Interesting read on the quick collapse of the Afghan government, primarily focused on the last day or so before the Afghan President bolted.
This account of Kabul’s fall — the climactic moment of America’s longest war — is based on nearly two dozen interviews with U.S. and Afghan officials, a Taliban commander and residents of the city.
On the Friday afternoon before Kabul fell, the White House was starting to empty out, as many of the senior staff prepared to take their first vacations of Biden’s young presidency. Earlier in the day, Biden had arrived at Camp David, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken was already in the Hamptons.
But by Saturday, the fall of Mazar-e Sharif — site of furious battles between pro and anti-Taliban forces in the 1990s — convinced U.S. officials that they needed to scramble. How quickly was a subject of dispute between the Pentagon and State Department.
In a conference call with Biden and his top security aides that day, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called for the immediate relocation of all U.S. Embassy personnel to the Kabul airport, according to a U.S. official familiar with the call.
Saturday evening Kabul time, Ghani and Blinken spoke by phone. Hoping to avert a showdown in the capital, Blinken sought Ghani’s support for a U.S.-brokered arrangement with the Taliban in which the militants would remain outside Kabul if the Afghan leader would step aside as an interim government took charge. The aim, said a senior U.S. official, was to buy time for negotiations aimed at forming an inclusive government that involved the Taliban, as well as others.
The president reluctantly agreed.
Precarious as it may have been, there appeared to be a path to a peaceful, political transition — a way for Afghanistan to avoid the sort of violent takeovers that have characterized so much of its recent past.
In a hastily arranged in-person meeting, senior U.S. military leaders in Doha — including McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command — spoke with Abdul Ghani Baradar, head of the Taliban’s political wing.
“We have a problem,” Baradar said, according to the U.S. official. “We have two options to deal with it: You [the United States military] take responsibility for securing Kabul or you have to allow us to do it.”
Throughout the day, Biden had remained resolute in his decision to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan. The collapse of the Afghan government hadn’t changed his mind.
McKenzie, aware of those orders, told Baradar that the U.S. mission was only to evacuate American citizens, Afghan allies and others at risk. The United States, he told Baradar, needed the airport to do that.
On the spot, an understanding was reached, according to two other U.S. officials: The United States could have the airport until Aug. 31. But the Taliban would control the city.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/20 ... ver-kabul/