Today's D Brief: Evacuations picking up in Kabul; Taliban’s first presser; USMC’s new missile; SecAF’s eye on China; And a bit more.
By Ben Watson and Jennifer Hlad
August 18, 2021
The D Brief
When will order return to Kabul? It’s an urgent question that surely no one wants to know the answer to more than the thousands of Afghans trying to flee the capital city, now three days after the collapse of the Afghan government and the departure of disgraced former President Ashraf Ghani—who turned up today with his family in the United Arab Emirates, according to the Associated Press. But it’s also a question more and more people around the world are wondering now that the fate of Afghanistan has once again become deeply troubling front-page news. Otherwise, there are several notable and inevitably overlapping storylines coming out of Afghanistan Wednesday, including:
It’s “mayhem” around the Kabul airport, with “no coherent system for processing people,” CNN’s Clarissa Ward reports on location, and one day after America’s top commander in the Middle East, Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie of Central Command, visited Kabul on Tuesday to review airport security and re-establish civilian flights—as well as warning the Taliban not to interfere in evacuation efforts. Added CNN’s Ward, “Honestly, to me, it’s a miracle more people haven’t been seriously, seriously hurt.” And that will likely be the world’s guiding metric for how the next hours and days proceed.
Already there have been several instances of violence around the airport as alleged Taliban fighters seem to have attempted crowd control measures Tuesday; the Los Angeles Times’ photographer Marcus Yam caught some of those bloody scenes with his lens and posted them to Twitter, here.
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2021/08/the-d-brief-august-18-2021/184628/
