Biden dug in on deadline, official states
Afghanistan exodus goes on with just days to pull it off
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden has decided to stick with his deadline next week for completing the U.S.-led evacuation from Afghanistan, an administration official said Tuesday. The decision is seen as reflecting a growing fear of extremist attacks at the Kabul airport but also opens Biden to domestic political complaints of caving to Taliban demands and of potentially leaving some Americans and Afghan allies behind.
A Taliban spokesman, speaking before word of Biden’s decision, said anew that the militant group would oppose any extension of Tuesday’s deadline. It has allowed the airlift to continue without major interference.
Pressure from U.S. allies,
Democratic and Republican lawmakers, veterans groups and refugee organizations has grown for Biden to extend the deadline, which he set well before the Taliban completed its lightning takeover of Afghanistan on Aug. 15. It remains unclear whether the airlift from Kabul’s international airport can get out all American citizens and other foreigners by next Tuesday, as well as former translators and other at-risk Afghans who fear for their lives under Taliban rule.
Some Republicans bristled Tuesday at the U.S. seeming to comply with a Taliban edict. “We need to have the top priority to tell the Taliban that we’re going to get all of our people out, regardless of what timeline was initially set,” said Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., the minority whip.
And Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., chairman of the House intelligence committee, said after a committee briefing Monday that “it was hard for me to imagine” wrapping up the airlift by the end of the month. He also said it was clear there had been “any number of warnings” to the administration “of a very rapid takeover” by the Taliban.
Biden asked his national security team to create contingency plans in case a situation arose for which the deadline needed to be extended slightly, the official said.
The chief Pentagon spokesman, John Kirby, said Aug. 31 leaves enough time to get all Americans out, but he was less specific about completing the evacuation of all at-risk Afghans.
“We believe we have the ability to get that done by the end of the month,” he said, referring to the unspecified number of American citizens who are seeking to leave. He said several hundred were evacuated Monday and “several thousand” have gotten out since the airlift began. He would not be more specific.
The U.S. has repeatedly stressed the risk of continuing the airlift because of threats of violence by the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate. Germany’s top military commander, Gen. Eberhard Zorn, said Tuesday that the United States and Germany were particularly concerned about ISIS suicide bombers possibly slipping into crowds in Kabul.
The U.S. ramped up its round-the-clock airlift of evacuees from Afghanistan to its highest level yet Tuesday. About 21,600 people were flown out in the 24-hour period that ended early Tuesday, the White House said. That compares with about 16,000 the previous day.
Thirty-seven U.S. military flights — 32 C-17s and five C-130s — carried about 12,700 evacuees. An additional 8,900 people flew out aboard 57 flights by U.S. allies.
Biden had considered extending his deadline, taking into account the continued security threats by extremist groups in the Afghan capital, the Taliban’s resistance to an extension, and the prospect that not all Americans and at-risk Afghan allies can be evacuated by Tuesday.
Kirby said the military will need “at least several days” to fully withdraw its several thousand troops and their equipment from Kabul.
NATO partners and other countries say they will have to shut down their evacuations if the U.S. withdraws the 5,800 troops it has flown in to run and protect the airlift out of Kabul.
British Defense Minister Ben Wallace said earlier that no country would have time to complete evacuations by next Tuesday.
ALLIES UPSET
The U.S. clashed with some of its closest allies Tuesday over Biden’s insistence on the deadline.
But the president also insisted after virtual talks with leaders of the Group of Seven industrialized democracies that the U.S. and its closest allies would “stand shoulder to shoulder” in future action over Afghanistan and the Taliban, despite disappointing them in their urgent pleas now to allow more time for the airlift.
Biden was adamant that the risk of terror attacks was too great to accede to appeals from G-7 leaders to keep what are now 5,800 American troops anchoring the airlift at Kabul’s airport beyond the end of the month.
Britain and other allies, many of whose troops followed American forces into Afghanistan nearly 20 years ago to deal with the plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, had urged Biden to keep American forces at the airport longer.
“We will go on right up until the last moment that we can,” said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who had openly lobbied to maintain the U.S. presence at the airport. He acknowledged that he was unable to sway Biden.
“You’ve heard what the president of the United States has had to say, you’ve heard what the Taliban have said,” Johnson noted.
A senior French official, speaking anonymously in accordance with the French presidency’s customary practices, said President Emmanuel Macron had pushed for extending the deadline but would adapt to the American sovereign decision. “That’s in the hands of the Americans,” he said.
In the tense operation to get people out of the country, CIA Director William Burns secretly swooped into Kabul on Monday to meet with the Taliban’s top political leader, Abdul Ghani Baradar, a U.S. official said.
A 2020 deal struck by President Donald Trump and the Taliban initially set a May deadline for U.S. troops to fully withdraw from Afghanistan after nearly 20 years of war there. Biden extended the deadline to Aug. 31 but is adamant that he too wants to end the U.S. military role in Afghanistan, and he is rejecting criticism after the collapse of the U.S.-backed government and military.
With access to the airport still dangerous, U.S. helicopter crews have been carrying out sorties beyond the airport walls to collect evacuees, including 16 Americans on Monday.
Since Aug. 14, the U.S. has evacuated and facilitated the evacuation of more than 58,000 people.
TALIBAN REJECTION
The Taliban said they would block Afghans trying to leave the country from traveling to Kabul’s airport and would reject any plans to extend the deadline for U.S. troops to withdraw from Afghanistan.
Speaking at a news conference Tuesday, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said chaos at the airport remained a dangerous problem and that the route there was being closed to Afghan citizens to prevent people from joining the crowds.
“The road that ends at the Kabul airport has been blocked,” he said. “Foreigners can go through it, but Afghans are not allowed to take the road.”
He did not say how long that policy would be in effect, but Mujahid did urge the crowds of Afghans thronging the airport in hopes of leaving the country to go home. He said the Taliban would “guarantee their security.”
Witnesses, however, have described a Taliban crackdown on those who protest against the militants. The Taliban also are actively seeking out Afghans who worked alongside U.S. and NATO forces.
Mujahid called on the United States “to not encourage Afghan people to flee their country” and said “this country needs our doctors, engineers and those who are educated — we need these talents.”
Although the evacuation has picked up speed in recent days, chaotic and deadly scenes have played out as crowds of Afghans converged on the airport to flee.
People trying to flee face Taliban checkpoints and jostle with desperate crowds, risking injury or death. Seven Afghan civilians, including a toddler, have been trampled to death in the crowds outside the airport, according to British military officials.
Other Afghans who supported the two-decade U.S. war effort, particularly women, are terrified to leave their homes, scared of incurring the Taliban’s wrath at checkpoints.
The Taliban and U.S. officials have taken steps to ensure that the situation does not spiral further out of control. The top U.S. official in Afghanistan talks with the Taliban nearly every day, U.S. military officials have said, leading to an agreement that expanded the security perimeter outside the airport, with the goal of bringing more order to the chaos.
The Pentagon has de
In the tense operation to get people out of the country, CIA Director William Burns secretly swooped into Kabul on Monday to meet with the Taliban’s top political leader, Abdul Ghani Baradar, a U.S. official said.
ployed helicopters and troops into select spots in Kabul to extract stranded U.S. citizens and Afghan allies, at least twice venturing from the immediate area of the airport.
EXTENSION URGED
Beyond Scalise and Schiff, other lawmakers in both parties urged Biden administration officials in a closed briefing Tuesday to extend the deadline.
“There is a broad bipartisan agreement within the United States Congress that we have to get American citizens out, and we have to get our Afghan partners and allies out,” said Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., a former Army Ranger.
“That can’t be accomplished between now and the end of the month, so the date has to extend until we get that mission done.”
Lawmakers pressed the administration to extend the mission during a classified briefing with the secretary of defense, the secretary of state, the director of national intelligence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“That was a major point we all tried to make: urging them to do more to advocate with the president to extend the deadline,” said Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., a former CIA officer and defense official.
Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, the top Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee, said if the president did not extend the withdrawal date, “he will have blood on his hands.”
“People are going to die, and they are going to be left behind,” McCaul said.
Lawmakers said they were not told during the briefing how many U.S. citizens remain on the ground in Afghanistan.
For weeks, members of Congress have been inundated with thousands of pleas from U.S. citizens and Afghans trying to escape Afghanistan.
“After 20 years at war, our actions over the next week will leave the most lasting impression around the world,” Slotkin said on Twitter. “And I want the U.S. to be known as a nation that takes risks for those who risk everything for us.”
Information for this article was contributed by Jonathan Lemire, Robert Burns, Ellen Knickmeyer, Nomaan Merchant, Padmananda Rama, Darlene Superville, Aamer Madhani, Frank Jordans, Lolita C. Baldor, Hope Yen, Alexandra Jaffe, James LaPorta, Matthew Lee, Dan Huff and Jill Lawless of The Associated Press; and by Sharif Hassan, Megan Specia, Daniel Victor and Catie Edmondson of The New York Times.