Britain Today.

[Ninurta]

 When they say 'no planes are leaving Kabul airport empty'... they're technically correct.
Someone has to fly them!

Ex-Royal Marine Paul 'Pen' Farthing sees wife leave Kabul on almost empty plane

'Paul 'Pen' Farthing tells Sky News how aircraft are taking off from Kabul airport every hour
"regardless of whether they're full or not", adding: "People can't get in, they cannot get into
the airport."...'

(UK) Sky News:

No planes leaving empty says UK defence secretary

'No plane carrying Britons and Afghans from Kabul has left empty, the UK defence secretary has said.
Ben Wallace rejected reports that some flights from Kabul contained only a few people, saying the UK was
"absolutely ploughing through the numbers".


UK defence secretary Ben Wallace.

He told BBC Breakfast "every hour counts" and confirmed "the Taliban are letting our people through"...'

BBC:

Some nations are providing armed escorts to get their people through the gauntlet the Taliban has set up. The chicken-shit US, and apparently the UK, seem not to be among those nations.

There is, however, a silver lining to all this. If the US military can no longer handle a few "illiterate, cave-dwelling goat herders", what the hell are they gonna do against a few million armed "insurgents" here in the US when said insurgents decide it's time to take their country back?

As an aside, I have eyes on the ground in Kabul, and those eyes report back to me that so far, news reports of widespread "house to house" searches for collaborators by the Taliban are fake news. They tell me that only Kabul District 5, where Hazara live, have been door to door searched, and only for weapons and ammunition. The Hazara have been an oppressed minority for millennia now, and might light up the Taliban in Kabul if given half a chance, and weapons, so the Taliban is taking no chances on them.

They also report that there is still fighting around the airport, and that the airport perimeter has been locked down by the Taliban, who are filtering who gets through and who doesn't. Further, I am told by the jungle grapevine that resistance cells are already forming in the Panjshir Valley, and those cells have put out the call for international assistance in their fight to retain freedom. I wonder if anyone, anyone at all, will answer those calls? All of the border crossing by land have been taken over by the Taliban (on roads - smuggler routes are still open, because they can't be closed by their very nature), and the only way out of Afghanistan at the moment is the Kabul Airport - fancifully named after Hamid Karzai, or along smuggler routes.

The Taliban is still mostly composed of Pakistanis, rather than native Afghans, is still in the clutches and under the direction of Pakistani ISI, although the last twenty years of fighting has brought a few native Afghan Pashtuns into their ranks. That is why the Tajiks in Panjshir said "Oh HELL no!" and started forming the core of a resistance. They're not real big on foreigners running their country, and most of them still don't much care for the Pashtuns, either.

From Panjshir:

they are all in the command of Ahmad Massoud (son of Ahmad Shah Massoud), he is the commander in Panjshir province and all the forces escaped from Taliban and some of distinguished governmental authorities go to Panjshir.

So, it's on again - the sides are simply re-arranging the Order of Battle in the wake of the US and NATO rout from the country. I might add that the Panjshir is the hope of Afghanistan. The Soviets never took it, and got their asses handed to them time after time there, and the Taliban never took it, either, so far as I know. Massoud was assassinated in 2001, just before the AQ attack of 9-11, but his spirit lives on in the Panjshir Resistance. AQ assassinated him as a favor to the Taliban, for all the good it did the talibs. His son has apparently taken the reins.

I recall seeing a Soviet column get decimated in the Panjshir. The Afghans set a log and rock trap at the head of the column, and at the tail of it, with about a 400 foot sheer drop off one side of the road and a 400 foot sheer climb on the other. With the way forward blocked, and the way rearward blocked, and a sheer drop or climb to either side, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. Those Panjshir folk are bad news, and mean business.

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