The French military has deployed their special forces to the crumbling nation of Afghanistan to evacuate their citizens, even as the leadership of the American military claims that they are incapable of doing the same, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
French special forces have already succeeded in evacuating at least 400 civilians from the capital city of Kabul, including both French citizens and Afghan civilians who aided French forces in the war. The successful rescue efforts took place just outside the Hamid Karzai International Airport, the city’s main airport which has been secured by the Taliban, and thus has become a scene of pure chaos after the fall of the nation’s Western-backed government.
In addition to French efforts, British special forces have been similarly evacuating their citizens from the besieged capital city in the days since Sunday, when Kabul fell to the Taliban.
These successful European efforts have been carried out even as American military leaders have claimed that the United States is incapable of conducting such operations. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said at a press conference on Wednesday that “the forces that we have are focused on the security of the airfield…we don’t have the capability to go out and collect up large numbers of people.”
There are currently thousands of American citizens still trapped in the Taliban-controlled nation, in addition to thousands of Afghan civilians who assisted the American military over the course of the 20-year war. The sudden collapse of the nation to Taliban forces directly contradicted Joe Biden’s prediction back in July that it was “highly unlikely” that the Taliban would overrun the country prior to the final departure of American forces, which was set for August 31st.
Following the fall of Kabul on Sunday, which led to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fleeing the country, thousands of Afghan civilians stormed the airport in a desperate attempt to escape Taliban rule. Stunning videos showed hundreds of Afghanis surrounding an American Air Force jet as it was taxiing on the runway, with several men clinging to the landing gear. Shortly after the aircraft took off and reached an altitude hundreds of feet in the air, some of the men who still held on could be seen falling to their deaths.
The chaos has led to universal condemnation of the Biden Administration, from across the political spectrum in the United States as well as within the international community. Many have likened the disaster to the Fall of Saigon in 1975, which marked the end of the Vietnam War, with some even declaring the Fall of Kabul to be even worse.