US rushes in troops to speed up evacuations in Afghanistan

SMA NEWS – WASHINGTON

Rapid Taliban conquests across Afghanistan led the Biden administration on Friday to rush 3,000 fresh troops to the Kabul airport to help with a partial evacuation of the US Embassy in the capital and send thousands more to the region, to be on standby and speed airlifts for Afghans who worked with the American military.
The temporary buildup of troops for US evacuations highlights the stunning pace of the Taliban takeover of much of the country. The Taliban completed their sweep of the country’s south on Friday as they took four more provincial capitals in a lightning offensive that is gradually encircling Kabul, just weeks before the US is set to officially end its two-decade war.
The latest significant blow was the loss of the capital of Helmand province, where American, British and other allied NATO forces fought some of the bloodiest battles in the past 20 years. Hundreds of Western troops during the course of the war died fighting to try to knock back the Taliban in the province and give Afghanistan’s central government and military a better chance to take hold.
The State Department said the embassy will continue functioning, but Thursday’s decision to bring in thousands of additional US troops is a sign of waning confidence in the Afghan government’s ability to hold off the Taliban surge.
Those advances, and the partial embassy evacuation, increasingly isolate the nation’s capital, home to millions of Afghans.
“This is not abandonment. This is not an evacuation. This is not a wholesale withdrawal,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said. “What this is is a reduction in the size of our civilian footprint.”
President Joe Biden, who has remained adamant about ending the US mission in Afghanistan at the end of this month, gave the order for the additional temporary troops Thursday morning after conferring with national security officials overnight.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. The US also warned Taliban officials directly that the US would respond if the Taliban attacked Americans during the temporary US military deployments.
Britain’s ministry of defense will send about 600 troops to Afghanistan on a short-term basis to help UK nationals leave the country. Canadian special forces will deploy to Afghanistan to help Canadian staff leave Kabul, a source familiar with the plan told The Associated Press. That official, who was not authorized to talk publicly about the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity, did not say how many special forces would be sent.
The Pentagon’s chief spokesman, John Kirby, said that in addition to sending three infantry battalions — two from the Marine Corps and one from the Army — to the airport, the Pentagon will dispatch 3,500 to 4,000 troops from a combat brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division to Kuwait to act as a reserve force. He said they will be on standby “in case we need even more” than the 3,000 going to Kabul