Kabul crumbles in the wake of Biden's botched pullout
President Joe Biden had announced America’s intention to withdraw from Afghanistan — no matter what — by September 11, 2021, two decades since the terror attack that sparked the US invasion.
The Taliban, for its part, wasted no time. Vacuums don’t remain unfilled for long in the Middle East. The moment the American departure became a certainty, the Taliban began recapturing one city after another, with the Afghan government offering only token resistance.
The Taliban’s advance was extraordinarily fast. Two weeks ago, intelligence experts estimated that Kabul would fall in three months’ time, revised last week to 30 days. As it turned out, Kabul fell on Sunday this week, long before the most pessimistic prediction.
The sight of Afghanistan’s president fleeing the country, and the every-man-for-himself attitude evident among Kabul’s elite, were painful blows to Biden’s exit strategy. Just six weeks ago the president had denied that the Afghan government would speedily collapse.
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