Afghanistan Intel Update: 21 August 2021

Hello again everyone welcome back to the s2 underground so just wanted to offer another quick update uh to follow on to that first update i gave yesterday on the situation in kabul uh if you have not checked out that first update i'll go into a lot more detail about the the background of the situation uh or at least a recent background of the situation and that would be a good primer for this briefing as well so just to dive right in to the situation on the ground the u. S embassy has advised people to not come to the airport particularly american citizens there they are advising for american citizens to avoid the main avenues of approach into the airport itself avoid coming to the airport and shelter in place now obviously if chances are if you're on the ground you're not actually going to be watching this video so um you know that that's something to consider i guess. But if the embassy is urging people to shelter in place and to not come to the airport well that obviously means that there are some plans in place to go get people. Finally maybe who knows i guess we'll see we do know of a lot of secret squirrel stuff going on it's in the works but right now there is a lot of consternation among conventional u. S military forces at the airport at this time which i'll talk about here at the end also we've received further information that thousands of americans are indeed trapped throughout the city it looks like most americans that were there were they did not get the word that this was going down and the speed in which the u. S military pulled out and the taliban took over caught most people by surprise so a lot of humanitarian aid workers and things like that are are out in the city new blue passport holding u. S american citizens are out in the city and they're unable to get to the airport due to the extensive taliban checkpoints pretty much everywhere also the secretary of defense has confirmed that americans have in fact been beaten and physically abused by the taliban as they try to go through the checkpoints to the airport which is probably driving a lot of that decision to urge americans to shelter in place the military and the political regime in the united states right now knows this is a fiasco everyone in the world knows it and they know that this is not going to be a quick uh solution so just my guess my my hip pocket assessment is that they're probably going to urge americans to stay out of harm's way as much as possible because that just makes them look you know more bad because you know americans getting tortured on on tv cameras are never good for press so that's a huge consideration for. Moving forward for at least the government also a tent city has been constructed uh on the north side of the airport which we'll talk about here in just a minute uh providing temporary uh billeting accommodations some somewhere out of the sun in the shade for the thousands of refugees that are now on the airport grounds and uh even more that are coming through the um ecp's entry control points as as the days go on so there's a lot of people there so they're setting up temporary tents we're not going to show exactly where those tents are located due to optic reasons and just in case the taliban gets froggy and impatient wants to uh assert their dominance a little bit more through attacks. But there are lots and lots of people on the airport grounds at this time also our coalition partners have have begun to speak out against the shameful actions by the united states uh political leadership and the united states senior military leadership uh just just to be aware uh the guys on the ground the actual dudes on the on the you know five-yard line so to speak those guys are doing some outstanding work and we we cannot uh praise them enough for the conduct with which they have shown over the past few days uh. But their senior leadership is is certainly uh acting with extreme cowardice and uh with extreme dishonor which is why the united kingdom parliament has actually uh held they voted to hold uh joe biden in contempt for his dishonorable conduct during this afghanistan crisis so yeah it's it's uh it's a lot it's a lot worse than what we're seeing on the international relations front and that will probably continue to get worse up until the united. But right now st are not good uh in fact we're hearing a lot of rument uh from the actual troops that are there uh witnesses people on the ground that are actually sending us uh in some reports and we're seeing it all over social media as well the disagreements and the arguments and the general hostility between the u. S leadership on the ground particularly the 82nd airborne leadership and the british special air service forces there that are on the ground those guys and really all the british forces that are there are are conducting raids and rescue missions outside the outside the perimeter of the airport and they are reportedly very angry with military us military leadership which is refusing to assume really any risk we have confirmed videos and photographs pretty much everywhere on social media of british british forces talking directly with taliban members to help facilitate the movement of refugees into the airport perimeter they the british checkpoints are within just a few feet of taliban checkpoints so they're making things happen and uh the united they're they're a little upset the united states is not holding up there into the bargain um a few other nations have also expressed uh contempt for the u. S actions at this time. But really a lot of the a lot of the heat is coming from the brits as one might expect because they're uh they're doing a lot of work in the united states is again not not holding up to our end of the bargain so that's the really overview of the political geopolitical situation on the ground let's let's actually jump into uh the map and we'll see what is actually going on on the ground in more specific detail all right so here we are on the map uh this is a map that we created here in-house our staff members threw this through this together with a lot of helpful points that anybody can use if they're wanting to follow this situation. Even if guys on the ground need some kmz's for their handheld gps's you guys can use this because this uh this kmz will be available for download uh from our uh from our platforms if you guys want it. But as you can see right here the red side the south side the civilian side of hkia is more or less a contested zone at this time we have it labeled red here just to show that this is very much a hot zone there are us forces in there there are taliban forces in there there are lots and lots of refugees and americans trying to get over to the north side of the base nor the north side of the bases the more secure side i don't want to show exactly where u. S positions are just because it's we haven't seen very many things on social media if it's on social media we'll throw it on there. But we haven't seen uh that stuff pop out so we don't want to give anything away uh for opsec reasons again the the actual runway itself is highly contested at this time as well this sort of taxiway slash parking apron is uh currently being used as a turnaround area a lot of aircraft from the civilian side have been moved over to the north side for loading of passengers which is good to get them out of there so they don't have to rely on military aircraft as much alright so zooming in just a little bit more here are uh where most of the people are you'll see a lot of photographs from a few days ago from the the pax terminals the uh the main packs terminal being located here of course there is a taliban checkpoint here uh really there are taliban checkpoints probably every 10 feet everywhere throughout kabul so you know take it for what it's worth i guess this road right here is uh terminal road let's see if i can get the actual uh label to show up that's not showing up. But this here is terminal road this is currently being held by the taliban um there are being efforts being undertaken to secure the rest of the airfield perimeter and that's about the as much as i can say on that. But moving further south here to the actual main gate where most of the the videos and social media posts are coming from uh this is where the majority of your crowds are located at least before the taliban pushed into the area so there's taliban consistently along this main drag here along the road to the west like i mentioned there's still thousands of people up along this road mostly this this road is clogged with vehicles so vehicle traffic is really hard to get up and down this road now uh because basically anybody who had a vehicle drove to the american drove drove to the airport uh to try to get on the aircraft uh and and they just left their vehicles in the road so this is really a very difficult to traverse terrain if you want to phrase it like that looks like most of the people coming into the airport are coming in through the main gate here to the south or through the north gate up here a lot of uh kinetic activity going on up here at this gate we saw we've seen a lot of shootings and things like that within just feet of of us and coalition forces so that is a big concern as well for for people trying to get into the airport uh there's the old north gate it's got some activity as well. And then there are a few other gates as well uh the abbey gate has also got some kinetic activity pretty much every gate that there's an opening in the wire or. Even if it's an old gate it's got people standing outside of it by the thousands so moving moving further south along airport road we're starting to get to get into the uh into the old town here into the old green zone as you can see here i've got the green zone turned on i'm going to go ahead and click that off just so it's easier to see let me go ahead and do that for you yep there we go uh so yeah moving down we've got tab and checkpoints all up and down this road here is the us embassy the their compound here's the old usaid compound. And then the old isaf hq everybody who's been there knows soccer field is great great hlz for getting in and out of the isaf hq there and then we have all the uh collection of embassies here uh most of these circles here uh that have been traditional spots for taliban attacks in the past uh are now being held by taliban as decently strong points they've got a lot of armored vehicles and things at these particular intersections so i thought we would mention that let's see here moving further south we've got the presidential palace complex the citadel is currently in taliban hands as well also the nds hq is being held by the taliban pretty much every government building is being held by the taliban. But there's the ministry of interior just wanted to show everyone where the uh where everything is at pretty much uh as we can zoom out we can actually see let me let me turn off all of this stuff except for the checkpoints let me turn that on there we go these are all of the checkpoints within kabul that we know of now this this kmz was found and uh corrected slightly by our staff here uh so things are are a little bit inaccurate. But as you can see there are quite a few that we have been able to find on or others have been able to find on social media and we've added quite a few as well to this list so yeah not super great situation on the ground in kabul right now hopefully it will stay stable enough to get get people out and hopefully the united states will will start doing the right thing uh. Moving forward into the next few days and or weeks all right so just wanted to show this slide again for anyone who hasn't see who didn't see it the first time on our first brief these are just some resources that you can do i know that not a whole lot of people are super happy about the situation right now and a lot of people just really don't care about the situation on the ground right now. But working through all of that aside we understand that everyone out there particularly people who who watch our and consume our content are going to have a lot of different feelings about the situation on the ground in afghanistan. But whatever your feelings are about that that's you know that's okay but we're just trying to update as much as we can and push push as hard as we can to get american citizens out you know we can debate everybody else i guess at the end of the day. But at least i think we can all kind of get together to to help get the american citizens out as best we can granted again there's not much we can do it's an unfortunate situation to be sure we're finding out that the us government is unfortunately incapable of doing the right thing a lot of times so when something like that happens those people that have the ability to take action have the responsibility to take action so that's what we're doing like i mentioned the kmz for what i just showed you will be available for download in the description box below from our uh odyssey page and as we keep. Moving forward through this thing let's uh let's make sure to focus on the good things where we can recognize the the good stuff that happens when it happens good things are so rare nowadays uh in this in this really troubled time we live that it's it's definitely worth highlighting every little good thing you can actually possibly find so let's remember to do that keep our heads on right and let's keep. Moving forward the best we can so with that always remember to fight in the shade.