Dozens of modern Afghan Air Force planes and helicopters also fell into the hands of the Taliban during their rapid reconquest of Afghanistan. However, many crews had also fled with their aircraft to the neighboring country of Uzbekistan.
In the meantime, the images of the cargo hold of the USAF C-17, which took off from Kabul to Qatar a week ago and was packed with people, have probably become just as much of a media “world cultural heritage” as the images of the plane taxiing through a crowd of people. Clinging to its fuselage were numerous Afghan men – admittedly unaware of their flying skills – at least four of whom fell to their deaths after take-off. According to media reports, these included a 19-year-old player from the Afghan national soccer team.
It has now been officially confirmed that the cargo jet actually had 823 people on board, which is a new record, at least for the USAF. However, the world record for the most people in an airplane is still held by a Boeing 747 of the Israeli ELAL, which was used to evacuate a total of 1,088 Ethiopian Jews from Addis Ababa in May 1991 as part of “Operation Solomon”. The USAF explained that its original figure of 640 people, announced after the count in Qatar, did not include any children on their parents’ laps. In the meantime, several passengers, such as an Afghan journalist, have described the flight (see video). The people flown out had been cleared for evacuation with US help, but were not all on the official manifest for this flight, according to Defense One. The crew of “Reach 871” had the choice of loading the plane with only people on that list, or trying to get as many people on board as possible. “It was about human lives, about the future of these people, and not about rules and regulations – according to our training and the guidelines for the aircraft, we were able to make sure we could get this large number of people out safely,” said USAF Lt. Col. Eric Kut, commander of Reach 871, according to CNN’s News Day. The USAF confirmed shortly thereafter through the head of the 18th Air Force USAF, Major General Thad Bibb, that the crew would not face disciplinary action for the unauthorized violations of protocol during the evacuation flight.
Afghan air force: flown out, crashed, captured
Also last week, dozens of the 211 US-funded aircraft and helicopters of the air force of the ANDSF (Afghanistan National Defense & Security Forces, 167 aircraft were operational at the end of June) were apparently flown by their crews to Termez in neighbouring Uzbekistan. Satellite images taken by PlanetLab on August 16 show 22 fixed-wing aircraft (such as six to eight of the 23 Embraer A-29 Super Tucano light turboprop ground attack aircraft of the ANDSF) and 26 helicopters (including several UH-60 Black Hawk and a MD530F Defender light attack helicopter). There also appear to be at least five Cessna 208B Caravans (some of which were AC-208s configured with Hellfire or 70mm Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System – APKWS II – against ground targets), of which the Afghan Air Force had a total of 33 aircraft. Also recognizable in the pictures are eleven or twelve of the once 18 Pilatus PC-12/47NG reconnaissance and surveillance aircraft of the (now former) Afghan Special Operations Wing SMW (US designation U-28A).
In 1991, while some Iraqi Sukhoi fighters were intercepted and shot down by F-15s on their flight to Iran, the Afghan aircraft crossed the northern border largely untouched. However, even here it was not entirely without losses: an A-29, for example, is said to have collided with an Uzbek MiG-29 during interception, whereupon both aircraft crashed, but all three pilots were able to eject and survive. Allegedly, the crew had first tried to fly to Tajikistan, but then ran out of fuel. An A-29 had already been captured by the Taliban in Kandahar days earlier, along with several Mi-171s – also financed by the USA – (which are also already traveling with Taliban fighters), tens of thousands of small arms and hundreds of Humvee and MRAP vehicles. As the Indian broadcaster WION puts it: “The Biden administration, which is perceived worldwide as incompetent to say the least, has handed the Taliban modern military equipment worth around 20 billion US dollars on a silver platter. This will keep them, and above all the entire region, busy for years to come!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4AxpoFUKuI Left hanging – and on death lists
In addition to the above list (see also officially this video), the Afghan Air Force also had four C-130H Hercules transports, but the fate of three of them is unknown. One of the aircraft flew to Kathlon in Tajikistan with 100 Afghan army personnel – a total of 585 Afghans fled from the Taliban on the military aircraft. They are all Western-trained (for example in our neighboring country, the Czech Republic), and the country’s first female military pilot flew on the AC-208. Many of them have killed thousands of Taliban fighters on their missions in recent years, so they are probably high up on the Taliban’s death lists.
In a report by Al Jazeera from Qatar on August 19, a former Afghan captain (a pilot or weapons systems officer – name pixelated) complains bitterly that the air force, which is largely dependent on maintenance personnel from US private companies (contractors), has been “simply abandoned” in recent months. The soldier mentions, for example, the Brazilian Embraer A-29 aircraft, which had been equipped with US sensors and technically maintained by the US company Sierra Nevada. The man admits to a systemic inability to train a sufficient number of pilots and maintenance personnel on a sustainable basis in order to reduce the heavy dependence on foreign contractors. But when these US specialist personnel left the country more or less abruptly in the spring as part of the Biden administration’s withdrawal plan, it “went into a nosedive of readiness”. This would have particularly affected the UH-60s and AC-208s, with the former’s availability dropping from 77 percent in April to 39 percent in June. For the latter, from 93 percent to 60 percent. No wonder that only 100 of the previously 409 foreign aircraft technicians and maintenance staff were still on site in July. Despite this, the aircraft still managed to complete 491 missions against the Islamists in June. He and his comrades would have flown against the Taliban right up to the last hour. But when training, reconnaissance, supplies and ammunition collapsed as a coherent unit, many of his comrades would have simply gone home. “We knew that the Americans would leave at some point, but then they left us hanging so abruptly. And now the US president and his media are describing us as unwilling to fight, as cowards. At least in our association, that’s certainly not true – but if nothing works technically, you can’t fight anymore. We would have just thrown ourselves in front of the Taliban’s guns.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCQnskv7OZ4
Final sale for Russia and China?
General Mark Kelly, head of USAF Air Combat Command, tried to make the point to Defense News that, unlike vehicles or tanks, most of the captured Afghan aircraft were clearly not operational or functional. “It’s understandable that people are worried about equipment that falls into the hands of people who don’t know exactly how to use it. Or exactly what equipment it is, whether it’s an M4, an M16 or an A-29. In addition, they can’t repair such equipment or operate it effectively, and an A-29 is not at a technology level that could massively threaten or operationally restrict US forces. The Taliban may actually be able to put some of it in the air, but it’s probably more dangerous to themselves and to people on the ground than to potential adversaries,” says Kelly. https://militaeraktuell.at/afghanistan-wohin-gehst-du/ This may be true, but firstly, it cannot be ruled out that existing personnel – there have already been several announcements of possible amnesties – will return to duty. Just as Iranian pilots were first imprisoned and tortured by the revolutionary guards after the fall of the Shah, only to return shortly afterwards in the war against the Iraqi invader and fly sometimes outstanding missions for years on poorly maintained aircraft. So if the Taliban were in trouble, something similar could happen. Perhaps even more importantly, it can be assumed that captured Western material of all kinds will be passed on to the Russians and – especially – the Chinese. Similar to the wreckage of the F-117 in Serbia or that of the hard-to-recognize stealth Black Hawk from the Bin Laden raid in Abottabad, Pakistan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCgLCXIVq3M Two interesting footnotes
1) The US State Department has confirmed that it is leaving seven old blue and white CH-46E Sea Knight helicopters (with tandem rotor like CH-47 Chinnok) in Afghanistan after they have been rendered unusable. Colloquially known as “Phrogs”, the aircraft taken over from the US Marine Corps were already being phased out when at least one of them with the civilian registration number N38TU – as well as a CH-47F – was filmed approaching the US embassy building in Kabul. According to a US news portal, there were explicit orders not to repeat the images of the UH-1 and the fugitives on the roof of the embassy in Saigon in 1975 during the “Frquent Wind” evacuation operation. It was visibly very similar but it did take place and the very N38TU (serial number 154038) in the US Marine Corps inventory at the time was now also involved in the operation (see report).
2) How exactly the Taliban can determine – in the coming weeks and months – who has served in the air force and army and who has worked for US and NATO troops and embassies and contractors will also depend on how much they can extract from HIIDE. HIIDE stands for “Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment” and its terminals contain identifying biometric data such as iris scans and fingerprints as well as biographical information and are used to access large, centralized databases. The Taliban have now captured the HIIDE equipment and could use it to identify the personal data of Afghans stored in it, which could be used to prove cooperation with the West (see report). According to investigative reporter Annie Jacobsen, the Pentagon’s goal was to collect biometric data on 80 percent of the Afghan population in order to filter out terrorists and criminals. “I don’t think anyone has ever thought about data protection or what to do if HIIDE falls into the wrong hands,” says Welton Chang, Chief Technology Officer for Human Rights First and himself a former US intelligence officer. Firstly, however, it is unclear how much of the US military’s biometric database on the Afghan population has been compromised. And secondly – at least Chang believes – the Taliban do not have the expertise or equipment to analyze it. “But their friends from Pakistan’s foreign intelligence service ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) certainly can. And then the Chinese have the data too, of course.” Emerging anti-Taliban Northern Alliance?
Ahmed Massoud, the son of Ahmad Shah Massoud, who was assassinated with a bomb in a video camera in 2001, was filmed in the Panjshir Valley on August 16, where he, along with former Vice President Amrullah Saleh, is reportedly trying to gather all anti-Taliban field commanders. Panjshir is free of Taliban, but surrounded by them.
Amrullah Saleh, Vice President of Afghanistan and Ahmad Massoud, son of Ahmad Shah Massoud spotted in Panjshir.They are bringing all Anti-Taliban commanders together in Panjshir. This province is still free from Taliban. pic.twitter.com/bgb8hUdfwi
– Sudhir Chaudhary (@sudhirchaudhary) August 16, 2021
Latest developments
The excellent internet defense portal “The Drive” has published the latest developments since this weekend in a extensive collection of tweets from various official and private sources. Among other things, about the German H145M helicopters that have now been transferred to Afghanistan for decentralized evacuation to Kabul airport (see report) and those of the 160th Special Operations Wing of the USAF. But also to the concern that IS (“Daesh”) could use the flights to “evacuate” terrorists and sympathizers. Because the Taliban are fighting IS – in contrast to what is left of Al Qaida.
Disarmingly open, but also shameful sentence
On August 31, the US evacuation mission at Kabul airport is now due to end – according to the current status. And a US withdrawal apparently also means an end to all other Western rescue operations. “If the Americans leave on August 31, the Europeans will not have the military capacity to occupy and secure the airport, and the Taliban will take control,” warned EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell. So Europe – still one can ask, as Kissinger once did, what or who that is – cannot establish a “snap power projection” on the site of even ONE major airport, for a few days or a few weeks. Mr. Borrell may not have the access to assess the further meaning of his sentence – in any case, there is nothing to add to it.
Here for an update on “The Drive”.
