US President Joe Biden reacted with fury after learning that Ashraf Ghani had fled Kabul ahead of the Taliban takeover in August 2021, a new book claims.
Biden was on a vacation at Camp David when he was informed by his National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, that the then-president of Afghanistan had left the country as the Taliban fanned out across the capital and seized the presidential palace.
“Biden exploded in frustration,” journalist Franklin Foer’s forthcoming book The Last Politician was quoted by Fox News on Sunday.
“Give me a break!” Biden lashed out.
When Ghani fled the country to Uzbekistan on August 15, 2021, the Taliban swiftly took over Kabul while its forces were already positioned at the capital’s outskirts.
This further led to a far more chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan, contrary to the expectation of the Biden administration which was looking for a “gradual handover of responsibility” to the Kabul government by the end of August.
On August 26, 2021, the US withdrawal turned deadly when a suicide bomber ripped through a large crowd, killing 13 US service members and at least 170 civilians, who were among the thousands rushed to the Kabul airport attempting to flee the country.
“After seeing the abject desperation on the Kabul airport tarmac, the president had told the situation room that he wanted all the planes flying thousands of troops into the airport to leave filled with evacuees,’ writes Foer. ‘Pilots should pile American citizens and Afghans with visas into those planes.’
Although the Biden administration evacuated more than 120,000 people from Afghanistan as the country fell to the Taliban, thousands more were left behind at the mercy of the Taliban.
Two years after the Taliban takeover and the US exit from Afghanistan, the country is grappling with a deepening humanitarian crisis, the economy has collapsed, and human rights violations by the group is rife.
Girls and women have been banned from receiving an education and employment, except for little exceptions, and their mobility, appearance, civic participation, and other basic freedoms have been gravely curtailed.
