Promise to strike faces new reality
Justice won’t be easy for US after it leaves Afghanistan
WASHINGTON — By promising to strike the extremists who killed 13 Americans and dozens of Afghans, President Joe Biden now confronts the reality of finding and targeting them in an unstable country without U.S. military and intelligence teams on the ground and no help from a friendly government in Kabul.
The president was warned Friday to expect another lethal attack in the closing days of a frantic U.s.-led evacuation. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden’s national security team offered a grim outlook.
“They advised the president and vice president that another terror attack in Kabul is likely, but that they are taking maximum force protection measures at the Kabul airport,” Psaki said, echoing what the Pentagon has been saying since the bombing Thursday at Kabul airport that pushed the White House deeper into crisis over a chaotic and deadly conclusion to a war that began nearly 20 years ago. Few new details about the attack emerged a day later, but the Pentagon corrected its initial report that there had been suicide bombings at two locations. It said there was just one — at or near the Abbey Gate, followed by gunfire. The initial report of a second bombing at the nearby Baron Hotel proved to be
false, said Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff; he attributed the mistake to initial confusion.
Based on a preliminary assessment, U.S. officials believe the suicide vest used in the attack, which killed at least 169 Afghans in addition to the 13 Americans, carried about 25 pounds of explosives and was loaded with shrapnel, a U.S. official said Friday. A suicide bomb typically carries five to 10 pounds of explosives, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss preliminary assessments of the bombing.
Biden said in an address to the nation after the attack
that the perpetrators cannot hide, and he vowed to strike back at the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate. “We will hunt you down and make you pay,” he said.
Taylor said the Pentagon will be prepared.
“We have options there right now” to enable whatever retaliatory action may be ordered, Taylor said.
In an Oval Office appearance Friday, Biden again expressed his condolences to victims of the attack. The return home of U.S. military members’ remains in coming days will provide painful and poignant reminders not just of the devastation at the Kabul
airport but also of the costly way the war is ending. More than 2,400 U.S. service members died in the war and tens of thousands were injured over the past two decades. The Marine Corps said 11 of the 13 Americans killed were Marines. One was a Navy sailor and one an Army soldier. Their names have not been released pending notification of their families, a sometimes-lengthy process that Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said involves “difficult conversations.”
Psaki said the next few days of the mission to evacuate Americans and others, including vulnerable
Afghans fleeing Taliban rule, “will be the most dangerous period to date.” Biden has set Tuesday as the deadline for completing the airlift.
The White House said that as of Friday morning, about 12,500 people were airlifted from Kabul in the last 24 hours on U.S. and coalition aircraft; in the 12 hours that followed, another 4,200 people were evacuated. Psaki said about 300 Americans had departed and the State Department was working with about 500 more who want to leave. The administration has said it intends to push on and complete the airlift despite the terror threats.
Kirby told reporters the U.S. military is monitoring credible, specific Islamic State threats “in real time.”
“We certainly are prepared and would expect future attempts,” Kirby said. He declined to describe details of any additional security measures being taken, including those implemented by the Taliban, around the airport gates and perimeter. He said there were fewer people in and around the gates Friday.
Biden promised that the Islamic extremist perpetrators would be made to “pay” for their actions, and Psaki on Friday said this was his way of saying “he does not want them to live on the earth anymore.”
Effective retribution, however, will be harder with fewer U.S. intelligence assets and no military presence in Afghanistan.
Emily Harding, a former CIA analyst and deputy staff director for the Senate Intelligence Committee, said she doubted Biden’s assurances that the United States will be able to monitor and strike terror threats from beyond Afghanistan’s borders. The Pentagon also insists this so-called “over the horizon” capability, which includes surveillance and strike aircraft based in the Persian Gulf area, will be effective.
“It’s way too rosy an assessment of what’s possible,” said Harding, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The U.S. is still scrambling to establish bases closer to Afghanistan while at the same time removing people who have worked with the CIA and other intelligence agencies in the country, former officials have said.