Explosion at Kabul will accelerate evacuation

It's too early as I write to know how bad the explosion at Kabul airport is and how many casualties there are. But the attack, predicted with unnerving accuracy by US, UK and Australian intelligence agencies, will have a number of consequences: it will encourage Joe Biden to wrap up the evacuation on the dot of midnight on August 31, tens of thousands of Afghans who had hoped to leave will be abandoned and the Taliban now knows that it will face its own insurgency from experienced and fanatical terrorists who will feel they have a better chance to exert their power and brutality on Afghanistan once all American and other foreign troops have gone. Not a civil war as such, as predicted by some analysts, commentators and military commanders, but a permanent and increasing presence of a group of extremist militants who will not allow the Taliban to get on with the job of tryng to govern the country. Afghanistan is and always has been a hopeless case, even when the US and the international community was ploughing funds into the government coffers. In the end all that investment to turn the country into a stable and democracy-loving nation is summed up by this explosion today. There will always be violence and killings in Afghanistan and the potential for tragedy, disaster and mayhem will never go away. In a strange way this might help Joe Biden who will feel his deadline of August 31 was right.