At first glance, I thought that was from The Onion.

quote:

Afghanistan’s state-run power company neglected to mention on Tuesday that the Taliban, which seized control of Afghanistan’s government on August 15, 2021, has failed to pay bills owed to its electricity suppliers, including those in Uzbekistan, since coming to power.

Not a high priority for the new folks in power.
Given the slap-dash nature and good-enough mindset amongst many there, purchasing a bunch of portable Honda generators and paying a lacky to constantly monitor and fill its gas level is a perfectly acceptable solution.

Saves lives. When TVs don’t work that’s less kids to toss off a roof for watching soccer games.

They didn't have electricity in the 7th century, why should they need it now?

^
This.

we just sent them 400 million. Can't we at least buy back some of our stuff ?

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
The DABS C.E.O. said at the time he had recently asked the United Nations (U.N.) for assistance in paying Afghanistan’s overdue power bills but had not received a response.

“We’ve asked the UNAMA in Kabul to assist the people of Afghanistan to pay the country’s power suppliers as part of their humanitarian aid

That's screwed-up enough, the UN just might do it, too.

There were a few assertions and public statements about this report in the days leading up to the surrender of Afghanistan, but now the report has been declassified and proves that the Biden administration had ample warning that withdrawal of U.S. support for the Afghan Air Force would lead to its collapse, with the Afghan Army dependent on the air support it provided, and the fall of the country to the Taliban.

Emphasis added in bold.

===========================

Before Pullout, Watchdog Warned of Afghan Air Force Collapse

A year-old report by Washington's Afghanistan watchdog has now been declassified and shows that it warned back in early 2021 that the Afghan air force would collapse without critical U.S. aid and training.

By Associated Press
Jan. 18, 2022


FILE - A-29 Super Tucano planes are on display during a handover from the NATO-led Resolute Support mission to the Afghan army at the military Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sept. 17, 2020. A year-old report by Washington’s Afghanistan watchdog warned in early 2021, months before President Joe Biden announced the end to America’s longest war, the Afghan air force would collapse without critical U.S. aid, training and American maintenance. The report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko was classified back when it was written and only declassified on Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2021. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul, File). THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


By KATHY GANNON, Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Months before President Joe Biden announced the U.S.’s complete withdrawal from Afghanistan last year, Washington’s watchdog warned that the Afghan air force would collapse without critical American aid, training and maintenance. The report was declassified Tuesday.

The report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko, submitted to the Department of Defense in January 2021, underscores that American authorities had been alerted that Afghanistan’s air force did not have the capabilities to survive after a U.S. withdrawal. In particular, the report points to U.S. failure to train Afghan support staff, leaving the air force unable to maintain its aircraft without American contractors.

U.S. air support to government forces was key in the 20-year-war against Taliban insurgents. Its removal — along with the inability of the Afghan air force to fill the void — was one factor that contributed to the Taliban’s sweeping victory as the Americans withdrew.

The inspector general’s office told The Associated Press on Monday that it is rare for SIGAR reports to be classified but when they are, a declassified version is issued by the Pentagon in under two months. The office said it did not know why it took the Defense Department more than a year before declassifying this particular report, or why it did so now, five months after the Taliban took power.

SIGAR has tracked and documented Washington’s spending and progress in Afghanistan since the office was established in 2008. It has released successive reports that documented corruption, Afghan and U.S. leadership failings and weaknesses within the Afghan army, offering recommendations on where to improve.

Since the 2001 U.S-led invasion that ousted the Taliban and during the long war that ensued, Washington spent more than $145 billion on reconstruction in Afghanistan and nearly $1 trillion on its military engagement. Billions went to building up the Afghan military forces.

Biden announced in April that the last 2,500-3,500 U.S. troops would leave along with NATO’s 7,500 troops, following a deal reached with the Taliban by the Trump administration. The announcement started a rapid collapse of the Afghan defense forces.

The Taliban’s sweep through the country was swift, with many areas falling without a fight as Afghan troops — many of whom had not received their salaries from the Afghan government in months — fled. Afghan warplanes continued to hit Taliban positions in some areas in June and July last year, but it was not enough to stem the tide.

The Taliban entered Kabul on Aug. 15 after U.S.-backed President Ashraf Ghani fled the capital. By the end of August, the U.S. completed its chaotic departure and the evacuation of tens of thousands of Afghans, marked by images of young men clinging to departing U.S. aircraft for an opportunity to live in the U.S. and flee the Taliban’s harsh and restrictive rule.

Over the preceding months, Afghan officials had warned that the air force was not able to stand on its own. Ata Mohammed Noor, a powerful warlord in northern Afghanistan who was a key U.S. ally in the 2001 defeat of the Taliban, said the fleet was overused and under-maintained.

“Most of the planes are back on the ground. They cannot fly and most of them are out of ammunition,” he said.

The newly declassified SIGAR report says that between 2010 and 2019, the U.S. spent $8.5 billion “to support and develop” the Afghan air force and its elite unit, the Special Mission Wing. But the report warns that both are ill-prepared. It also warns against removing the hundreds of U.S. contractors who maintained the aircraft fleet.

According to the report, NATO and the U.S. switched in 2019 from building the air force to making sure it had a chance at long-term survival.

But Sopko gave their efforts a failing grade, saying the Afghan air force hadn’t been able to get the qualified personnel needed to set itself on the road to independence.

He said a combination of U.S. and NATO military personnel, as well as U.S.-funded contractors, had focused on training pilots but had not prioritized training for 86% of Afghanistan Air force personnel, including its support staff.

Even as the U.S. Department of Defense touted the Afghan air force’s progress “in combat operation capabilities, pilot and ground crew proficiency, as well as air-to-ground integration,” Sopko said, they continued “to struggle with human capital limitations, leadership challenges, aircraft misuse, and a dependence on contractor logistic support.”

Despite the announced surrender months earlier, leaked memos from a meeting proove just how inept and unprepared the Biden administration was for the evacuation of Afghanistan.

[Note: embedded cloud memo from the meeting and hyperlinks found at linked website article.]

=====================

Leaked document reveals Biden’s Afghan failures

Jonathan Swan and Hans Nichols
Updated Feb 2, 2022

Leaked notes from a White House Situation Room meeting the day before Kabul fell shed new light on just how unprepared the Biden administration was to evacuate Afghan nationals who'd helped the United States in its 20-year war against the Taliban.

Why it matters: Hours before the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan's capital on Aug. 15, 2021, senior Biden administration officials were still discussing and assigning basic actions involved in a mass civilian evacuation.

• Outsiders were frustrated and suspicious the administration was having plenty of meetings but was stuck in bureaucratic inertia and lacked urgency until the last minute.

• While the word "immediately" peppers the document, it's clear officials were still scrambling to finalize their plans — on the afternoon of Aug. 14.

• For example, they'd just decided they needed to notify local Afghan staff "to begin to register their interest in relocation to the United States," the document says.

• And they were still determining which countries could serve as transit points for evacuees.

The big picture: President Biden was determined to end the country's involvement in its longest war, and last April he announced his plans to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, 2021.

President Trump had previously cut a deal for a U.S. withdrawal by May 2021.

• Biden's approval ratings still haven't recovered from the chaotic scenes of those final moments, with Afghans falling to their death from military transports and a suicide blast that killed 13 U.S. service members and scores of Afghans outside the gates of Hamid Karzai airport.

• The Atlantic reported this week that thousands of vulnerable Afghans remain stuck in bureaucratic hell, terrified the Taliban they fought for years will hunt them down.

• Later this month, Congress will name members to a bipartisan, 12-person commission that will study the war and issue a report similar to the 9/11 Commission.

The details: Axios obtained the NSC's "summary of conclusions" for a meeting of the so-called Deputies Small Group.

It assembles top aides to various Cabinet members, and usually lays the groundwork for Deputies' or Principals' sessions, or works out practical details for executing decisions already made by their bosses.

• The document regarded "Relocations out of Afghanistan," and the meeting was held from 3:30-4:30pm on the afternoon of Aug. 14, Washington time.

• At that moment, Taliban fighters were descending upon Kabul.

• The meeting was chaired by National Security Council official Liz Sherwood-Randall and included senior officials across multiple agencies, including Gen. John Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Between the lines: The meeting notes highlight how many crucial actions the Biden administration was deciding at the last minute — just hours before Kabul would fall and former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani would flee his palace in a helicopter.

Action items decided in meeting included:

• "State will work to identify as many countries as possible to serve as transit points. Transit points need to be able to accommodate U.S. citizens, Afghan nationals, third country nationals, and other evacuees.(Action: State, immediately)"

• "Embassy Kabul will notify LES [locally employed staff] to begin to register their interest in relocation to the United States and begin to prepare immediately for departure... (Action: Embassy Kabul, immediately)"

What they're saying: "While we're not going to comment on leaked internal documents, cherry-picked notes from one meeting do not reflect the months of work that were already underway," NSC spokesperson Emily Horne told Axios.

• "Earlier that summer, we launched Operation Allies Refuge and had worked with Congress to pass legislation that gave us greater flexibility to quickly relocate Afghan partners," Horne said.

• "It was because of this type of planning and other efforts that we were able to facilitate the evacuation of more than 120,000 Americans, legal permanent residents, vulnerable Afghans and other partners."

Behind the scenes: By the time the Saturday afternoon meeting happened, senior Biden officials across the government had been meeting around the clock to deal with the high-speed unraveling of Afghanistan.

• The administration had taken some measures that would help them ultimately evacuate more than 120,000 people out of Kabul airport by Aug. 31 — the president's revised withdrawal deadline.

• Amid chaos and death, the effort to remove both U.S. citizens and cooperative Afghan nationals was executed in partnership with allies and many desperate improvised efforts from the private sector and veterans groups.

• Troops were pre-positioned in the region so they could get quickly to Kabul airport to run the evacuation. The administration had accelerated the Special Immigrant Visa [SIV] approvals. And Biden officials had explored with other countries the possibilities of them serving as transit points for evacuees — which ultimately led to a network that hosted tens of thousands of Afghans waiting for processing.

• Nonetheless, many of the key decisions hadn't been made on the eve of Kabul's fall.

The president himself — and his intelligence community — overestimated the ability of the Afghan military to defend their territory against the Taliban.

• And complicating the situation further, Ghani had personally pleaded with Biden not to do mass evacuations of Afghans earlier in the year.

• He feared it would signal a loss of faith in his government.

The bottom line: Many outside advisers were sounding the alarm as the Taliban swept through provincial capitals heading into August.

• "I kept being told by people in the [White House] the thing they were most concerned about was the optics of a chaotic evacuation," said Matt Zeller, a former CIA officer who contacted administration officials in February 2021 about protecting Afghans who worked with the Americans. "They treated us like we were Chicken Little. They didn’t believe the sky was falling."

• "On the 13th of July, we offered to work with them to help evacuate our partners," Zeller added. "We all saw this disaster coming before the inevitable occurred. They didn’t get back to us until Aug 15, the day Kabul fell."

Mark Jacobson, deputy NATO representative in Afghanistan during the Obama administration, told Axios: "That so much planning, prioritizing and addressing of key questions had not been completed, even as Kabul was about to fall, underscores the absence of adequate interagency planning."

• "This is especially surprising given the depth of experience on Afghanistan and contingency operations at that table."

Go deeper: Read the document.

A new Senate Foreign Relations committee report contradicts the Biden administration's numbers and indicates as many as 9000 American citizens remain trapped in Afghanistan.

[Note: hyperlink to report found at linked website article.]

==================

Biden abandoned as many as 9,000 Americans in Afghanistan, new report shows

FEBRUARY 07, 2022 LIZ GEORGE

President Joe Biden abandoned as many as 9,000 American citizens in Afghanistan following the administration’s botched withdrawal in August last year, a new report released on Thursday by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee revealed. The report contradicts the Biden administration’s earlier claims that just 100-150 were left behind.

Signed by Foreign Relations ranking member Jim Risch of Idaho, the report shows that senior State Department officials leading the evacuation task force believed 15,000 Americans at the most were in Afghanistan around Aug. 17. By Aug. 31, the final day of evacuation operations, 6,000 Americans managed to escape the country that was quickly taken over by the Taliban.

“Even taking the most conservative estimates from the F-77 report, this meant the United States left at least a few thousand people behind,” the report concluded.

Despite the State Department’s information on the number of Americans still in Afghanistan, Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken testified in September in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee that “approximately 100-150 remained in Afghanistan who still wished to depart.”

The report also highlighted the Biden administration’s characterization of Americans left behind in Afghanistan, particularly Blinken’s “problematic” suggestion that some Americans were still unsure if they wanted to leave Afghanistan at the time.

“Instead of reinforcing the administration’s commitment to continue to evacuate Americans, Secretary Blinken instead parsed between dual nationals and American citizens claiming the remainder were ‘…dual citizens living in Afghanistan for years, decades, generations. Deciding whether or not to leave the place that they know as home is a wrenching decision.’ Dual citizens faced the same security threats and deserved the same efforts to depart Afghanistan as American citizens. The effort to distinguish between dual citizens and American citizens is a distinction without a difference, and appears to have been a messaging tactic to minimize the number of American citizens left behind,” the report stated.

The report also noted that despite “countless warnings” that the Taliban was going to “swiftly” take control of Afghanistan, the Biden administration “failed to properly plan a coordinated evacuation of U.S. citizens, Afghans, and allied partners.”

“The administration waited until less than a day before Kabul fell to make senior leadership decisions on organizing and executing a withdrawal, which proved to be too little too late,” the report added. “While the Department of Defense and Department of State pulled off a major feat in the number of people evacuated, more of our partners could have been saved if proper planning had been conducted.”

^^^ If Trump left Americans behind it would have been on the news 24/7, with another impeachment. The fact that the commie press gives Biden a pass on sentencing thousands of Americans to their death (or worse, if you can imagine) is truly sickening.

A bit more sunlight to this sad chapter. There's some gems in there, and as expected, military was hamstrung but the White House and an intransigent State Dept. No surprise, quotes from State representatives attempt to point fingers back at DoD...the Pentagon deserves plenty of blame but, not for the reasons they think.

If you want to get your blood pressure up, or, get a picture of the Left's thought process, check out the comments. Its not called the Washington comPost for nothing

Documents reveal U.S. military’s frustration with White House, diplomats over Afghanistan evacuation

quote:

Senior White House and State Department officials failed to grasp the Taliban’s steady advance on Afghanistan’s capital and resisted efforts by U.S. military leaders to prepare the evacuation of embassy personnel and Afghan allies weeks before Kabul’s fall, placing American troops ordered to carry out the withdrawal in greater danger, according to sworn testimony from multiple commanders involved in the operation.

An Army investigative report, numbering 2,000 pages and released to The Washington Post through a Freedom of Information Act request, details the life-or-death decisions made daily by U.S. soldiers and Marines sent to secure Hamid Karzai International Airport as thousands converged on the airfield in a frantic bid to escape.

Beyond the bleak, blunt assessments of top military commanders, the documents contain previously unreported disclosures about the violence American personnel experienced, including one exchange of gunfire that left two Taliban fighters dead after they allegedly menaced a group of U.S. Marines and Afghan civilians. In a separate incident a few days later, U.S. troops killed a member of an elite Afghan strike unit that had joined the operation and wounded six others after they fired on the Americans.

quote:

Military personnel would have been “much better prepared to conduct a more orderly” evacuation, Navy Rear Adm. Peter Vasely, the top U.S. commander on the ground during the operation, told Army investigators, “if policymakers had paid attention to the indicators of what was happening on the ground.” He did not identify any administration officials by name, but said inattention to the Taliban’s determination to complete a swift and total military takeover undermined commanders’ ability to ready their forces.

....

During an Aug. 6 meeting, a National Security Council official, who is not identified in the report, appeared to lack a sense of urgency and told others involved that if the United States had to execute an evacuation, it would signal “we have failed,” Sullivan recalled. “In my opinion, the NSC was not seriously planning for an evacuation,” he said.
The White House declined to comment.

....

At the embassy, U.S. troops went room to room on Aug. 15, pressing people to meet deadlines and get ready to go, an Army officer from the 10th Mountain Division told investigators. Some State Department personnel were “intoxicated and cowering in rooms,” and others were “operating like it was day-to-day operations with absolutely no sense of urgency or recognition of the situation,” the officer said.
The administration official said they had not previously heard that allegation. “Were there any truth to it, we presumably would not be learning of it six months after the fact,” the official said.

quote:

Originally posted by Lefty Sig:
^^^ If Trump left Americans behind it would have been on the news 24/7, with another impeachment.

Perhaps slightly off-topic, I wonder occasionally: just [i]what would it take[i/] for there to be as much screaming to impeach JB as there was to impeach President Trump?

quote:

Originally posted by vthoky:

quote:

Originally posted by Lefty Sig:
^^^ If Trump left Americans behind it would have been on the news 24/7, with another impeachment.

Perhaps slightly off-topic, I wonder occasionally: just [i]what would it take[i/] for there to be as much screaming to impeach JB as there was to impeach President Trump?

The only way JB would get impeached is if his dementia took full hold and he became a conservative and Republican. Beyond that it isn’t going to happen.

Once again, you have to go across the Pond to see what’s happening in America. I wonder how long he’ll remain in that job now.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ne...straction-chaos.html

Commander in charge of Kabul evacuation slams the White House and Jill Biden for being a 'distraction' during chaos: Claims high-profile pestering for special favors to get allies out slowed military down

Vasely said the Pentagon was being pulled in all different directions from Biden officials, lawmakers, members of the media and even the Vatican

He called the requests a 'distraction' that created competition for 'already stressed resources'

The Pentagon's standard priority had been to first evacuate American citizens, then lawful permanent residents, then Afghans who aided the U.S.

Demands poured in at such a high volume that Vasely felt the need to take certain forces away from the established rescue plan

Watchdog: Team Biden still sending billions to Afghanistan

by WorldTribune Staff, July 24, 2022

A government watchdog group said the Biden administration continues to send billions in U.S. taxpayer dollars to Afghanistan and is also preventing an audit of their actions.

There are no assurances the funds are not going to the Taliban terrorists who took charge of Afghanistan when Team Biden surrendered in August of last year, Judicial Watch reported.
The Taliban in November held a military parade in Kabul which featured U.S. armored vehicles that were gifted by the Biden administration. / Ali Khara / Reuters

Judicial Watch found via the Freedom of Information act that “The U.S. has dropped a ghastly $146 billion on Afghanistan reconstruction in the last two decades and billions more continue to be spent, but the Biden administration is blocking federal auditors from conducting their congressionally mandated job of investigating where the money is going.”

Judicial Watch continued: “For months the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) has been trying to investigate the abrupt collapse of the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan, if the State Department is complying with laws and regulations prohibiting the transfer of funds to the Taliban and ongoing humanitarian programs supporting the Afghan people. However, the State Department and its offshoot, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), refuse to cooperate as required by law.”

The head of SIGAR, John Sopko, expressed outrage at the State Department’s efforts to obstruct his office’s investigation. In letters to congressional committees, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and USAID Administrator Samantha Power, Sopko reveals that the State Department has blown off more than 20 requests for information from his office in the last eight months.

Judicial Watch noted: “Of greatest concern to the Afghanistan watchdog is the State Department’s refusal to provide basic information for an audit involving efforts to ensure that ongoing programs supporting the people of Afghanistan do not result in the illegal transfer of U.S. taxpayer funds to the Taliban or the Haqqani Network. “The fact that State and USAID would obstruct such oversight work, particularly after the Taliban’s seizure of governmental power in Afghanistan, is unprecedented,” Sopko writes.”

Related: Taliban war booty exceeds military spending of Germany, Japan, South Korea, Australia, December 2, 2021

Sopko wrote: “Given the express prohibition against State and USAID officials preventing SIGAR from conducting its oversight work, it is also illegal,” adding that by as the U.S. government continues adding to the billions of dollars that it has already spent in Afghanistan since 2002, U.S. taxpayers deserve objective information concerning where their money is going and to whom it is being given.

Upon surrendering Afghanistan to the Taliban, Team Biden decided to leave nearly $85 billion worth of U.S. military equipment behind.

The list of U.S.-supplied and left behind equipment now controlled by Taliban includes:

-2,000 Armored Vehicles Including Humvees and MRAP’s
-75,989 Total Vehicles: FMTV, M35, Ford Rangers, Ford F350, Ford Vans, Toyota Pickups, Armored Security Vehicles etc
-45 UH-60 Blachhawk Helicopters
-50 MD530G Scout Attack Choppers
-ScanEagle Military Drones
-30 Military Version Cessnas
-4 C-130’s
-29 Brazilian made A-29 Super Tocano Ground Attack Aircraft
208+ Aircraft Total
-At least 600,000+ Small arms M16, M249 SAWs, M24 Sniper Systems, 50 Calibers, 1,394 M203 Grenade Launchers, M134 Mini Gun, 20mm Gatling Guns and Ammunition
-61,000 M203 Rounds
-20,040 Grenades
-Howitzers
-Mortars +1,000’s of Rounds
-162,000 pieces of Encrypted Military Communications Gear
-16,000+ Night Vision Goggles
-Newest Technology Night Vision Scopes
-Thermal Scopes and Thermal Mono Googles
-10,000 2.75 inch Air to Ground Rockets
-Reconnaissance Equipment (ISR)
-Laser Aiming Units
-Explosives Ordnance C-4, Semtex, Detonators, Shaped Charges, Thermite, Incendiaries, AP/API/APIT
-2,520 Bombs
-Administration Encrypted Cell Phones and Laptops all operational
-Pallets with Millions of Dollars in US Currency
-Millions of Rounds of Ammunition including but not limited to 20,150,600 rounds of 7.62mm, 9,000,000 rounds of 50.caliber
-Large Stockpile of Plate Carriers and Body Armor
-U.S. Military HIIDE, for Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment Biometrics
-Heavy Equipment Including Bull Dozers, Backhoes, Dump Trucks, Excavators

Action . . . . Intelligence . . . . Publish

John Sopko, Samantha Power, SIGAR, USAID, Watchdog: Team Biden still sending billions to Afghanistan, WorldTribune.com

https://www.worldtribune.com/w...ions-to-afghanistan/

Former Pentagon boss: Delay in Afghanistan after-action reports raises fear of political meddling

"There's probably some concern that it doesn't paint the rosy picture that the Biden administration has said," Christopher Miller says.

https://justthenews.com/govern..._campaign=newsletter

The Trump administration's last Pentagon chief is warning that the Biden administration's delayed release of military after-action reports on the bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan is keeping Washington from learning lessons and raising fears of political meddling.

"What I understand is [the report] has been kicked back down to those that wrote it because of some sort of concern that I don't know exactly what the concerns are. But I can tell you that lessons learned and after-action reviews save lives. And we're not seeing that right now," Former acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller told the "Just the News, Not Noise" television show Thursday night.

Asked why there's a delay Miller added: "I have to think that there's probably some concern that it doesn't paint the rosy picture that the Biden administration has said."

The Pentagon press office did not immediately return a request for comment Thursday regarding Miller's comments.

The Biden administration has defended its withdrawal strategy, which cost the lives of 13 Marines in a suicide bombing, saying earlier this week that the president "refused to send another generation of Americans to fight a war that should have ended long ago."

Miller, a retired Army special forces officer, was directly involved in the early U.S. military operations in both Afghanistan and Iraq. He is the second major figure to raise concerns that the Defense Department's after-action reports have not been released a full year after the withdrawal.

Rep. Ted Budd, now the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in North Carolina, wrote the Pentagon late last month that it "has been 11 months since the Biden Administration mismanaged the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan" and "Department of Defense (DOD) leadership has offered little insight to the public into how failures in intelligence and execution occurred."

He urged Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin not to withhold the after-action reports from the American public. "The Pentagon should strive to avoid even the appearance that its leaders withhold unclassified information because those findings could shine an unfavorable light on its leadership," he wrote.

Miller said after-action reports aren't designed to be an exercise in blame but rather an education process to save future lives.

"This isn't just a paper," he said. "So young people that are entering the service, the way you learn not to make mistakes from the past is by reading about the mistakes that have happened previously. It's really, really powerful process that they use ... I'm really hopeful that they do the right thing, because this is about our country."

He added: "I came in the Army in 1983. And I was trained by Vietnam veterans. And they all said never again. I never thought it would happen again in our lifetime. And of course, I was part of the loss of the war in Afghanistan. So we have to get those lessons learned out to the forces and to the American people so that we don't do this again."

"Spiegel" has a extensive three-part series on the German evacuation from Afghanistan, now available in English:

https://www.spiegel.de/interna...43-863a-96e8157165bc

https://www.spiegel.de/interna...48-bd73-b22f80bd2470

https://www.spiegel.de/interna...bd-97c4-dd6761ba1d68

Some excerpts:

quote:

Escape from Afghanistan, Part I

"We're Destroying the IT. Have a Nice Sunday"

Documents are burned, computers mutilated and 15 Mercedes SUVs are destroyed with a forklift: The fall of Kabul caught the Germans by surprise – and politicians in Berlin proved unequal to the moment.

By Matthias Gebauer und Konstantin von Hammerstein

02.09.2022, 10.01 Uhr

On Monday morning, at six, the earth begins shaking. The floor sways, the walls quiver, but Chris Klawitter doesn’t get nervous easily. The businessman from Hamburg has lived in Kabul for two decades. He knows what earthquakes feel like.

But this time it's different, the shaking doesn't stop. Klawitter runs outside. He has spent the night in an accommodation container located in the military part of the airport. As he will recall later, the embassy called him at just after 3 p.m. on the previous afternoon: "Chris, come to the airport right away. We’re evacuating."

The call didn’t come as a surprise. On Sunday morning, Klawitter was still in the city. His American principals didn’t initially want to let him go, but they ultimately relented, even providing him with Georgian bodyguards. There were long lines of people waiting outside the banks in the capital and gunfire could be heard. On the way back, he saw armed Afghan policemen who had thrown away their uniforms and were now fleeing in their pickup trucks toward the airport.

The Taliban are on the advance, and now Klawitter feels the earth shaking. He looks across the runway to the civilian part of the airport. What he sees there in the distance in the morning haze frightens him. A huge wall seems to be moving. "Oh, shit!" he recalls thinking, "the earthquake is so strong it is moving walls."

But it's not a wall, nor is it an earthquake. It's people. Children, women, men, thousands of desperate Afghans sprinting to the runway and causing the ground to shake. Klawitter feels fear creeping up inside him. He has endured a lot in Afghanistan: He has been shot at, experienced explosions, but this is horrifying. He doesn’t want to be crushed or overrun by desperate people fleeing the Taliban.

He sees armored combat vehicles driving up. British and American Marines are taking up positions on his side of the runway. They throw themselves to the ground and open fire, warning shots over the heads of the oncoming masses.

Klawitter has seen enough. He runs back into the container, gathers his things and runs the few hundred meters to the compound where the German Embassy is housed.

The diplomats there are not alone. The building also provides shelter to officers with the Federal Police and special forces from the Czech Republic, Spain and Italy. Now, the heavily armed men are standing in the corridors as they prepare for the worst. They aren’t equipped to bring crowds under control – they only have live ammunition. If the crowds storm the building, they will have to fire at desperate, unarmed men, women and children.

On this Monday morning in August, Klawitter has no idea that the next 11 days will change his life. Nothing will be the same afterward. He has spent the past few years importing armored vehicles for the U.S. Army into Afghanistan. Now, he will play a critical role in helping Germany’s armed forces, the Bundeswehr, evacuate thousands of people from the Afghan capital.

quote:

On the evening of August 3, the German envoy in Kabul, Jan Hendrik van Thiel, is sitting with two journalists by the embassy pool. Van Thiel has been in his post since mid-July. There is no ambassador – the old one is gone and the new one hasn’t yet arrived. As such, van Thiel heads the German representation as chargé d'affaires. He knows the country well: Around 10 years earlier, the experienced crisis diplomat headed a civil-military reconstruction team in Faizabad in the northeast.

Suddenly, as he is sitting with his two guests by the pool, a huge explosion rocks the embassy. According to van Thiel’s account, the sky is lit up by a fireball and gunfire erupts nearby. Kalashnikovs, machine guns, the occasional grenade launcher. It would continue for several hours.

An alarm is blared out over a loudspeaker and van Thiel runs into the protected living container with his guests. In their operations room, the Federal Police officers charged with securing the site tune in to the livestream from the American observation blimp that hovers day and night over the highly secured Green Zone, with its many embassies.

The blimp’s surveillance cameras have zoomed in on one of the Afghan defense minister's homes. A man, apparently one of the attackers, can be seen on the balcony being shot at by security forces. The minister is alive, not having been there at the time of the attack, but there are at least four dead.

Van Thiel urgently needs to go to his office to send a message to Berlin, but his bodyguards fear stray bullet fire. He overrules their concerns and runs across the courtyard to the office container and sends a short email to the German Foreign Ministry ("Current situation difficult to assess fully/Embassy fine"). It doesn’t take long for the answer to come; Berlin wants to set up another conference call that evening.

Antje Leendertse, a high-level official at the Foreign Ministry is on the phone. Van Thiel would later recall her questioning that there had even been an attack in Kabul? "But it hasn’t been reported in the newsfeed," Leendertse says. From a German perspective, in other words, the event essentially hasn’t happened. The diplomat has trouble maintaining his composure.

Next door he can hear machine gun fire, a bomb has gone off a few hundred meters from the embassy, he has seen the fireball, himself, and Berlin doubts that anything at all has happened? That’s when one of Leendertse’s staffers intervenes. "It is in the newsfeed, and Bild has already reported it," she says, referring to the mass-circulation German tabloid. That cleared things up, van Thiel would later say. If it was in the newsfeed, then it must have happened.

The fact that Berlin doesn’t always seem to know what is going on is something that people in Kabul have grown used to. The crisis response center of the German Foreign Ministry will sometimes call in the middle of the night to ask if everything is OK after an attack – involving a bomb that has gone off in Kandahar, some 500 kilometers away. Of course it’s not always easy to keep track of everything from such a distance.

For van Thiel, though, the phone call from Leendertse represents a new level of ignorance. The Taliban has managed to carry out a complex attack on a high-value target despite all the checkpoints and safeguards in the center of the capital. It takes the security forces hours to recapture the buildings. The government in Kabul will no longer be able to recover from this. Don't they understand in Berlin what this attack means? Or, even worse, are they not willing to understand?

quote:

In the first days of August, Fish returns to Kabul. Why is he called Fish? Good question. Perhaps because he enjoys sailing? Or because he comes from the port city of Wilhelmshaven? But in the elite unit of the German Federal Police, the GSG 9, everyone has an alias. And Fish is called Fish.

What is certain is that he has a reputation in the service, and what a reputation it is. Fifty-six years old, three tours of Afghanistan, three in Baghdad, once in Kosovo and in the civil war-torn country of El Salvador in 1989. There are few who have as much experience as Fish.

Sailing is an expensive hobby, so Fish volunteers for a fourth deployment to Afghanistan. Those sent to Kabul receive the highest foreign allowance for government employees. This time, he is sent as the ambassador’s security adviser. The Federal Police's bodyguards report to him, and he coordinates security arrangements for the embassy. He starts his tour in July 2020. A few weeks of Afghanistan, a few weeks of home leave, a few weeks of Afghanistan. That’s what things look like when you're working in the service, and now he’s back.

Fish is well networked within the capital's security community. And the information he is getting worries him. On August 9, he learns that the Taliban have closed the ring around Kabul.

Fish knows how flimsy the embassy’s evacuation plans are. The Bundeswehr has promised to fly the diplomats out of the international airport in an emergency, but that presupposes that they’ll be able to get there. And that could be difficult if the city is consumed by violence and chaos. Nor our problem, says the military.

The embassy has spent months pressing for Berlin to contract a private helicopter service for the event of an emergency. A company that has previously flown for the Bundeswehr is under discussion, but it suddenly raises its prices. The Foreign Ministry considers it too expensive and pushes for other offers and a call for tenders – as if it has all the time in the world.

Ultimately, there will be no helicopters, not even at the end. Instead, Fish now sees the huge U.S. helicopters constantly flying over the German Embassy. For days now, the Americans have been transporting people and materials to the airport. Which is also alarming.

There are still no instructions from Berlin to prepare for the evacuation of the embassy, and Fish’s men have begun insisting on action. Before withdrawal, they point out, massive amounts of sensitive materials will need to be destroyed. Will they have time?

So they start moving, even without orders from Berlin. Large fires in the embassy courtyard begin burning, day and night. The bureaucratic work of two decades goes up in flames. Because of possible pension claims, the personnel files of local hires have been archived. It would be a nightmare if they were to fall into the hand of the Taliban.

The Federal Police officers throw weapons, ammunition and communications equipment that they can’t take with them into a dried-up well on the grounds. A load of weapons, a layer of fast-drying cement, then more weapons and another layer of cement.

And the 15 armored Mercedes SUVs, each with an estimated value of a half-million euros? There’s an empty lot behind the embassy. Fish and his men first destroy the steering modules, and then they roll the heavy cars across the field with a forklift until they are little more than scrap metal. They will be useless to the Taliban.

quote:

In Berlin, there is still hope that things might not turn out so badly after all. Markus Potzel contacts van Thiel by email on Saturday. The German government's former Afghanistan commissioner who spent months negotiating with Taliban envoys in Doha, Potzel has been selected as Germany’s next ambassador to Kabul, and he plans to start on Monday. Potzel requests that van Thiel and the entire embassy staff stay in Kabul. He says the Taliban won’t arrive in Kabul that quickly – and that if they do, they wouldn’t harm the Germans. They’re not that dangerous, he says.

Van Thiel rebuffs Potzel, writing, "That the Taliban mean us no harm is nothing but an unproven assumption.” Potzel then tries the same line with Fish, but he, too, thinks the idea from Berlin is absurd. "The Foreign Ministry abandoned us and largely ignored our assessments and operational proposals in the weeks leading up to the evacuation,” van Thiel will later tell DER SPIEGEL.

At four in the afternoon, Leendertse gets a call. The situation has deteriorated. A decision is needed on whether or not to move the embassy to the airport as early as Sunday. The state secretary schedules a conference call for 5:30 p.m. Kabul isn’t invited to participate, nor are the liaison officers from the Federal Police, the BND and the Defense Ministry, all of whom have offices in the Foreign Ministry. This is not the first time that the other departments have deliberately been left out of the loop when it comes to Afghanistan. Why? Because the ministry’s management isn’t interested in contradiction?

Van Thiel is contacted after the meeting. Yes, the embassy can be relocated to the airport, provided the ability to work there is guaranteed. The envoy has questions. Where are they supposed to do their work at the airport?

They have those containers. Which containers? Well, the containers that Kabul reported. Van Thiel, as he will later describe it, stops to think about it. The Federal Police reported that they were packing a container of materials and taking it to the airport. But it was a container for material – not a container you live or work in.

He recalls saying, "Thank you for the decision. So, we're supposed to relocate to non-existent housing containers at the airport, provided that we are fully capable of working there? Great.”

quote:

First Lieutenant Marc-André Hinzmann, on the other hand, has a pretty good idea of what's in store for him. He’s scheduled for Tashkent. At the airport in the Uzbek capital, he and his military police are to check and register the people who are flown in from Kabul by the Bundeswehr before they fly onward to Germany.

The previous evening, he had introduced himself to his 16 men. They come from all across Germany, and he doesn’t know most of them. Most of them have more experience than the young lieutenant who is now their boss. Tashkent is Hinzmann’s first foreign assignment.

There he is, standing in front of these long-serving sergeants, some of whom have been on quite a few missions, telling them what his priorities are. A correct appearance, an impeccable uniform and that all corona regulations in the host country be observed.

On early Monday morning, according to Hinzmann’s recollection of these hours, they drive to Wunstorf. He hadn’t been expecting such a crowd. There are photographers, cameras and spotlights everywhere on the fences of the air base. The heavy A400M transport aircraft are already waiting on the tarmac.

There are so many soldiers here that he sits on the ground with his men outside the barracks fence. They slide cartridges into their magazines. An air force officer hands him a passenger list for him to check that everyone is on it.

Everything is OK, except that Kabul is at the top of the list and not Tashkent. Why is that? "There’s also a plane to Tashkent,” the air force man says. "Should I book you on that one?” Hinzmann thinks, perhaps there’s a reason it says Kabul. He decides to ask again.

He calls the Bundeswehr Military Police Command in Hannover and recalls them saying, "We’ll check and get back to you.” It doesn’t take long before the callback comes. "Kabul is right.” – "Oh,” says Hinzmann, "and what am I supposed to do there?” – "Well, fly there first. You’ll manage.”

The lieutenant goes to his men. "Small change,” he says, "we’re going to Kabul.” He gets some pleased faces. His men are up for Kabul. And so is he.

quote:

That evening, Fish gets a call from the adjutant of General Jens Arlt, the commander of the evacuation operation. "We are in the air," the officer says, "and we need permission to land." "You can forget about it," Fish responds, according to his recollection of the conversation, "no landing permission is being given." "But we need one. We are circling." Fish tells him what is going on at the airport: complete chaos. How can any planes land?

Arlt's plane spends the next several hours circling above Kabul until it begins running out of fuel. At 10 p.m., "German Air Force 309" has to turn around and head for Uzbekistan. Then, Fish receives another call, this time from a man who goes by the alias "Tobias," a lieutenant colonel in the KSK special forces. He had been planning to go fishing in Brandenburg, but here he was in a second German plane circling above Kabul. Given that both are in the special forces – Fish with the GSG-9 and Tobias with the KSK – they know each other.

Tobias has just spoken on the phone with a frustrated General Arlt, who is on the way back to Tashkent. Tobias would say later that because he was now the senior-most commanding officer, Arlt had transferred authority to him of the men and women on board the flight. He signed off with a hearty "Good luck!"

ln the end, Tobias is a bit more fortunate than the general. His plane is allowed to land shortly before it, too, would have run out of fuel. The runway is still not illuminated, and the pilots don't know if it is clear, so as soon as they land, they hit the brakes so hard that they immediately heat up to over 1,000 degrees Celsius. Within seconds, the inside of the plane becomes unbearably hot. Later, back in Tashkent, all 14 tires of the A400M have to be replaced.

Fish is waiting at the parking slot. Midnight passes before he finally sees the giant transport plane taxiing toward him. In the darkness, he can see the wheels glowing red – the brakes.

When the ramp lowers, armed soldiers rush out of the plane and establish a security ring. Their weapons are also pointed at Fish and his welcoming committee. "Other direction please," Fish calls out. "We're the good guys!" He then greets his old comrade, Tobias.

---

Lieutenant Marc-André Hinzmann is one of the soldiers who arrives with the cargo plane, and he begins wandering around the airport with his weapon, helmet and backpack. He walks past empty storage halls and abandoned buildings. Past cars that are standing around, their doors open and windshields either shattered or pierced by bullets.

It is the middle of the night, but oppressive heat is still radiating from the concrete. The young lieutenant sees clothing on the car seats and cups still half full, looking as though the coffee is still warm.

Some of the vehicles' trunks are open, but it looks as though nobody had enough time to take the bags along with them. How great must the fear have been for these people to leave their last possessions behind?

Hinzmann would later say that the images were familiar. He had seen the U.S. television series "The Walking Dead." The Kabul airport reminded him of the world following the zombie apocalypse.

quote:

Since Arlt's arrival in Kabul on Tuesday evening, the evacuation operation has been dominated by the Bundeswehr. With over 240 men and women, they make up the lion's share of the German contingent, and the military's media machine is also pressing ahead. The goal is to ensure that the mission receives the attention and credit it is due. It is no accident that the general had a Bundeswehr camera team with him when he landed.

But Arlt has a different set of concerns on this evening. The officer has arrived late, and he has to make up for lost time. His plane is hardly on the ground before he rushes across the airport to visit the Turkish commander who is in charge of food, lodging and supplies, as Arlt would later say. Adding that the commander no longer had an adequate overview of the situation given the general chaos.

The German general then meets with the British and Americans, where he runs into an old acquaintance. As a young KSK officer, Arlt had served together in Afghanistan with Chris Donahue, the commanding general of the 82nd Airborne Division. The two were both special forces soldiers and have great trust in one another, which will prove helpful in the current situation. Arlt is even able to be present when Donahue confers with the U.S. president a few days later.

In the coming days, the airport will increasingly become a "Woodstock of Special Forces," as the soldiers would joke. Most of the countries seeking to evacuate their citizens are now sending special forces to Kabul. It is like a vast reunion, with many of the men having met previously during joint exercises and missions. It makes cooperation in this extremely challenging environment easier.

quote:

Thousands of Afghans are pushing their way between the razor wire, a trench full of water and cement walls in these days in August 2021, doing everything they can to get on board a plane out of Kabul. Tobias and his men are standing in front of the gate trying to get German citizens into the airport so they can be flown out. They suddenly see two men in the crowd behind the razor wire arguing over a young boy who looks to be around four years old.

Babies and young children are seen as a ticket into the airport since they generate sympathy. Crying mothers hold up their infants in the crowd to attract attention. Babies are shoved into the arms of soldiers in the hopes that their families will be allowed to join them later.

Young children have become coveted commodities in these August days of 2021. Men pull them away from their mothers to use them as a ticket through the airport gates. Soldiers watch as the putative fathers of the stolen children heedlessly abandon them as soon as they have been allowed into the airport. "Children were disposed of like garbage," General Jens Arlt, the commander of the German evacuation operation, will say later.

Tobias is in the middle of the chaos at Abbey Gate when he sees these two men arguing over the boy. It is obvious that neither is the father. They pull on the child, each holding onto one of his arms, as the KSK troops watch in horror. The scene is taking place behind the razor wire, so they can't interfere. They can only look on helplessly as the two men pull harder and harder – until the boy's shoulders are dislocated.

quote:

The secret mission order for the commandos of the KSK is kept vague. The around 20 soldiers in Kabul are to use "unconventional means" to help rescue German citizens and ensure an "emergency attack capability" in case hostages are taken. The Defense Ministry has kept it at that.

In consultations with Arlt, KSK unit leader Tobias decides that the time for "unconventional means" has arrived. For weeks, the unit has been trying to get a former interpreter out of Mazar-e-Sharif and into Germany. Thus far, they have failed due to the strict rules the Bundeswehr has established when it comes to assisting local hires. The interpreter was only paid by the job, he wasn't a staffer. Plus, he has a previous conviction and has a lifelong entry ban.

But that no longer matters. When the KSK soldiers see their man with his family in the crowd of people, they go outside the gate and rush the family into the airport. The first KSK operation is successful, but it won't be mentioned in any mission reports.

And that's not enough. Since the revelations about KSK ammunition disappearing and Nazis in their ranks, the commando has been under intense pressure. For a while, some were even talking about dismantling the KSK. A few nice media reports about the heroic deeds of the KSK in Kabul certainly wouldn't hurt.

As he would later relate, Tobias is thinking of a particularly spectacular operation. He convinces General Arlt that it would be a good idea to bring over two of the KSK's light helicopters from Germany in an A400M transport plane, so that they could be used to fly small groups of refugees out of the city center to the airport.

The Defense Ministry is enthusiastic about the idea from Kabul, with Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats, also finding it attractive. She immediately sees it as an opportunity to raise the profile of the otherwise risk-averse Germans as the only country besides the U.S. to send helicopters to Afghanistan. At operation headquarters in Potsdam, military planners get to work.

Tobias and his troops, meanwhile, are considering ways to get more women to the airport, because they are no longer being allowed through by the numerous young men standing in front of the gate. And quickly, they identify a potential target. DER SPIEGEL and other media outlets have reported on calls for help from a high school student from Munich who is trapped in Kabul. If they are successful, the fawning articles will practically write themselves.

The KSK men establish contact with the woman, telling her to be ready and that details of the operation will only be communicated to her at the last moment. Then, Tobias uses FaceTime to contact a man he has long had on his radar. He knows the man's history by heart, one of the Taliban commanders in charge of Abbey Gate.

In fluent English, as Tobias will later relate, the commander names his conditions. The KSK, the Taliban commander says, may only transport people to the airport who are German citizens or who have a valid German residency permit. Tobias accepts the conditions. What other choice does he have?

In the night from Saturday to Sunday, the young woman and her family are standing in front of one of the gates, where she is received by the KSK soldiers and brought into the airport. "Operation Bluelight," as it has been dubbed, could certainly have been more spectacular, but it is a success for Tobias and his men. Finally, the KSK is making positive headlines.

Two days later, a mixed team of BND agents and federal police manage to get 80 people into the airport in a similar nighttime operation – all of them locals hired by the BND and the German Embassy, together with their families. This rescue operation does not make it into the press.

quote:

Early on Monday morning, at around 4 a.m., Corporal Adrian is chatting at the North Gate with an American comrade to kill time. At the moment, all is quiet here at the gate. The paratrooper only has a few hours left on his shift.

Adrian would later describe what then happened as follows: A shot suddenly pierces the silence. There has been a lot of gunfire in recent days, all of it coming from the Americans and their Afghan allies as they shoot into the air in an attempt to push people back from the gate. But this shot isn't outside of the airport wall. It's on the inside, as Adrian, a sniper, immediately recognizes.

He rushes a few meters between the high concrete walls to the back. He has no idea what has happened, but he knows that the rest of his unit is resting on the ground in the back, including his two best friends. Only a few seconds elapse before Adrian throws himself on the ground and takes up his position. But it seems like an eternity to him. "Those were the worst moments of my life," he will later say, "because I had no contact with my unit."

He sees that U.S. Marines and German paratroopers have taken cover behind their vehicles and a low concrete wall and that they are firing at their own allies, the men from the Afghan "Cobra" unit. Complete chaos.

The Bundeswehr and the Americans would later try to determine what actually happened. It is likely that a sniper from one of the high-rise buildings next to the airport fired a high-caliber weapon at the "Cobra" unit inside the airport, killing one of them. Exhausted and frightened, the Afghan fighters opened fire on the Americans and Germans, thinking the shot came from them. They return fire, and three Afghans are injured. A bloodbath is narrowly avoided.

Tobias, the KSK officer, hears the shooting from the German accommodations. He also has no idea what is happening, but as a professional military man, he can immediately tell that it's not the normal shooting out in front of the gate, but a real firefight. He will say later that the sound actually put him in a better mood. Finally, something he recognized.

quote:

On Monday evening, van Thiel is at the airport when he receives a call. The "Taliban Express," a bus convoy that the German diplomats have set up, is stuck at a Taliban checkpoint on the road from the city. His help is needed.

His bodyguards take him out in front of the main airport gate, where he finds two officers from the German paratroopers sitting on the bed of a pickup while their soldiers are taking a nap. They are supposed to receive the refugees from the convoy, but since it is currently stuck, there's apparently nothing they can do.

The parking lot in front of the airport is controlled by the Americans, and the nearest Taliban checkpoint is around 50 meters away behind vehicle barriers and rolls of barbed wire. Colonel Webb, the U.S. officer in charge of the area, makes it clear that he is the one who maintains contact with the Taliban on the other side, and nobody else. Van Thiel will later describe him as being like Brad Pitt, just completely exhausted and, thus, almost like he is on drugs.

The envoy knows that he is completely dependent on this colonel for help, so he just stays in the parking lot talking for hours on end, through half the night. It is his only chance. The colonel talks about how great Germany is and tells van Thiel his life story. Every now and then, he wanders over to the other side of the front to negotiate with the Taliban. It emerges that the German buses are stuck at a different checkpoint, but the Taliban commander there is asleep and nobody wants to wake him.

Webb and his deputy describe to van Thiel how the Americans and the Taliban initially insulted and threatened each other, and almost came to blows. But now it seems that a modus vivendi has been found. At some point in the night, the Taliban commander wakes up and allows the German buses through. A similar drama plays out the next night – and the German envoy, with his tenacity, is ultimately able to get several hundred refugees to the airport.

quote:

Marc-André Hinzmann no longer knows exactly what came first: the dull impact or the airplanes. His recollection of his final minutes in Kabul are all mixed up in his head. It was probably the impact, says the young lieutenant in the military police.

On this Thursday afternoon, with the light slowly fading, they are standing with their gear on the tarmac where the refugees stood waiting for their flights out on previous days. Now, it is just Germans – men and women from the Bundeswehr, diplomats, BND people and federal police officers. Over the last 11 days, they have managed to get 5,347 people onto transport planes out of Kabul, including 140 local hires and their families. Now, it is their turn, and they are waiting for the last flight out to Tashkent.

Suddenly, Hinzmann feels this dull impact. He doesn't know what has happened, but he sees a dark cloud of smoke rising from the Abbey Gate, and then he hears sirens and sees American soldiers running. At this moment, as he would later recall, the first A400M is on the approach before aborting the landing at the last moment and thundering over the heads of the waiting Germans.

Hinzmann's initial thought, according to his recollection of the incident, is that they will have to keep waiting for several more hours. But he is immediately proven wrong, with the next two planes approaching the runway. They land so close together that Hinzmann is concerned they might collide on the runway. A short time later, a fourth plane lands.

Hinzmann's comrades are following German news reports on their mobile phones. A suicide attack at the Kabul airport has killed and injured a number of people. Later, they will learn that almost 200 Afghans lost their lives at Abbey Gate, along with 13 U.S. soldiers and two British paratroopers.

As the planes taxi up to the group, Hinzmann checks to see if his men are with him, and then he takes off. He has no time to glance at the cars carrying the wounded as they speed past to the Norwegian field hospital. He only sees the backpack of the soldier in front of him.

He runs behind him all they way to the waiting plane, its rotors still spinning. The noise is deafening, but Hinzmann will later only remember sprinting up the ramp and throwing himself onto the floor of the aircraft next to his comrades.

He is hardly in the plane before it begins taxiing. Hinzmann feels a breath of hot air and lifts his head from his lying position. The loading ramp is still open and he can see the brown mountains of Kabul passing by outside and the paratroopers with their weapons at the ready standing on the open ramp to secure the rear of the plane. The powerful engines rev up and the heavy A400M begins speeding down the runway.

When the plane takes off, he feels lighter than he ever has before, he will later recall. Hinzmann is lying between his men on the steel floor of the transport plane, which is ascending steeply. He has survived, the 11 days in Kabul. His first mission abroad. His eyes close and the young lieutenant falls asleep.

---

Jens Arlt receives several awards and accolades after the mission. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier presents the general with the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany 1st Class in Berlin. He gives interviews, appears in talk shows and is inundated with speaking invitations.

Fish tells his superiors in the Foreign Ministry and at the Federal Police upon his return that he is no longer interested in working for the Foreign Ministry. He feels as though he was left in the lurch. The GSG-9 member is still distressed by the fate of the 13 Americans and two Brits who died in the suicide attack at Abbey Gate. He believes they sacrificed their lives for the Germans, because despite increasingly urgent warnings of an impending attack, they remained at the gate to prevent the airport from being overrun by Afghan refugees.

Chris Klawitter only remains in Germany for a short time before returning to Afghanistan. But his office in Kabul is searched several times by the Taliban and he ultimately leaves the country for good. Now, he is living in Hamburg with his parents. He is looking for work, but has been unable to find any.

Jan Hendrik van Thiel, following his return, requests that the Foreign Ministry send him either back to Kabul, to Baghdad or to Bamako, the capital of Mali. Instead, he ends up as ambassador designate in the Caribbean, in Kingston, the capital of Jamaica. He feels as though he's been shunted aside and continues applying for posts in crisis regions, but the Foreign Ministry has thus far rejected his attempts.

Fish, Klawitter and van Thiel have been nominated for the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany on several occasions. Thus far, they have yet to receive the honor.

quote:

Originally posted by BansheeOne:
"Spiegel" has a extensive three-part series on the German evacuation from Afghanistan, now available in English:

https://www.spiegel.de/interna...43-863a-96e8157165bc

https://www.spiegel.de/interna...48-bd73-b22f80bd2470

https://www.spiegel.de/interna...bd-97c4-dd6761ba1d68

Some excerpts:

[QUOTE]Escape from Afghanistan, Part I

...

BansheeOne, I haven't made the time to read the entire article yet, but just based on reading the excerpts you posted, it's good to get info on the Afghanistan debacle and tragedy from our NATO allies' and partners' perspective, so thanks for posting the Speigel excerpts.

This article is from last month, as the one year anniversary of the Afghanistan debacle was coming up.

[Note: hyperlinks found at linked website article.]

============

Brother of Marine killed in Kabul dies by his memorial

By Jonathan Lehrfeld
Tuesday, Aug 16


A military honor guard carries the flag-draped casket of Marine Lance Cpt. Kareem Grant Nikoui at the Harvest Christian Fellowship on Sept. 18, 2021, in Riverside, California. (Apu Gomes/AFP via Getty Images)

This story discusses the topic of suicide. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please contact the 24/7 National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.

The older brother of a Marine who died in the attack on Kabul nearly one year ago killed himself near a town memorial in California that honored his brother.

Dakota Halverson, 28 ― the older brother of Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui ― died on Aug. 9, according to a press release from Riverside, California, County Sheriff’s Department.

Shana Chappell, the boys’ mother, said that he took his own life near the permanent town memorial paying tribute to Nikoui and the 12 other service members killed in Kabul.

“The month [o]f August has been very hard so far with the one year coming up...This morning my son Dakota went to be with [h]is brother Kareem,” Chappell shared on Facebook the night of Aug. 9.


The month Of August has been very hard so far with the one year coming up. I look at my kids as strong and like they can handle anything. That was my mistake. My son Dakota has been talking a lot lately about how he just wants to be with Kareem, how much he misses him, etc…. We all feel that way so i didn’t see the signs. This morning my son Dakota went to be with His brother Kareem. I can’t post the go fund me link in my bio for some reason but i do have a go fund me on my Facebook page. Thank you all so much. I am still in shock over this right now and i can’t believe that it’s real so please don’t think I’m rude if i don’t reply back to your comments or msgs. I just need some time. #check your #loved

Nikoui, 20, from Norco, California, was one of the 13 U.S troops killed during the suicide bombing at Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai International Airport on Aug. 26, 2021. That attack also took the lives of more than 160 Afghan civilians.

Nikoui was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, at Camp Pendleton, California.

In a follow-up post, Chappell wrote, “Dakota had been expressing some of the things that had been bothering him and one of those things was the loss of his brother Kareem and how he just wanted to be with him again. He was still having a hard time believing he was actually gone. He’d sneak into the cemetery at night and sleep on Kareem’s resting place.”

The death highlights the depth of wounds from the chaotic withdrawal that still exist for Marines and their families. While some service members injured in the bombing are physically healing one year later ― other Marines and loved ones are still interiorly grappling with the tragedy.

“There MUST be accountability for this continued carnage,” Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Florida, wrote on Twitter over the weekend, replying to a tweet by Townhall.com reporter Julio Rosas on Halverson’s death.

The most recent annual suicide data, which includes numbers on military family suicide rates, were comparable to years prior, a September 2021 Department of Defense report shows.

Suicide rates among active-duty service members since Sept. 11, 2001, are at an all-time high, according to a USO June press release. The number of deaths also is significantly higher than the total number of troops killed in combat over the same period.

All seven former living Veterans Affairs secretaries have asked lawmakers to designate a Sunday in November as “National Warrior Call Day,” as reported by Military.com, to raise awareness on the issue of veteran suicide and encourage checking in on former service members.

Chappell began a GoFundMe campaign to help pay for Halverson’s burial and funeral costs. As of Tuesday morning, it had raised more than double its original $20,000 fundraising goal.

Mental health resources are available for veterans and their loved ones. Veterans, service members, their families and friends may dial 9-8-8 and then press 1, or text 838255 to get free around-the-clock and confidential assistance from Veterans Crisis Line.

About Jonathan Lehrfeld

Jonathan is a staff writer and editor of the Early Bird Brief newsletter for Military Times. Follow him on Twitter @lehrfeld_media