Covid, death of 9 Chinese engineers in terror attack led to airport chaos & quick Kabul fall?

[enhanced_deficit]

These news came up in different discussions but looking at these developments sequentially appears to shed more light on past couple of weeks dramatic events.


Did covid variant spread and lockdowns at US Embassy in June contribute to the processing delays and Kabul airport chaos in August?


USA Today
June 17, 2021
COVID-19 surge in Afghanistan hits US embassy, prompting lockdown, onsite wards

COVID infection rates have surged in Afghanistan by 2400% over the past month, according to the International Federation of Red Cross.

WASHINGTON – A dangerous surge in COVID-19 cases in Afghanistan has gripped the U.S. embassy in Kabul, forcing an immediate lockdown and the creation of temporary, on-site COVID-19 wards to care for oxygen-dependent patients, according to an internal memo.
"COVID-19 is surging in the Mission. 114 of our colleagues now have COVID and are in isolation; one has died, and several have been medevaced," reads the notice from Shane Pierce, an employee in the embassy's health unit.
His memo says that intensive care units at a U.S. military hospital "are at full capacity," triggering the need to set up temporary on-site units for staff who need oxygen.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs suspected Thursday the Delta variant, first detected in India, could be responsible for the recent spike in Afghan cases.


US Embassy in Kabul shelters staff at airport after evacuation
usatoday
Aug 15, 2021 — U.S. troops were evacuating all diplomatic staff from the embassy to the airport as the Taliban entered the Afghanistan capital, Kabul.

Sluggish Visa Process Strands Many Afghans Who Helped U.S.
nytimes
5 days ago— As many as 6,000 people — including former interpreters and cultural and political advisers — were on standby to be flown out of Kabul's airport ...
The Biden administration is under increasing pressure to defend its delay in evacuating Americans and Afghan allies, forced to send 6,000 troops




Above may not have become a major issue if Kabul had not fallen so quickly to everyone's surprise.


Did the high level China-Taliban meeting on July 28 following killing of 9 Chinese Belt-n-Road engineers in a bus terrorist attack on July 14 lead to dramatic Kabul fall?


Global Times is China's State Paper
Crusade against July 14 terrorists to punish whoever attacks Chinese
globaltimes.cn
Aug 13, 2021 — The Dasu terrorist attack that killed nine Chinese nationals... The NDS is the largest intelligence agency in Afghanistan.
Nine Chinese nationals were killed in a shuttle bus explosion in ... that India's RAW and Afghan NDS have been involved in the Dasu attack, ...
there was a "nexus of Indian RAW and Afghan NDS" in the attack, ...

Chinese officials and Taliban meet, in sign of warming ties
Jul 28, 2021 — China's foreign minister has met a Taliban delegation, signalling warming ties as ... Wang Yi on Wednesday told the nine visiting Taliban ...



That significant meeting took place two weeks after 9 Chinese nationals working on Belt-n-Road project were killed and 28 Chinese wounded in bus blast being blamed on Afghan agency NDS per CNN and SCMP reports. Just weeks after that meeting, Taliban swept through much of Afghanistan taking over city after city at lightening fast speed and entered Kabul just as Afghan Prez Ghani fled the country.
There are also reports that Talibs even gave "pocket money" to some Afghan soldiers before they fled their posts.


"the seniority of the Chinese representatives was unprecedented, as was the very public message that Beijing recognizes the group as a legitimate political force, Yun Sun, the Stimson Center think tank’s China program director, noted this week in an essay on the national security platform, War on the Rocks. After posing for photographs with the group’s co-founder and deputy leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, Wang described the Taliban as “a crucial military and political force in Afghanistan that is expected to play an important role in the peace, reconciliation, and reconstruction process of the country."

China denounces use of terrorism for geopolitical gains and calls for a united front to uphold regional security interests
Sarah Zheng
13 Aug, 2021
scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3144956/pakistan-blames-indian-and-afghan-spy-agencies-bus-blast


After Kabul fell, transition was called the most peaceful takeover of Kabul in Afghanistan's history and amnesty was announced. But one entity that apparently did not see the new gentler side of Talibs was the one implicated in killing of Chinese nationals:

Taliban were ‘catching and killing us’: Afghan intel officer who fled to Delhi on last flight from Kabul
The National Directorate of Security (NDS) officer said that the Taliban had sent them notices...
AUG 17, 2021
hindustantimes.com/world-news/afghan-intel-officer-fled-to-delhi-on-last-flight-from-kabul-to-escape-taliban-101629139600183.html


Perhaps China saw them as best suited for "crusade" against "terrorists to punish whoever attacks Chinese" as China's State Paper had demanded:

Taliban militants kill dozens at Afghan intelligence base
BBC News
Jan 22, 2019 — The attack on the National Directorate for Security (NDS) base in central Wardak province came hours before the Taliban held another round ...

ETA:

Another factor that may be contributing to the airport rush and chaos:

US biometric devices are in the hands of the Taliban. They could be used to target Afghans who helped coalition forces.

Days after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, many Afghans who worked for the US are now concerned that their paper documents — attesting to how they helped — could essentially be death sentences if the Taliban were to find them.
But the fear doesn't stop with paper documents. There are also US military biometric devices, which are high-tech tools that contain sensitive data, like iris scans and fingerprints, tools to distinguish friend from possible enemy, that are in the hands of the Taliban. The Intercept first reported how they could be used to identify Afghans who worked with coalition forces.

‘An enormously valuable trove’: America’s race against Afghan data

Having seized Kabul, the Taliban can tap into government databases and communications data to go after U.S. allies who don’t get out.

An employee scans the eyes of a woman for biometric data needed to apply for a passport, at the passport office in Kabul, Afghanistan, on June 30, 2021.

By SAM SABIN and HEIDI VOGT
08/24/2021

U.S. officials racing to evacuate Afghan allies have limited time before another threat comes into play: vast digital data stores that will expose Afghans’ ties to American operations on a massive scale once in Taliban hands.
Telecom companies store reams of records on who Afghan users have called and where they’ve been. Government databases include records of foreign-funded projects and associated personnel records. And stashes of biometric data like fingerprints make people easy to identify.
“There’s almost no doubt that they’ve gotten their hands on an enormously valuable trove of information that they can exploit at their leisure,” said Thomas Warrick, a former Department of Homeland Security counterterrorism official.

American forces and diplomats rushed to destroy their own records on Afghan citizens as they departed, but the rapid takeover of Kabul left large stores of data open for exploitation inside Afghan businesses and government offices. That gives today’s technologically adept Taliban tools to target Afghans who worked with the U.S. or the deposed Afghan government with unprecedented precision, increasing the danger for those who don’t get out on evacuation flights.

politico.com/news/2021/08/24/taliban-afghan-data-target-allies-506638