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White Home requested to guard journalists at Kabul airport

White House asked to protect journalists at Kabul airport

Men attempt to break into Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan on August 16, 2021.

Stringer | Reuters

The editors of three major US newspapers asked President Joe Biden on Monday to help fellow Afghan journalists evacuate Afghanistan.

Inquiries from the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal came after asking the White House to keep more than 200 journalists and newspaper associates “in danger” “in danger” at Kabul airport bring.

Post editor Fred Ryan sent an “urgent request” email to National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to move them from the civilian side of Hamid Karzai International Airport “to the military side, where they can be safe while they are on Waiting for evacuation flights ”.

“They are currently in danger and need the US government to keep them safe,” wrote Ryan in the email he wrote on behalf of the three newspapers.

Afghan people are waiting to leave Kabul Airport in Kabul on August 16, 2021 after a surprisingly quick end to the 20-year war in Afghanistan as thousands of people besieged the city’s airport to face the dreaded hard-line Islamist rule to flee the group.

Deputy Kohsar | AFP | Getty Images

Ryan wrote that 204 journalists, auxiliaries and family members from the three newspapers are stuck on the civilian side of the airport.

Later on Monday, Ryan, Times Publisher AG Sulzberger, and Journal Publisher Almar Latour Biden sent a joint letter asking him to get Afghan newspaper-related colleagues out of the country.

“For the past twenty years, brave Afghan colleagues have worked tirelessly to help the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal share news and information from the region with the world,” the letter said.

“Now these colleagues and their families are trapped in Kabul, their lives are in danger.”

“As an employer, we are looking for support for our colleagues and, as journalists, we are looking for a clear signal that the government stands behind the free press,” the editors wrote. “In this light, we ask the American government to act urgently and take three specific steps that are necessary to protect its security.”

In the letter, Biden was expressly requested to grant his Afghan colleagues “easier and protected access to the airport controlled by the US”; “Safe passage through a protected access gate to the airport”; and “facilitated air movement out of the country.”

After the Taliban captured the capital Kabul, thousands of Afghans streamed across the airport’s runway on Monday.

Kamal Alam, a non-resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council and senior advisor to the Massoud Foundation, told CNBC, “Nobody can really walk.”

“If you don’t have a visa or a passport, you won’t go,” said Alam, who is stuck in Afghanistan.

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U.S. to Advise Boosters for Most Individuals eight Months After Vaccination

U.S. to Advise Boosters for Most Americans 8 Months After Vaccination

WASHINGTON – The Biden government has decided that most Americans should have a coronavirus booster vaccination eight months after receiving their second vaccination and could start offering third vaccinations as early as mid-September, according to administrative officials familiar with the discussions.

Officials want to announce the decision later this week. Their goal is to let Americans who have received the Pfizer BioNTech or Moderna vaccines know now that they need additional protection against the Delta variant, which is causing case numbers to rise across much of the country. The new policy is subject to approval of additional syringes from the Food and Drug Administration.

Officials said they expect recipients of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which has been approved as a one-dose regimen, will also need an additional dose. But they are waiting for the results of the two-dose clinical trial from this company, which is expected later this month.

The first boosters should go to nursing home residents, health workers and rescue workers. They would likely be followed by other elderly people who were on the front lines at the start of vaccinations late last year, then the general population. Officials envision giving people the same vaccine they were originally given.

The decision is made as the Biden government struggles to regain control of a pandemic it allegedly tamed a little over a month ago. President Biden had declared the nation reopened to normal life for the July 4th holiday, but the spread of the Delta Variant wildfires has thwarted this. Covid-19 patients are again overwhelming hospitals in some states, and federal officials are concerned about an increase in the number of children being hospitalized at the beginning of the school year.

For weeks, officials in the Biden administration have been analyzing the rise in Covid-19 cases, trying to find out whether the Delta variant is better able to avoid vaccines or whether the vaccines have lost strength over time. According to some administrative experts, either could be true, a worrying combination that is resurrecting a pandemic the nation fervently hoped has been contained.

Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, told Fox News Sunday that “there is concern that the vaccine may wear off.” That, combined with the ferocity of the Delta variant, could dictate boosters, he said.

Federal health officials were particularly concerned about data from Israel suggesting the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine’s protection against serious illness has fallen significantly in older people who received their second vaccination in January or February.

Israel can in some ways be seen as a role model for the United States, having vaccinated a larger portion of its population faster and using almost exclusively the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine, which made up much of the US population. Unlike the United States, however, Israel has a nationalized health system that allows patients to be systematically tracked.

The latest Israeli data, released Monday on the government’s website, shows what some experts consider to be the ongoing erosion of the Pfizer vaccine’s effectiveness against mild or asymptomatic Covid-19 infections in general and against serious illnesses in the elderly who vaccinated early, have described the year.

Updated

Aug. 16, 2021, 10:32 p.m. ET

One slide suggests that for those over 65 who received their second vaccination in January, the vaccine is only about 55 percent effective against serious illnesses. However, the researchers found that the data had a large margin of error, and some said that other Israeli government data suggested that the decline in effectiveness was less severe.

“It’s showing a pretty big drop in effectiveness against infections, but it’s still a little unclear about protection against serious diseases,” said Dr. Peter J. Hotez, a vaccines expert at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, who contributed the data. checked the New York Times request.

Dr. Jesse L. Goodman, a former chief scientist with the Food and Drug Administration who also reviewed the data, said this indicates “worrying trends” that could signal a decline in vaccine effectiveness. But he said he would like to see more details about Israel and, more importantly, data that shows whether the United States is going in the same direction.

Understand the state of vaccination and masking requirements in the United States

    • Mask rules. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in July recommended that all Americans, regardless of vaccination status, wear masks in public places indoors in areas with outbreaks, reversing the guidelines offered in May. See where the CDC guidelines would apply and where states have implemented their own mask guidelines. The battle over masks is controversial in some states, with some local leaders defying state bans.
    • Vaccination regulations. . . and B.Factories. Private companies are increasingly demanding corona vaccines for employees with different approaches. Such mandates are legally permissible and have been confirmed in legal challenges.
    • College and Universities. More than 400 colleges and universities require a vaccination against Covid-19. Almost all of them are in states that voted for President Biden.
    • schools. On August 11, California announced that teachers and staff at both public and private schools would have to get vaccinated or have regular tests, the first state in the nation to do so. A survey published in August found that many American parents of school-age children are against mandatory vaccines for students but are more likely to support masking requirements for students, teachers and staff who are not vaccinated.
    • Hospitals and medical centers. Many hospitals and large health systems require their employees to have a Covid-19 vaccine, due to rising case numbers due to the Delta variant and persistently low vaccination rates in their communities, even within their workforce.
    • new York. On August 3, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that workers and customers would be required to provide proof of vaccination when dining indoors, gyms, performances, and other indoor situations. City hospital staff must also be vaccinated or have weekly tests. Similar rules apply to employees in New York State.
    • At the federal level. The Pentagon announced that it would make coronavirus vaccinations compulsory for the country’s 1.3 million active soldiers “by mid-September at the latest. President Biden announced that all civil federal employees would need to be vaccinated against the coronavirus or undergo regular tests, social distancing, mask requirements and travel restrictions.

Federal officials said the booster program will most likely follow the same scenario as the initial vaccination program. The first syringes for the general public in the United States were given on December 14, days after the FDA approved the Pfizer emergency shot. A week later, people received the Moderna vaccine.

While frontline health workers and nursing home residents were among the first to be vaccinated nationwide, states had their own plans for who else would be vaccinated during the first weeks and months of the vaccination campaign.

But almost everyone over 65 will have qualified for a vaccination by the end of February, as have many police officers, teachers, grocery store workers, and others exposed to the virus in the workplace.

The regulatory path for additional recordings is not entirely clear. Pfizer-BioNTech filed data with the FDA on Monday demonstrating the safety and effectiveness of a booster vaccination. But the data was preliminary, from a phase 1 clinical trial. Moderna is following a similar path, studying the safety and effectiveness of both half and full doses as a third shot.

The World Health Organization has called for a moratorium on booster vaccinations until the end of September, stating that the doses available should be used to help countries lagging far behind on vaccinations. But Israel is already offering third recordings to those who are at least 50 years old. Germany and France have announced that they will offer additional vaccinations to vulnerable populations next month. Britain has a plan to do so, but is holding back for the time being.

Late last week, the FDA approved third doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for certain people with compromised immune systems, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended them. Authorities decided that these people, who make up less than 3 percent of Americans, deserve extra shots as many do not respond to the standard dose. The agency has not yet approved any of the vaccines for children under the age of 12.

Noah Weiland contributed the reporting.

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How Afghanistan fell to the Taliban so rapidly

How Afghanistan fell to the Taliban so quickly

Taliban members are seen near Hamid Karzai International Airport as thousands of Afghans rush to flee the Afghan capital of Kabul, Afghanistan, on August 16, 2021.

Haroon Sabawoon | Getty Images

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The world was shocked this week by horrifying scenes of desperate Afghans swarming the tarmac at Kabul’s international airport, grasping at their last chance to escape a country now completely overrun by the Taliban.

After nearly two decades of war, more than 6,000 American lives lost, over 100,000 Afghans killed and more than $2 trillion spent by the U.S., the outlook for the country’s future was still grim, with regional experts assuming the Taliban would ultimately come to control most of Afghanistan once again.

But few expected a takeover this swift, with so little resistance from the Afghan government and Afghan National Army, the latter of which was funded and trained with $89 billion from the U.S. taxpayer.

“While the end result and bloodletting once we left was never in doubt, the speed of collapse is unreal,” one former intelligence official and U.S. Marine who served in Afghanistan told CNBC, requesting anonymity due to professional restrictions.

“Why were the Taliban able to so quickly take over? This is a masterpiece, frankly, operationally,” Michael Zacchea, a retired U.S. Marine who led an American-trained Iraqi Army battalion during the Iraq War, told CNBC. “Why were they able to take the country faster than we did in 2001?”

The question has been asked by Americans, Afghans, military veterans and international observers alike — and the answer, much like the Afghanistan conflict itself, is complex, multilayered and tragic.

But among the main causes, analysts say, are intelligence failures, a more powerful Taliban, corruption, money, cultural differences, and simple willpower.

Intelligence failure

The Taliban’s rapid takeover of Afghanistan, including its capital and the presidential palace, suggests that U.S. military intelligence failed in its assessment of the situation, according to Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

“This is an intelligence failure of the highest order,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Monday, adding that it’s the “biggest intelligence failure” since the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War, a campaign of devastating surprise attacks on the U.S. and its allies in 1968.

Roggio said the Taliban pre-positioned equipment and materials, organized, planned and executed a “massive offensive” since early May before beginning its “final assault,” while U.S. officials said the local government and military forces should be able to hold out for six months to a year.

Last week, Reuters reported that a U.S. defense official saw Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, falling in 90 days. Instead, that happened on Sunday, less than 10 days after the first provincial capital of Zaranj was taken by the Taliban.

‘A collapse in the will to fight’

What’s key to note is that the Taliban did not have to fight their way into Afghanistan’s provincial capitals but rather brokered a series of surrenders, says Jack Watling, a research fellow for land warfare and military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute in London. Over the last few years of fighting, the group managed to gain control of some 50% of the country by seizing rural areas.

We did not understand the tribal dynamics, we never did. We think everybody wants what we have. It’s cultural obtuseness, obliviousness to their reality.

Michael Zacchea

U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Col. (ret)

And when they began making headway in cities, many Afghan forces gave in to them, convinced that the government in Kabul would not back them up.

“The Taliban would infiltrate urban areas, assassinating key people like pilots, threatening the families of commanders, saying if you capitulate, you’ll save your family,” Watling said.

“A lot of people, because they lacked confidence that Kabul would be able to save them, capitulated.” More and more people chose this route, “so there was very little fighting, which is why it suddenly happened so fast,” he added. 

“The speed is not a reflection of military capability, it is a reflection of a collapse in will to fight.”

An Afghan National Army soldier stands guard at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan April 21, 2021.

Mohammad Ismail | Reuters

The news from the Biden administration of the full U.S. withdrawal sped this up, said Stephen Biddle, professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University.

“When the U.S. announced a total withdrawal, that sent a signal to Afghan soldiers and police that the end was near, and converted chronically poor motivation into acute collapse as nobody wanted to be the last man standing after the others gave up,” he explained.

“Once the signal was sent, contagion dynamics thus took over and the collapse snowballed with increasing speed and virtually no actual fighting,” Biddle added.

Women with their children try to get inside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan August 16, 2021.

Stringer | Reuters

In April, Biden ordered the Pentagon to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, a decision he said was made in lockstep with NATO coalition forces. On Monday, the president defended his decision to leave the country and placed the blame squarely on the Afghan national government.

“American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves,” Biden said. “We gave them every chance to determine their own future. We could not provide them with the will to fight for that future,” he added.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani himself fled the country on Sunday evening as the Taliban entered the presidential palace and declared the war “over.” Ghani said he fled to prevent “a flood of bloodshed.”

“The Taliban have won with the judgment of their swords and guns, and are now responsible for the honor, property and self-preservation of their countrymen,” Ghani said.

Despite being vastly outnumbered by the Afghan military, which has long been assisted by U.S. and NATO coalition forces, the Taliban carried out a succession of shocking battlefield gains in recent weeks.

On Sunday, the Taliban arrived at their last destination and seized the presidential palace in Kabul.

“The swift Taliban takeover shows how utterly dependent the Afghan state was on the U.S.-led coalition, materially and psychologically. Even before the U.S. withdrawal, the Afghan government and security forces were fraying at the seams,” said John Ciorciari, director of the International Policy and Weiser Diplomacy Center at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Policy.

“Soon after the U.S. pullout began, Afghan troops and officials began jumping ship, either to appease the Taliban or to retreat into old ethnic militias. The Taliban takeover will not bring peace. As the dust settles, many U.S.-trained fighters will likely regroup along ethnic lines to fight again,” he added.

Taliban ‘much more adept’ militarily

Not everyone believes the U.S. troop withdrawal is to blame for the chaos in Afghanistan today.

Kirsten Fontenrose, director of the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council, said the Taliban has become more effective since the 1990s.

“They’ve become much more adept … militarily and non-militarily in terms of pursuing the same objective they have — which is establishing an Islamic emirate in Afghanistan,” she told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Monday.

“The U.S. withdrawal is not the reason the Afghan government was outmaneuvered,” she added.

Fontenrose said the Taliban surrounded the capital of Kabul, cut off supply lines that government forces needed, and have also have grown in numbers while developing new strategies.

“They use social media as lethally as they do sniper rifles. They’ve used coercion to pressure local tribal leaders, they’ve used pretty simple but effective text message campaigns to threaten local Afghans working with the U.S. and with other foreign efforts,” she described.

The Taliban also lets ground commanders make decisions, and brings people into captured territories to provide small-scale social services to the residents.

That has allowed the group to “outmaneuver” Afghan and foreign forces in terms of effectively appealing, co-opting or coercing the local population into supporting — or not opposing — them, she added.

Afghan government corruption and military weakness

Had the Taliban engaged in a full military onslaught and faced resistance, the blitz of the country would have taken longer — but it still would have happened, Watling believes.

“I think the Taliban would have still won,” he said. “And this is because the Afghan National Army is comprised of lots of units that are systemically corrupt, have no effective command and control, they don’t know how many people are in their own units, most of their equipment has been taken apart, stolen and sold off, and so they were a completely dysfunctional force.”

Soldiers in many cases have not been fed very well, very rarely been paid and been on duty for a long time away from home… and were not well-led.

Jack Watling

Research Fellow for Land Warfare, RUSI

It’s also because the Afghan military is woefully underpaid, underfed and undercompensated by the leadership in Kabul.

The “soldiers in many cases have not been fed very well, very rarely been paid and been on duty for a long time away from home … and were not well led,” Watling added, a tactical failure that resulted in heavy casualties to the tune of about 40 soldiers a day for the past several years.

Many army units would sell their equipment to the Taliban for cash, and there were frequent desertions that went unaccounted for, leaving inflated troop numbers on the books.

How little Americans ‘understand Afghanistan’

Central to understanding America’s failure in Afghanistan also comes down to understanding the country’s history and its culture — and how drastically it differs from any Western nation.

“There’s never been a central government in Afghanistan. To think we could establish one was a fool’s errand,” said the former U.S. intelligence officer and Afghan War veteran. “The ‘surprise’ at the Taliban regaining power shows just how little Americans, from top to bottom, understand Afghanistan.”

Afghanistan is a country of numerous tribes, languages, ethnicities and religious sects, and Washington and its NATO allies were attempting to turn it into a unified democracy premised on largely Western values.

“There was a fundamental failure to understand what the Afghans wanted,” Zacchea, who trained an Iraqi battalion in 2004, said. “We assumed they wanted what we had — liberal democracy, Judeo-Christian values … And think they’d just automatically convert. And that is not the case.”

Tribal alliances in Afghanistan very often supersede national ones, or loyalties follow money and power. And part of the Taliban’s strength lay in the fact that as Pashtuns, they belonged to the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan.

“Meanwhile,” the former U.S. intelligence official said, “we basically supported a hodgepodge of ethnic minorities, who never had the capability of unifying the country.”

A U.S. soldier keeps watch at an Afghan National Army (ANA) base in Logar province, Afghanistan August 5, 2018

Omar Sobhani | Reuters

“We did not understand the tribal dynamics, we never did,” Zacchea said. “We think everybody wants what we have. It’s cultural obtuseness, obliviousness to their reality and their lived experience.” 

The nature of the U.S.-brokered cease-fire with the Taliban in early 2020 also further weakened the Afghan government’s image: Negotiations led by the Trump administration left out the elected leadership in Kabul, which “destroyed the Afghan government’s legitimacy” at a time when it already had little respect from local communities, said Watling.

Afghans across the country of 39 million have expressed acute fear for their country’s future — especially women, who following the U.S. invasion in 2001 were able to go to school for the first time since the Taliban first took control of Afghanistan in 1996. For many Afghan War veterans, bringing some of these basic freedoms to Afghans made their sacrifices worth it.

Now, those achievements are set to vanish, lamented one American veteran who served as an infantryman in the country in 2011.

“I have no regrets about what I did in Afghanistan,” the former Marine told CNBC, requesting his name be withheld due to job restrictions on speaking to the press.

“I just feel devastated for the people I saw over my time there when they were kids. Now they’re teens, and I can only imagine what they are going through.”

— Amanda Macias contributed to this report from Washington, Natasha Turak contributed from Dubai, and Abigail Ng contributed from Singapore.

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Lawmakers Unite in Bipartisan Fury Over Afghanistan Withdrawal

Lawmakers Unite in Bipartisan Fury Over Afghanistan Withdrawal

Moderate Democrats are angry with the Biden administration for their dire plans to evacuate the Americans and their allies. Liberal Democrats, who have long tried to end military engagements around the world, grumble that the images from Kabul are damaging their cause.

And Republicans, who months ago hailed former President Donald J. Trump’s even faster schedule to end US military involvement in the nation’s longest war, have brushed aside their earlier encouragement to accuse President Biden of humiliating the nation.

If Mr Biden hoped to find cover from politicians from both parties who had achieved broad consensus on the withdrawal, he has found little so far.

Faced with images of panicked Afghans bullying Kabul airport and inundated with appeals from Afghans seeking refuge, some Democrats openly attacked their president’s performance on Monday.

“I’ve been asking the administration for a refugee evacuation plan for months,” said Seth Moulton, Rep., Democrat of Massachusetts and former Marine Corps captain. “I was very clear: ‘We need a plan. We need someone to be in charge. ‘ To be honest, we still haven’t really seen the plan. “

“You had the opportunity for weeks. They had an amazing coalition of liberal and conservative lawmakers ready to assist the government in this effort, ”continued Moulton, who serves on the Armed Services Committee. “In my opinion, this was not only a national security mistake, it was also a political mistake.”

Some Liberal Democrats made appearances on television broadcast by White House officials on Twitter ahead of Mr Biden’s speech to the nation at the White House in defense of the President. However, finding few vocal defenders, administrative aides distributed topics to talk to Democrats in Congress to bolster the president’s position.

The government said the collapse of the Afghan government and the resulting chaos were not indictments of US policies, but evidence that the only way to prevent a disaster would have been to increase the presence of American troops. And in response to critics who say the president was caught on the wrong foot, the topics of the conversation read: “The government knew that there was a possibility that Kabul could fall to the Taliban. It wasn’t inevitable. It was a possibility. “

Rep. Barbara Lee, Democrat of California, who has been one of the fiercest voices against the wars that followed the 11th attacks for more than two decades, added, “We’ve been there for 20 years, spent over $ 1 trillion and trained over 300,000 of the Afghan armed forces. “

Rep. Jake Auchincloss, a Democrat of Massachusetts and a former Marine officer who served in Helmand Province, argued that Mr Biden’s only possible options would be to increase the American military presence in Afghanistan as the deadline for withdrawal agreed by Mr Trump. came and went – or to “finally tell the American people the truth”.

“What I have heard from voters,” he said in an interview, “is that what we are seeing in Afghanistan is worrying, but that people appreciate the President’s integrity for emphasizing that there is no end there are. Twenty years has been a long time to give Afghan leaders time to sow the seeds of civil society and instead they have only sown the seeds of corruption and incompetence. “

Updated

Aug. 16, 2021, 3:50 p.m. ET

In private, the Liberal Democrats were appalled by the widening catastrophe that Afghan refugees were exposed to. And some worried that the images of chaos in Kabul would serve as a cudgel for restrictive Republicans like Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, to crack down on Democrats pushing for permits to use military force to be revoked who were in 1991 before the Gulf War, in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks, and in 2002 before the US invasion of Iraq.

The Democratic left flank has pushed for substantial cuts in military spending and the Department of Defense’s overseas operations, as well as a realignment of government priorities for poverty reduction, education and childcare. But they now have to grapple with indelible images of the cost of US withdrawal.

Rep. Daniel Crenshaw, Republican of Texas and former Navy SEAL, wielded that stick when he said of Fox and Friends on Monday, “We’re getting this because we’re focusing on hollow slogans like ‘Bring the Troops Home’ and ‘No Endless Get more. ‘”

Mr McConnell, who had been ruthless during Mr Trump’s tenure in his disdain for the former president’s desire to keep his campaign promise and withdraw troops from Afghanistan, pounded Mr Biden in a statement, saying that the nation’s enemies ” watch “embarrassment of a superpower that has been laid deep.”

“America’s two decades of engagement in Afghanistan have had many writers,” said McConnell. “Just like the strategic missteps along the way. But while the monumental collapse predicted by our own experts is happening in Kabul today, the responsibility rests directly on the shoulders of our current commander in chief. “

Few Republicans, however, were willing to allude to the role of one of Mr Biden’s predecessors – or that Mr Trump had supported an even faster withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and, in April, called ending the war “a wonderful and positive thing”. “

Rep. Andy Biggs, Republican of Arizona and chairman of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, accused Biden on Monday of “abandoning Trump’s peace plan and exit strategy and creating his own arbitrarily”. In February, he wrote to Mr Biden pleading with him to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan “in the coming weeks”.

But in a sign that lawmakers believed the withdrawal from Afghanistan was still supported by large American voters – at least for now – even some notoriously radical Republicans refrained from condemning the decision themselves.

“There is a difference between the decision to back out and the way that decision was carried out,” said Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, on Fox and Friends.

“Whatever you think of the initial decision, the execution of Joe Biden was ruthlessly negligent,” he said, adding that “everything” Biden “might have to wait a few more months” to begin the withdrawal.

The political ramifications of the chaos and possible bloodshed in Afghanistan are not clear either in next year’s mid-term congressional elections or in the 2024 presidential election. Mr Trump felt the political advantage of retreating when he signed a peace deal with the Taliban and even invited Taliban leaders to Camp David from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan ahead of the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks. (The idea was quickly foiled.)

As soon as the images of Kabul fade off television screens this week, relief that the war was over – at least for US troops – could be the dominant emotional outcome.

Rep. Ruben Gallego, Democrat of Arizona and a former Marine who served in Iraq, said in a long statement on Twitter that the American public simply “stopped caring about Afghanistan years ago.”

“Our military has not abandoned Afghanistan. The American people have not abandoned Afghanistan, ”wrote Mr Gallego. “Hubris of us, the elites in Washington, DC, did that. We did not understand Afghanistan and we did not understand the will of the American public for a long commitment … again. “

Jonathan Weisman contributed to the coverage.

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Chaotic scenes at Kabul airport as Afghans flee Taliban

Chaotic scenes at Kabul airport as Afghans flee Taliban

Thousands of Afghans have amassed on the tarmac at Kabul’s international airport in the hours after the Taliban captured the capital.

The chaotic scenes Monday at Hamid Karzai International Airport captured by news crews and cellphones convey a terror and desperate rush to escape the country, which is now overrun by Taliban militants in the lead-up to the complete departure of U.S. forces.

A video shared on Twitter appears to shows large crowds of people, including children, moving toward passenger aircraft on the tarmac.

“No one can really leave,” Kamal Alam, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and senior adviser to the Massoud Foundation, told CNBC in a phone interview. Alam was stuck in Afghanistan, his flight out of the country canceled. “If you don’t have a visa or passport, which the majority of Afghans don’t, you’re not going.”

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country on Sunday evening, reportedly to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, as the Taliban entered the presidential palace and declared the war “over.” Ghani said he fled to prevent “a flood of bloodshed.”

“The Taliban have won with the judgment of their swords and guns, and are now responsible for the honor, property and self-preservation of their countrymen,” Ghani said.

The rapid departure of high-ranking Afghan officials — along with substantial amounts of cash — in recent days is what initially prompted the rush to leave and a flood of anger at the Afghan government, Alam said. He was at Hamid Karzai International Airport a few days ago.

“All the VIPs were being allowed to fly out first, all their cash was being transported first … whether on commercial airlines or private jets from [an] unnamed Gulf country,” he said, not specifying the country due to the sensitive nature of the issue.

“So people were seeing this, there was a lot of resentment and anger from the airport security, and that is really where the rot started. That’s when people started saying this government and this president is not worth defending, let’s get out of here.”

Another video posted to social media appears shows people struggling to board a plane.

The panic is unfolding as an expanded force of about 6,000 U.S. troops return to the country to evacuate Western diplomats. The forces were tasked, according to the State Department, with the “very narrowly focused mission” of evacuating embassy staff in Kabul. As of late Sunday, the U.S. Embassy was effectively moved into the airport.

An Afghan family rushes to the Hamid Karzai International Airport as they flee the Afghan capital of Kabul, Afghanistan, on August 16, 2021.

Haroon Sabawoon | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

“We can confirm that the safe evacuation of all Embassy personnel is now complete,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement Monday. “All Embassy personnel are located on the premises of Hamid Karzai International Airport, whose perimeter is secured by the U.S. Military.”

Before Sunday, Kabul was the last major city to have been spared takeover by the militants.

A Taliban spokesperson said the fighters intended to negotiate a “peaceful surrender” of the city.

Since President Joe Biden’s April decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan before Sept. 11, the Taliban have made stunning battlefield advances with now the entirety of the nation of 38 million people under their control.

The rapid disintegration of Afghan security forces and the country’s government have shocked the world and led many to question how a collapse could happen so quickly after two decades of American nation-building and training efforts.

Afghans (L) crowd at the airport as US soldiers stand guard in Kabul on August 16, 2021.

SHAKIB RAHMANI | AFP | Getty Images

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Rushed Evacuation in Kabul Highlights Disconnect in Washington

Rushed Evacuation in Kabul Highlights Disconnect in Washington

Meanwhile, at the Pentagon, Defense officials said that 3,000 Marines and soldiers were on the ground in Kabul as of Sunday night to help with the evacuation, and another 3,000 were en route.

Tension had been building between the Kabul Embassy and the Pentagon, the officials said, with Pentagon officials urging a smaller footprint and the State Department seeking to keep a robust presence. During meetings and video conference calls, Pentagon officials reminded their diplomatic counterparts that American troops were leaving.

Three weeks ago, as Afghan cities began to fall to the Taliban, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III extended the deployment of the amphibious assault warship U.S.S. Iwo Jima in the Gulf of Oman so that it would be close to the region. One week after that, he ordered the Marine expeditionary unit on the ship — some 2,000 Marines — to disembark and wait in Kuwait so that they could more easily deploy to Afghanistan.

On Sunday, the military evacuated 500 people, officials said, adding that they expected that number to go up to 5,000 a day in the coming week.

All U.S. embassies overseas have emergency evacuation plans, but Kabul posed significant hurdles. First, with some 4,000 employees, the embassy is one of the largest in the world. Shutting it down and destroying any sensitive documents and other materials takes time. Second, given that the Taliban control border crossings out of the country, the evacuation has to be done entirely by air, officials said.

Thousands of others, including dual citizens and U.S. contractors, are also in the country.

Embassy officials urged American citizens who are still in Afghanistan to shelter in place and resubmit paperwork to request help to leave instead of showing up at the airport, given reports of gunfire there.

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Microsoft challenges NSA cloud contract reportedly awarded to Amazon

Microsoft challenges NSA cloud contract reportedly awarded to Amazon

President Donald Trump speaks on Jan.

Jabin Botsford | The Washington Post | Getty Images

Microsoft has filed a protest against the National Security Agency at the Government Accountability Office and challenged the award of a cloud computing contract.

The protest filed on July 21 is intended to challenge the NSA’s decision to award the $ 10 billion contract to Amazon, the journals Nextgov and Washington Technology reported on Tuesday.

The NSA deal with Amazon follows the Pentagon’s decision to terminate its $ 10 billion cloud contract known as JEDI, or Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure. The JEDI deal, embroiled in a lengthy legal battle between tech giants Amazon and Microsoft, had become one of the most tangled contracts for the Pentagon.

The NSA contract, which is also up to 10 billion US dollars, is code-named “WildandStormy” and is intended to modernize the agency’s secret data storage, reported Nextgov.

In a statement to CNBC, a spokesman for the NSA said the agency “recently placed a contract for cloud computing services” and declined to elaborate on the matter.

“The unsuccessful provider has filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office. The agency will respond to the protest in accordance with applicable federal regulations,” added the spokesman.

A Microsoft spokesman told CNBC in a statement: “Based on the decision, we are filing an administrative protest through the Government Accountability Office. We exercise our legal rights and will do so carefully and responsibly. “

Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud computing unit, referred questions to the NSA.

The lucrative JEDI cloud contract was intended to modernize the IT operations of the Pentagon for services provided for up to 10 years. Microsoft received the cloud computing contract in 2019, beating the market leader AWS.

A month later, AWS filed a lawsuit in the US Federal Court to protest the JEDI decision.

The company argued that former President Donald Trump was biased against Amazon, and that its then CEO Jeff Bezos lobbied the Pentagon to give the contract to Microsoft.

Last year the Pentagon inspector general released a report that the award did not appear to have been influenced by the White House.

However, the Inspector General noted in the 313-page report released in April 2020 that he had limited cooperation with White House officials throughout his review and was therefore unable to complete his assessment of the ethical misconduct allegations.

A Pentagon official said on a call with reporters that the litigation itself is not necessarily the main reason for the change in approach. Given that the landscape had changed in the meantime, the agency found that their needs had changed too.

– CNBC’s Jordan Novet and Lauren Feiner contributed to this article.

WATCH: Department of Defense Chief Information Officer on the decision to terminate the JEDI program

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Remaining Failure in Afghanistan Is Biden’s to Personal

Final Failure in Afghanistan Is Biden’s to Own

Rarely in modern presidential history have words come back so quickly that bite an American commander in chief as quickly as President Biden’s a little over five weeks ago: “There will be no circumstance in which people are lifted from the roof of an embassy” of the United States in Afghanistan. “

Then he dug the hole deeper and added, “The likelihood that the Taliban will overrun everything and own the whole country is very unlikely.”

On Sunday, the scramble to evacuate American civilians and embassy workers from Kabul unfolded – exactly the image that Mr Biden and his aides had to avoid at the recent meetings in the Oval Office – live on television, not from the roof of the US embassy, ​​but from the Landing area next to the building. And now that the Afghan government has collapsed at astonishing speed, the Taliban certainly seem to have full control of the country back if the anniversary of September 11, 2001 is commemorated in less than a month of the attacks – just like that it was 20 summers ago.

Mr. Biden will go down in history, fair or unfair, as President who led a lengthy, humiliating final act in the American experiment in Afghanistan. After seven months in which his administration seemed to be broadcasting much-needed skill – vaccinating more than 70 percent of the country’s adults, developing rapid job growth, and making progress towards a bipartisan infrastructure bill – everything shook America’s final days in Afghanistan the pictures.

Even many of Mr. Biden’s allies, who believe they have made the right decision to finally end a war that the United States could not win and that was no longer in their national interest, admit that in carrying out the Withdrawal made a number of serious mistakes. The only question is how politically damaging these will be, or whether the Americans who cheered at the 2020 election rallies when both President Donald J. Trump and Mr Biden promised to leave Afghanistan will shrug their shoulders and say that it is had to end, even if it ended badly.

Mr. Biden knew the risks. He has often noted that he came into office with more foreign policy experience than any other president in recent times, arguably since Dwight D. Eisenhower. At meetings this spring about the impending U.S. withdrawal, Biden told staff it was crucial to avoid the kind of scene revealed by the iconic photos of Americans and Vietnamese climbing a ladder to a helicopter on the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon when it was desperately evacuated in 1975 when the Viet Cong swept into town.

But after he decided in April to set September 11th as the date for the final American withdrawal, he and his aides failed to get the interpreters and others helping the American forces out of the country fast enough, and them Stuck in immigration papers. There was no reliable mechanism for contractors to keep the Afghan Air Force flying while the Americans packed up. The plan Mr Biden spoke of at the end of June, what he called what he called a “beyond the horizon” capability to strengthen the Afghan forces in the event of a threat to Kabul, was half-baked before those Afghan forces collapsed .

By their own admission, Mr Biden’s aides believed they had the luxury of time, perhaps 18 months or so, based on intelligence ratings that grossly overestimated the capabilities of an Afghan army that disintegrated, often before any shots were fired. On July 8, the same day he said there was no need to worry about an imminent takeover by the Taliban, Biden said the Taliban were “not even close in terms of the training and capabilities” of the Afghan security forces at “be their capacity.” He now knows that they have made up for the lack of capacity in strategy, determination and drive.

“There are lessons in how every government has dealt with Afghanistan from start to finish, and we owe it to the military and other Americans who risk their lives to use those lessons to make future decisions.” said Michèle Flournoy, who served as the No. 3 Pentagon official in the Obama administration and was a leading contender in defense of Mr. Biden.

“The question for the Biden administration will be whether sufficient contingency planning has been carried out to sustain critical counterterrorism operations,” and whether we are “meeting our obligations to the Afghans who helped us, the risks associated with the withdrawal and enable continued support “the Afghan military is viable.”

Even the most seasoned hands in South Asian politics, like Ryan Crocker, a retired career diplomat who served as ambassador to Afghanistan under President Barack Obama and Iraq under President George W. Bush, thought it was more time.

“A prolonged civil war is, frankly, more likely,” he said seven days ago in ABC’s This Week, “than a swift takeover of the entire country by the Taliban.” But he went on to say that Mr. Biden “now has full responsibility for President Trump’s pledges” to leave the country. “He owns it,” said Mr. Crocker. “And I think it’s already an indelible mark on his presidency.”

On Sunday, Mr. Biden was silent in public. The White House posted a photo of him in a video briefing at Camp David. He was to be seen alone in the photo, his helpers beamed in. And it was up to them to explain why, in July, he thought the Afghan forces would fight hard.

Republicans, including some of those who applauded Trump when he said he would get America out of Afghanistan by Christmas 2020, jumped at the pictures of Americans being evacuated and Ashraf Ghani, the country’s president who has no succession flees without a deal with the Taliban on the country’s future and without support.

“I think it’s an absolute disaster,” said Texas representative Michael McCaul on Sunday in CNN’s State of the Union, claiming that Afghanistan would become a “state before September 11, 2001 – a breeding ground for terrorism” to return. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken countered that the US ability to track down, track down and kill terrorists is far greater than it was two decades ago.

But Mr. McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, appeared to be exploring topics for the next election season when he said of Mr. Biden, “He could have planned this. He could have had a strategy for that. “

Now, he said, “there is still no other strategy than speeding to the airport and evacuating as many people as possible.”

Indeed, there is a strategy, but not one that Mr Biden can easily sell given the images of chaos in Kabul. In his opinion, the years of reshuffling American foreign policy in response to the 9/11 attacks gave China room to stand up, Russia room to disrupt, Iran and North Korea room to focus on their nuclear ambitions. The escape from Afghanistan is part of a wider effort to refocus on key strategic challenges and new threats from cyberspace to space. But this weekend was proof that the past is never really in the past.

The government defended itself against criticism for not moving fast enough in Afghanistan by admitting that it was surprised by the speed of the collapse but insisted that there were plans. Pentagon press secretary John F. Kirby said a sample of the evacuation effort was “withheld until May” and that Marines from Iwo Jima were stationed to fly to Kabul.

“We have been quick to respond in the past few days because we were prepared for this emergency,” said Kirby.

But Mr Biden’s own words make it clear that he was confident that that day, if at all, would not come for a long time. He repeatedly said he did not regret his decision and would bear no responsibility if the Taliban took power, also because Trump signed the deal in February 2020 that set a date for full American withdrawal on May 1, 2021. (Although Mr. Biden extended the withdrawal date to September 11, almost all American troops were gone by early July.)

The result of the Trump-Taliban agreement, Biden said on Saturday, was that he was facing a Taliban force “in the strongest military position since 2001” and a date by which all American forces would have to be deposed.

Mr Blinken went around on Sunday to ask why more was not being done sooner to get Afghan interpreters out of the country for the US military and other allies threatened by Taliban retaliation. He was also asked why more Americans weren’t withdrawn from the embassy in Kabul earlier, as many at the Pentagon had requested, before the extent of the collapse became apparent.

“The inability of the Afghan security forces to defend their country has played a very important role,” Blinken said in NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday.

All true. But it is Mr Biden who may be remembered for his role in wildly overestimating the strength of the Afghan armed forces and not moving fast enough when it became clear that the scenarios presented to him were wrong.

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Kathy Hochul to run for NY governor after ending Cuomo’s time period

Kathy Hochul to run for NY governor after finishing Cuomo's term

New York Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul speaks during a news conference the day after Governor Andrew Cuomo announced his resignation at the New York State Capitol, in Albany, New York, August 11, 2021.

Cindy Schultz | Reuters

New York Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul said Thursday she plans to run for governor in the state’s 2022 race after she finishes the remainder of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s term. 

“I fully expect to. I’ve prepared for this,” Hochul said when asked on NBC’s “TODAY” whether she will run. 

“I am confident that they’ll see that I fight like hell every single day. It’s how I’m hardwired, and I’m looking forward to this challenge, and I won’t let New Yorkers down,” Hochul said in the interview. 

Hochul will succeed Cuomo in less than two weeks and will complete the last 15 months of his term. The governor announced his resignation following a bombshell report released by the New York State Attorney General’s office that found he sexually harassed at least 11 women and oversaw a hostile working environment in his office. 

Hochul said Wednesday she is ready to take the helm and vowed not to have the same “toxic” workplace that her predecessor allegedly had for his three terms. She also said she would oust any Cuomo staff or officials who were implicated in the report. 

“No one who was named as doing anything unethical in the report will remain in my administration,” Hochul said Wednesday. “There will be turnover.”

Hochul as lieutenant governor has amassed a war chest of roughly $1.7 million, according to state campaign finance records.

She already has a strong mix of wealthy donors from a wide range of industries including those in real estate, labor and health care, according to state campaign finance records. Donors include William Rudin, the CEO of Rudin Management; Samuel Savarino, the head of Buffalo-based construction firm Savarino Companies; and the International Union of Operating Engineers.

The formidable campaign funding suggests Hochul has an advantage going into 2022.

Other potential Democratic contenders include State Attorney General Letitia James, who oversaw the months-long investigation into Cuomo. She is seen as having ambitions for higher office but has not said whether she would run.

Cuomo, despite stepping down within the next two weeks, could still run for governor again if he’s not impeached and convicted by the state legislature. The governor had more than $18 million in campaign funds on hand by the end of the first half of this year. 

New York state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi is also considering running for governor next year, according to key Democratic Party sources in and around Albany. The Democrat was one of several critics of Cuomo’s workplace environment and had called on the governor to resign.

But Biaggi is not a household name like other contenders and has only $185,000 in campaign funds, according to New York State campaign finance records, making it unlikely she would win the election.

Several Republican candidates have also announced their plans to run for governor next year, including U.S. Rep. Lee Zedlin and Westchester County executive Rob Astoriano, according to The Wall Street Journal. Andrew Giuliani, a former aide in the Trump administration and the son of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, has also announced his candidacy.

— CNBC’s Brian Schwartz contributed to this report.

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U.S. Asks Taliban to Spare Its Kabul Embassy in Coming Struggle for Capital

U.S. Asks Taliban to Spare Its Kabul Embassy in Coming Fight for Capital

Mr Khalilzad hopes to convince Taliban leaders that if the group hopes to receive US financial and other aid as part of a future Afghan government, the message must remain open and secure. The Taliban leadership has declared that it wants to be seen as the legitimate administrator of the country and is seeking relationships with other world powers, including Russia and China, in order to obtain economic support.

Two officials confirmed Mr. Khalilzad’s efforts, which had not yet been reported, to discuss the delicate negotiations on condition of anonymity. A third official said Thursday that the Taliban would lose all legitimacy – including development aid – if they attack Kabul or forcibly take over the Afghan government.

Other governments are also warning the Taliban that, given the rampage their fighters have carried out across the country in recent days, they will not receive any help if they overrun the Afghan government. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Thursday that Berlin would not give the Taliban any financial support if they ultimately rule Afghanistan with an Islamic hardline law.

In other posts around the world, US diplomats said they would be closely monitoring the dangerous situation in Kabul to see how the State Department weighs its long-standing commitment to stabilizing Afghanistan against protecting the Americans who stay there if the odds change Withdraw forces.

Ronald E. Neumann, who was the American ambassador to Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007, described a push-and-pull between the Pentagon and the State Department in similar situations in view of the military’s responsibility for conducting evacuations and the duty of diplomats to act on the American Help maintain and influence even in danger zones.

“If the military goes too early, it may be unnecessary and it can cost you a lot politically,” said Neumann, who is now president of the American Academy of Diplomacy in Washington. “If the diplomats wait too late, it looks like Saigon from the roof or leaving Mogadishu after everything has been lost, and it endangers the military. So there is no guaranteed right-hand side. “

Another senior US official this week voiced alarm over the fall of provincial capitals across Afghanistan, saying the situation could fall apart quickly if other cities follow suit, notably Mazar-i-Sharif, the only major city in the north that remains is under the control of the government.