A controlled detonation by American forces that was heard during Kabul has ruined Eagle Foundation, the last C.I.A. outpost outside the Kabul airport, U.S. officials claimed on Friday.
Blowing up the foundation was intended to make certain that any equipment or info left powering would not tumble into the palms of the Taliban.
Eagle Foundation, initially commenced early in the war at a former brick manufacturing unit, experienced been utilised all over the conflict. It grew from a little outpost to a sprawling centre that was used to practice the counterterrorism forces of Afghanistan’s intelligence businesses.
Those forces ended up some of the only types to keep battling as the federal government collapsed, according to existing and previous officials.
“They had been an remarkable unit,” stated Mick Mulroy, a previous C.I.A. officer who served in Afghanistan. “They were being one particular of the most important usually means the Afghan government has utilised to preserve the Taliban at bay more than the very last 20 a long time. They ended up the final types fighting, and they took weighty casualties.”
Area Afghans knew minimal about the foundation. The compound was extremely safe and designed to be all but unattainable to penetrate. Partitions reaching 10 ft higher surrounded the website, and a thick metallic gate slid open and shut quickly to permit vehicles inside of.
After inside of, cars and trucks nevertheless experienced to very clear three outer security checkpoints where by the autos would be searched and paperwork would be screened right before currently being authorized inside the foundation.
In the early several years of the war, a junior C.I.A. officer was place in charge of the Salt Pit, a detention web-site in close proximity to Eagle Base. There the officer requested a prisoner, Gul Rahman, stripped of his clothing and shackled to a wall. He died of hypothermia. A C.I.A. board advised disciplinary action but was overruled.
A former C.I.A. contractor mentioned that leveling the foundation would have been no simple activity. In addition to burning paperwork and crushing really hard drives, sensitive equipment desired to be ruined so it did not drop into the arms of the Taliban. Eagle Base, the former contractor stated, was not like an embassy in which files could be quickly burned.
The base’s destruction experienced been prepared and was not linked to the enormous explosion at the airport that killed an estimated 170 Afghans and 13 American support users. But the detonation, hrs immediately after the airport assault, alarmed quite a few men and women in Kabul, who feared that it was a different terrorist bombing.
The official American mission in Afghanistan to evacuate U.S. citizens and Afghan allies is set to close next Tuesday. The Taliban have stated that the evacuation hard work should not be prolonged, and Biden administration officials say that continuing previous that date would appreciably enhance the challenges to both equally Afghans and U.S. troops.