Afghan troops are filmed laying down arms as US general overseeing NATO exit says he’s shocked by how quickly they’ve surrendered to the Taliban and 1,000 are caught fleeing the country
- The Afghan army is collapsing across the country, with videos posted by the Taliban showing troops laying down their US-made weapons and handing over the keys to their Humvee armoured cars
- The US left Bagram Airfield last week – its fortress in the country for nearly 20 years – by slipping away in the night without telling the base’s new Afghan commander who discovered they had gone the next morning
- However, General Austin Scott Miller, commander of US and Nato troops in Afghanistan, said he was shocked by how quickly the Afghan National Army had surrendered to the resurgent jihadists
- ‘I don’t like leaving friends in need,’ he told ABC on Monday. ‘We should be concerned. The loss of terrain and the rapidity of that loss of terrain has to be concerning. You look at the security situation, it’s not good’
- More than a thousand Afghan National Army soldiers fled into Tajikistan from the northern province of Badkhshan following clashes with the resurgent jihadists on Sunday
- Tajikistan said that the Afghans were allowed to enter on the principle of ‘good neighbourliness’ but called up 20,000 reservists to bolster its border guard and prevent further flooding of the frontier
Afghan soldiers appear to surrender to the Taliban:
https://twitter.com/photo_military/status/1406296758653751308?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1406296758653751308%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailymail.co.uk%2Fnews%2Farticle-9760119%2F20-000-Tajikistan-troops-ordered-border-stop-Afghanistan-soldiers-fleeing-Taliban.html