generalspeaking: The New Afghanistan is the Old Afghanistan

"Make no mistake, this evacuation mission is dangerous. I cannot promise what the final outcome will be or that it will be without risk of loss. Any American who wants to come home, we will get you home."
"I have seen no questioning of our credibility from our allies around the world. I have spoken with our NATO allies. the opposite, we're acting with dispatch. It's time to end this war. I think we can get it done [get all Americans out by August 31] by then, but we're going to make that judgement as we go."
"To the best of our knowledge, the Taliban checkpoints, they are letting through people showing American passports."
"I took the consensus opinion [on withdrawal of forces]. the consensus opinion was, that in fact, it [Taliban takeover] would not occur, if it occurred, until later in the year."
U.S. President Joe Biden

US Air Force security forces raven maintains a security cordon at Hamid Karzai International Airport [Taylor Crul/US Air Force/AFP]

American allies complained bitterly that the Biden administration failed to consult with them, failed to give them timely notice of the intention to withdraw the U.S. military presence from the American bases that fell to the Taliban. Prime Minister Boris Johnson was said to have attempted fruitlessly to speak with Mr. Biden, but his request for a return call wasn't returned for a day and a half. Now, NATO allies are attempting to persuade the Biden administration to put off complete withdrawal until such time as they have succeeded in getting all of their nationals to safety and rescuing as many of the Afghan civilians that worked for and with them.

The Taliban control roads leading to the Kabul airport and they maintain strict control over the checkpoints leading into the airport. There are reports the Taliban are confiscating passports from Afghans desperate to make flights out of Afghanistan, and are refusing to allow people to pass through into the airport from the packed crowd-control areas where rifle butts and whips and stark orders help with the job of keeping people in line. The U.S. agreement with the Taliban not to harm Americans in exchange for non-interference is tenuous.

"Any attack on our forces or disruption of our operations at the airport will be met with a swift and forceful response", said the president of the Taliban airport checkpoints. In any event, pointed out the president, some of those gathered by the thousands desperate to enter the airport and be taken by magic flights away from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan may not be who they appear to be: "There's a whole lot of Afghanis who would just as soon come to America, whether they have any involvement with the United States in the past at all rather than stay under Taliban rule or any rule".

Taliban fighters patrol in Kabul, Afghanistan [Rahmat Gul/AP Photo]

According to Democratic congressman Jason Crow sitting on the House Intelligence Committee, 100,000 Afghans who gave assistance to the United States during its 20-year tenure in Afghanistan could ultimately be left behind, that the Taliban were making use of files from Afghanistan's intelligence agency to identify U.S. 'sympathizers' for their very own special treatment. Diplomats from the Kabul U.S. embassy had sent an internal memo of "dissent" warning of swift gains by the Taliban and a collapse of Afghan security forces, back in mid-July.

And in Kabul and other cities now in the capable hands of the Taliban, an Afghan woman, ordered to pay for, provide and cook the food ingredients to serve to Taliban stationed nearby her home -- a general order that went out in an aura of increasingly scarce food supplies impoverishing Afghans -- was set on fire by the Taliban fighters she was serving who deemed her cooking to be inferior and who viewed this as just punishment for the error of her cooking skills.

It was an Afghan judge who reported on the incident following a group of Afghans waving the Afghan flag being attacked by the Taliban. Former judge and human rights campaigner Najia Ayoubi, fled when the government collapsed but continues to campaign against violence directed at women, as she did when reporting casual abuse of women taking place since the Taliban victory. "They also force families to marry their young daughters to Taliban fighters. I don't see where is the promise that they think women should be going to work, when we are seeing all of these atrocities."

House-to house searches in systematic manhunts for government officials, former soldiers, Afghans who had worked with foreign troops, journalists and other non-governmental workers is being carried out with great vigour despite the central Taliban leadership promising a general amnesty to former government officials and soldiers. Safe houses operated by a German charity meant to give haven to Afghan nationals connected with coalition forces, were shut down by necessity because they had become "death traps".

Taliban fighters stand guard at a checkpoint in the Wazir Akbar Khan neighbourhood in the city of Kabul, Afghanistan, August 22, 2021 [Rahmat Gul/AP Photo]

"The Taliban are going door-to-door looking for local forces. This was foreseeable and there has already been a visit to one of the safe houses by the Taliban. Thank God it was empty", said Marcus Grotian, a German soldier who operates the safe-house network. Footage has emerged of Taliban fighters on the streets of captured cities taking aside anyone they suspect of 'disloyalty' to be abused and arrested. The Taliban have reverted to form despite assurances to an international audience that all would be well.

The 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation has issued a formal statement that now is the time for all 'sides' in Afghanistan to reach a conciliation agreement, for order and good government to prevail and peace to set in. Afghanistan, they declared, should never again become a safe haven for terrorists. A confusing statement at the very least, since the Taliban is, in and of itself a terrorist group, one that enjoys quite collegial relations with al-Qaeda, and permits the presence of ISIL on Afghan soil.

With the OIC recognition of the Taliban as the new-and-improved government as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the Islamic world confers recognition of legitimacy on a terrorist group that has succeeded in short order -- through sowing terror in violent bombings and assassinations -- to oust the constitutional government of the country, prepared to set up another, under strict sharia law that will effectively ban the quality of life for Afghans. As for peace and harmony, it will not be achieved.

A desperately cowed and fearful public destined once again to adjust to their reduced position from free human beings to indentured theists suffering the oppressive tyranny of Byzantine-era armed-and-dangerous thugs who are able to mete out instant punishment over perceived sharia infractions resulting in public floggings and murder, will return Afghanistan to the stone age. But there is a reckoning on the sidelines as former members of the Northern Alliance regroup in the Panjshir Valley to eventually march in opposition to the Taliban to return some semblance of liberty to a suffering population.