After the flash control of the Kabul capital by the Taliban on Sunday, the President of the United States Joe Biden was strongly criticized for his management of the evacuation carried out by the American troops, with scenes of panic fear in theAnd near Kabul airport showing people who are desperately trying to flee the country, images that have gone around the world.

For President Biden, it would have been impossible to withdraw American troops without a form of "chaos" in the country, he said on Wednesday to the ABC channel:

However, the American president wanted to show that he takes into account the reality of the situation by announcing yesterday that American troops could remain in Afghanistan beyond August 31, when the American military intervention must endthe country, in order to evacuate the Americans still present on the territory.

Biden promises to evacuate all Americans

But when the journalist who questioned him asks him: "So, does that mean that American troops could be there beyond August 31?"Joe Biden answers first" No, our compatriots must understand that we will try to do so before August 31. "But he then specifies: "If we do not succeed, we will determine ourselves at that time.»»

For its part, the Pentagon said that the US military was currently unable to reach people who are not at Kabul airport.

The Americans took charge of air traffic control and flight coordination

After a ten -day lightning military campaign to take control of the country and the Taliban entrance into the capital on Sunday, tens of thousands of people tried to flee from Afghanistan.The United States has 4,000-4,000-soldiers on the spot to secure Kabul airport and evacuate around 30,000 Afghan Americans and civilians who worked for them and fearing for their lives.

The American army has already evacuated more than 3,200 people, including American staff, and nearly 2,000 Afghan refugees.Other Western countries, including France and the United Kingdom, also proceeded to evacuations.

With the sudden collapse of the Afghan state, the United States has taken care of air traffic control and flight coordination.According to the American daily Air Force Times, the control of air movements to Kabul is the responsibility of American airplanes based on the Air Udeid air base in Qatar.Afghan civil aviation said on Monday that he is unable to control civil traffic above Afghanistan.

The Taliban would let the Americans pass, not the Afghans

At Kabul airport, complex evacuation operations continue laboriously, but the United States accuses the Taliban, which control all the surroundings, of hindering access to the Afghans who wish to leave the country.

According to Wendy Sherman, number two of the American State Department, the Taliban let American citizens access Kabul airport, but it seems that they "prevent Afghans who wish to leave the country from reaching the airport"She deplored.

These Afghans, who still remember the previous Taliban regime, between 1996 and 2001, and their catastrophic assessment in terms of human rights, have no confidence in the promises given in recent days by new Islamist leaders.They sought to present themselves in a much more benevolent light, promising not to seek to take revenge and even saying having pardoned the former government officials.But for many Afghans as for the international community, distrust remains in order.

On the front page of the New York Times, in mirror of the fall of Saigon in 1975

This Thursday, NATO and Taliban officials said that 12 people have died since Sunday at Kabul airport and in its surroundings, reports the Reuters agency.

As in mirror of this one that he had devoted at the end of April 1975 to the fall of Saigon, a fall which marked the end of the Vietnam War and the departure of the defeated Americans, the New York Times made its front page this morning (todayHuch that of its website, see below) with an image of Kabul's airport seen from the sky (yesterday a card, today a satellite image) which informs the dangerousness of the situation and the forces involved.While thousands of people flock to the airport trying desperately to flee country, the NYT explains in particular where the Taliban fighters block the entries, where they fired on people and beaten some others in the crowd.

[The front page of the New York Times site this morning (click to enlarge the full screen image)]]

Many have made the rapprochement, such as the INA site which today republishes this video archive of the fall of Saigon today.

The situation is "a disaster and a nightmare," says Borrell

These events in Afghanistan, the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, qualified them on Thursday as "disaster" and "nightmare", pointing to a failure of the intelligence services for their inability to anticipate the speed of the Taliban's returnpower.

Instead of an organized political transition, this situation has panicked, with the flight of President Ashraf Ghani to the United Arab Emirates, and in the case of foreign diplomats and civilians, an exodus in the most total precipitation.

The European Union must accommodate Afghans subject to an "immediate threat", said European Commissioner Ylva Johansson and Austria already requests that the EU provides "detention centers"In neighboring countries of Afghanistan for those who will be expelled from Europe.

A hundred UN employees will be evacuated to Almaty, Kazakhstan, a spokesperson said.

Save the Afghans who worked for the EU, "a moral duty"

Josep Borrell reported to the European Parliament that a group of 106 Union staff in Afghanistan had been transported by plane to Madrid, Spain.About 400 Afghan Bloc auxiliaries and their families were evacuated to Europe, he said, but 300 others are still trying to go to Kabul airport.

It is "our moral duty" to save the Afghans who have worked for the structures of the European Union, said Josep Borrell, stressing nevertheless that it would not be possible to bring them all out of the country.

French special forces in Kabul

The first plane evacuating from the French and some Afghans from Kabul who fell in the hands of the Taliban arrived Tuesday morning in the United Arab Emirates, announced the Minister of the Armed Forces Florence Parly.

"After a very chaotic situation at the end of the day yesterday [Monday, August 16, editor's note]" at Kabul airport, a first plane was able to land and then left and "arrived at the end of the night" on a French base in the Emirates,She said on RTL on Tuesday August 17.She added that with this first flight, "we laid the foundations for an air bridge between Kabul and the United Arab Emirates", where France has a military base, the Air Base 104 of Al Dhafra.

"This operation could not take place without a powerful support of the United Arab Emirates," praised the minister, declaring that he was "a little early" to "give a figure with certainty" on the total number of people who will berepatriated.

This first aircraft, an A400 m of military transport, who left France on Monday for the Emirates, brought French special forces in Kabul to participate in the evacuation operations of several dozen French people as well as some Afghans.

The first Afghans put in safety by France arrived on Wednesday evening at the Parisian airport of Roissy Charles-de-Gaulle.The operation could last for another several days."We owe it to you. Welcome," said French President Emmanuel Macron on Twitter.

(with Reuters, AFP, NYT)

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