In Its Last Days in Kabul, U.S. Turns to Taliban as a Partner

Twenty many years back, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan to get rid of the Taliban. Now, American forces, battered by a person of the bloodiest assaults of the war, are relying for their very own protection on that identical team, whose users they have been seeking to destroy just weeks earlier.

Fighters of the Taliban’s elite Badri 313 device, dressed in the most current tactical gear, patrol the identical Kabul airport parking ton as U.S. Marines, divided by a several coils of razor wire. Farther absent, Taliban foot troopers pat down Afghans trying to find to enter the facility and disperse crowds with whips and occasional gunfire in the air.

The Taliban’s vital mission all around the airport in the closing days of the chaotic withdrawal is to maintain off Islamic Condition, an even more radical business, which killed thirteen U.S. troops and just about two hundred Afghans in a suicide bombing on Thursday.

In this arrangement, the five,two hundred American forces in Afghanistan “use the Taliban as a instrument to shield us as substantially as possible,” Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of the U.S. Central Command, reported immediately after Thursday’s assault. The Taliban and the U.S., he extra, now share a “common intent.”

More than that: The Taliban checkpoints on the way to the airport—in coordination with the U.S.—are screening Afghans whose earlier function with Western forces places them in hazard of Taliban retribution. The Taliban are “providing the outer protection cordon” for American forces, Gen. McKenzie reported, and have closed some streets at U.S. request, extending the checkpoints’ perimeter.