Kabul fell as key Ghani aide switched sides to join Taliban

Amid the abject capitulation by hordes of Afghanistan government soldiers to the Taliban, the news that a key aide of Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani had also joined the ranks of the insurgents, made the fall of Kabul shockingly much easier than believed to be possible, reports senior journalist Sanjib Kr Baruah.

New Delhi: With US intelligence reports indicating that the Taliban would take much more time to enter Kabul, US President Joe Biden persisted with his summer holiday plans at the presidential retreat at Camp David until news came on Sunday, August 15 that a key aide of Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani had joined ranks with the Taliban.

That set alarm bells suddenly ringing in Washington DC even as 3,000 American soldiers were flown to Kabul to secure the Hamid Karzai airport to aid the emergency evacuation of US citizens, third-country civilians, Afghan allies and vulnerable Afghans trapped inside the war-ravaged country. That aide was Mirwais Yasini, deputy speaker of the ‘Wolesi Jirga’ or the Afghanistan lower house and a trusted aide of Ghani. And before Ghani, Yasini was known to be close to former President Hamid Karzai.

Reportedly, the Taliban has now entrusted the security of Kabul to the 58-year-old Yasini, a Pashtun from eastern Nangarhar province which he represents in Parliament. Four years ago, Yasiri was known to have vociferously opposed the Taliban. He said in an interview with an international news agency in 2017: “The biggest threat to the security and stability of this country is the Taliban insurgents, not Daesh forces.” Daesh is another name of the Islamic State (IS) that is known to be operating in Afghanistan.

Taking to guns quite early as a 16-year-old, Yasini fought the invading Soviet army in 1979 before moving to Pakistan for higher studies in 1986. Graduating in law from the Islamabad Islamic International University (IIIU) in 1993, Yasini went on to earn a master’s degree in Islamic law and political science.

IIIU aims to produce scholars and practitioners who are imbued with Islamic ideology, whose character and personality conforms to the teachings of Islam. Yasini fought the Taliban during their 1996-2001 stint in power in Kabul. He worked with the Red Crescent Society before joining the finance ministry and then taking up the post of deputy minister of counter-narcotics till 2005 as eastern Nangarhar is one of the main poppy-producing areas in the country. In 2009, he also ran unsuccessfully for president.

Yasini’s defection reinforces the dominant belief that the spectacular success of the Taliban’s blitzkrieg has more to do with the inherent weaknesses of the Afghanistan National Army coming to fore rather than any application of military tactical mind by the insurgents.

Presently about 6,000 US troops are deployed in the Kabul airport that include troops of the US 82nd Airborne Division that are mandated with securing the runway, the Army’s 10th Mountain Division putting a security girdle around the airport and the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit assisting in the civilian departure.