned to despair for hundreds due to a lack of coordination between Australian agencies and bureaucratic processes, sources say
www.theguardian.com
6. The spokesman of the Taliban, Suhail Shaheen, has said that commercial flights for those with the correct documentation will be allowed after the 31st. So what is it that you were you saying about the Taliban not allowing people to leave again?
7. I return to my principal point: the degree of belligerence, and violence against civilians exhibited by US and NATO troops in the past ten days, and in the past twenty years, has far exceeded any degree of violence exhibited by the Taliban. With the exception of Hamid Karzai airport, a debacle for which the US are entirely responsible, a modicum of normality has returned to the rest of Kabul and Afghanistan. People are going about their day to day lives and earning their livelihoods without any harassment or perturbation, under the protection of the Taliban. It is expected that when the August deadline passes, and the Taliban form a government, things will become increasingly calm. But this is being threatened by the US, who it seems, will endeavor to undermine every attempt by the Taliban to establish a working state.
8. Please take your "enslavement through violence" statement and put it in the trash.