‘Game over’: Westerners rush to leave Kabul, rescue Afghans

TAug. 31 withdrawal deadline were sending troops back in as well this weekend to protect evacuations of their own. Some complained the U.S. was failing to move fast enough to bring to safety Afghans at risk of reprisal from the Taliban for past work with the Americans and other NATO forces. “This is murder by incompetence,” said U.S. Air Force veteran Sam Lerman, struggling Sunday from his home in Woodbridge, Virginia, to find a way out for an Afghan contractor who had guarded Americans and other NATO forces at Afghanistan’s Bagram air base for a decade. Massouma Tajik, a 22-year-old data analyst, was among hundreds of Afghans waiting anxiously in the Kabul airport to board an evacuation flight. “I see people crying, they are not sure whether their flight will happen or not. Neither am I,” she said by phone, with panic in her voice. the administration announced it was taking over air-traffic control at Kabul’s international airport, to manage the airlifts. Sporadic gunfire there Sunday frightened Afghan families fearful of Taliban rule and desperate for flights out, one of the last avenues for escape in an evacuation made far more urgent by the Taliban’s weeklong sweep across the country. NATO allies that had pulled out their forces ahead of the Biden administration’s intended Two weeks from the Biden administration’s planned full military withdrawal, the United States was pouring thousands of fresh troops back into the country temporarily to safeguard what was gearing up to be a large-scale airlift. Shortly before dawn Monday Kabul time, State Department spokesman Ned Price announced the U.S. had completed the evacuation of its embassy in Afghanistan, lowering the American f l ag. At the same time, he beating blades of U.S. military helicopters whisking American diplomats to Kabul’s airport on Sunday punctuated a frantic rush by thousands of other foreigners and Afghans to flee to safety as well, as a stunningly swift Taliban takeover entered the heart of Afghanistan’s capital.