Inside the Fall of Kabul: An On-the-Ground Account

On July 15, I went to the palace to see Mohib. Above the gate tower, a large tricolor of the republic fluttered in opposition to a transparent blue sky. After passing via safety, I walked throughout the lengthy, abandoned garden towards the constructing that held the Workplace of the Nationwide Safety Council. I waited within the council’s empty reception room till one among Mohib’s workers members, a younger lady who had studied in America, introduced me upstairs to his workplace, the place he sat behind his desk. Our dialog was largely off the file. He appeared exhausted as we spoke in regards to the determined combating in Kandahar Metropolis, which had been surrounded by the Taliban.

Only some days earlier than, there had been a farewell ceremony for Gen. Austin S. Miller, the long-serving U.S. commander. The army had accomplished 90 % of its withdrawal, effectively forward of Biden’s deadline. This speedy tempo was supposed to scale back the danger of assault throughout the retreat, however it had a devastating impression on Afghan safety forces. The U.S. army had spent billions to coach and equip a drive in its personal picture, closely depending on international contractors and air help. However the Afghan Military’s notoriously corrupt generals stole their males’s ammunition, meals and wages; whereas safety forces have been presupposed to whole 300,000, the true quantity was possible lower than a 3rd of that. Out within the districts, the military and the police have been crumbling, handing over their arms to the Taliban, who now managed 1 / 4 of the nation.

Ghani had repeatedly insisted that he would stand and combat. “That is my residence and my grave,” he thundered in a speech earlier within the spring. His vice chairman, Amrullah Saleh, and the safety council have been engaged on a post-American technique known as Kaf, a Dari phrase which means “base” or “ground,” which envisioned garrison cities linked by corridors held by the military and bolstered by militias, just like how President Mohammad Najibullah clung to energy for 3 years after the Soviet withdrawal. “It was very a lot the Russian mannequin,” mentioned Bek, who returned to the federal government because the president’s chief of workers that month. “That they had plan on paper, however for this to work, you wanted to be a army genius.”

Earlier in July, Ghani was warned that solely two out of seven military corps have been nonetheless useful, in line with a senior Afghan official. Determined for forces to guard Kandahar Metropolis, the president pleaded with the C.I.A. to make use of the paramilitary military previously often called counterterrorism pursuit groups, in line with Afghan officers. Skilled for night time raids and clandestine missions within the borderlands, the items had grown into succesful mild infantry, hundreds robust. They have been now formally a part of the Afghan intelligence service and have been often called Zero Items, after codes that corresponded to provinces: 01 was Kabul, 03 was Kandahar and so forth. However in line with the officers, the C.I.A. nonetheless paid the salaries of those strike forces and needed to consent to Ghani’s request for them to defend Kandahar Metropolis that month. (A U.S. official said that the items have been beneath Afghan management; the C.I.A. declined to touch upon particulars of their deployment.) “They’re very efficient items, motivated, low-cost,” Mohib advised me in his workplace, saying Kandahar would have fallen with out them. “They don’t want all kinds of heavy tools. I want we had extra like them.”

However the Zero Items had a fame for ruthlessness in battle; each journalists and Human Rights Watch have referred to them as “loss of life squads” — allegations that the C.I.A. denied, saying they have been the results of Taliban propaganda. I had been attempting to trace these shadowy items for years and was stunned to see them, of their distinctive tiger stripes, given glowing protection on the federal government’s social media accounts.

In Kabul, I met with Mohammad, an officer from one of many N.D.S. items that operated across the capital, whom I had recognized for just a few years. Mohammad had labored as an interpreter for the unit’s American advisers and as an teacher for undercover groups that carried out arrests contained in the cities. He mentioned morale had plummeted amongst his males, now that the People have been leaving. In keeping with Afghan officers, the station on Ariana Sq. was empty by late July. However Mohammad’s staff nonetheless obtained recommendation from the People. He confirmed me messages that he mentioned have been from the C.I.A., urging his unit to patrol areas round Kabul that had been infiltrated by the insurgents. “The airport remains to be at risk,” one message mentioned.