As the Taliban takes control of Afghanistan following the Biden administration’s chaotic withdrawal, untold numbers of American citizens, Afghan translators and U.S.-allied individuals remain trapped behind the militant group’s checkpoints, as Fox News contributor Sara Carter and Fox Nation host Lara Logan described the widespread fear gripping the war-torn nation.
“People are living in terror right now,” Carter said Friday on “Hannity,” recounting reports from sources and friends in Afghanistan of Taliban militants summarily “hunting [them] down like animals.”
“I have been speaking to over 30 people in various different groups. Some of my sources are around the Kabul embassy and around, as well, the Kabul International Airport. They are in hiding. They have been beaten. I have one source that was beaten so badly, his leg was almost broken,” she said.
Carter said some of those people have been able to make it to the gates of the airport, just to find them arbitrarily closed or unguarded.
“[They] cannot get into the Kabul airport because there is no one to allow them into the gate. The gates have been open, they have been shut. Now we are hearing they may open again. I have other family members at home who are calling me during the day and during the middle of the night, I can literally hear the gunfire outside of their homes, as the Taliban is searching for them.”
As the Taliban takes control of biometric identification systems left behind by the former government, both Carter and Logan said the militants have the capability to identify those who will be “hunted” and killed.
Later on “Hannity,” Logan recalled hearing from American citizens and embassy staff who are fearing for their life and enraged that the American military has not gotten the call from the Pentagon to go into the city proper and safely extract them, as the United Kingdom and France have ordered for their trapped civilians.
“The orders are changing constantly, nobody is making decisions, and those are private American citizens, many former veterans, but not all, some of whom are on the ground and some of whom trying to rescue people, trying to hunt… families of special operations soldiers and move them to safe houses because they are being hunted,” she said.
Many of the people Logan has spoken with are strongly considering going to command posts of the German and Australian forces and asking them for help because the United States government refuses to help them or get them out of the country.
Those folks, she said, are collectively calling for the ouster of Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, the highest-ranking uniformed military officer, and top Biden adviser.
“The U.S. Military and State Department keep blocking the flights, they keep refusing clearances, and that they are so frustrated that at this point, they think that General Milley should resign, that he is making this mission impossible,” Logan said.
“They don’t understand why there isn’t a perimeter already established and controlled by the U.S. Military. Five days in at this point, they say it is unacceptable.”
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She added that the Taliban is collectively considering Biden’s August 31st date a firm conclusion to U.S. involvement in the country, regardless of what the president himself or the Pentagon may say.
“The Taliban is telling the U.S. that they have to be out of the country by then. They are pushing for 100% power. They are ordering Afghan officials who they are supposedly in talks with to swear allegiance or Bay’ah to the Taliban’s Islamic emirate. If you recall, when Ayman al-Zawahiri became the leader of Al Qaeda, he swore Bay’ah publicly to the Islamic Emirate of the Taliban – and they want to see the Taliban flag flying over Afghanistan for the 20th anniversary of 9/11.”
“That is what Afghan intelligence and security officials have been telling me, and they say there are no talks, that the Europeans, everybody else knows it, and they are just grabbing up their people and running for the exits as fast as they can because this is going so far south.”
Al-Zawahiri, 70, an Egyptian native, has been the leader of Al Qaeda since Navy SEALs successfully killed his predecessor, Osama bin Laden, in 2011. The FBI continues a $25 million reward for his capture.