Biden: Flights out of Kabul accelerating
Talks on to extend airlift beyond Aug. 31 deadline
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden said Sunday that the U.S.-led evacuation of Americans, at-risk Afghans and others from the Kabul airport accelerated this weekend, although it remains vulnerable to threats posed by the Islamic State extremist group.
One week after the Taliban completed its takeover of Afghanistan by capturing Kabul, Biden said discussions are underway among military officials about potentially extending the airlift beyond Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline. “Our hope is we will not have to extend, but there are discussions,” he said, suggesting the possibility that the Taliban will be consulted.
Since Aug. 14, one day before the Taliban entered Kabul, the airlift has evacuated 28,000 people, Biden said. He said that included 11,000 who had departed from Kabul in a 36-hour period this weekend, but he did not provide details. The number appeared to include flights by charter and nonU.S. military aircraft as well as the U.S. Air Force C-17 and C-130 transport planes that have been flying daily from the capital. The U.S. military is controlling air traffic on both the civilian and military sides of the airport.
Tens of thousands of people remain to join the airlift, which has been slowed by security issues and U.S. bureaucracy hurdles.
Biden asserted, without a full explanation, that U.S. forces have managed to im
prove access to the airport for Americans and others seeking to get on flights. He suggested that the perimeter had been extended, widening a “safe zone,” but declined to elaborate, citing security concerns.
“What I’m not going to do is talk about the tactical changes we’re making to make sure we maintain as much security as we can,” he said.
Later Biden added: “We’ve discussed a lot with the Taliban. They’ve been coopera- tive in extending some of the perimeter.”
He said groups of Americans in Kabul are being moved more efficiently and safely to the airport, but he provided no details. U.S. military helicopters have been used to collect 169 Americans from outside the airport.
“Any American who wants to get home, will get home,” he asserted.
Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that 3,900 people had been airlifted out of Kabul on U.S. military flights over the past 24 hours. A U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity to provide details not yet made public, said those people were flown on a total of 23 flights — 14 by C-17 transports and nine aboard C-130 cargo planes.
That represents an increase from 1,600 flown out aboard U.S. military planes in the previous 24 hours, but remains far below the 5,000 to 9,000 that the military says it has the capacity to airlift daily. Sullivan also said about 3,900 people were airlifted on non-U.S. military flights over the past 24 hours.
The Biden administration has given no firm estimate of the number of Americans seeking to leave Afghanistan. Some have put the total between 10,000 and 15,000. Sullivan on Sunday put it at “several thousand.”
AIRLINES ENLISTED
Earlier Sunday, administration officials said the U.S. military is considering “creative ways” to get Americans and others into the Kabul airport for evacuation from Afghanistan amid “acute” security threats.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin activated the Civil Reserve Air Fleet program, requesting 18 aircraft from U.S. carriers to assist in transporting Afghan refugees after they are evacuated to other countries. The voluntary program, born in the wake of the Berlin airlift, adds to the military’s capabilities during crises.
The Defense Department said 18 aircraft from American Airlines, Atlas Air, Delta Air Lines, Omni Air, Hawaiian Airlines and United Airlines will be directed to ferry evacuees from interim waystations. The airlines will not fly into Afghanistan. The six participating airlines have agreed to assist for a little less than two weeks, which roughly coincides with the currently planned duration of the airlift, which is to end Aug. 31.
Those temporary waystations, including in Qatar, Bahrain and Germany, are sometimes reaching capacity, although new sites are being made available, including in Spain.
The civil airline reserve system was last activated in 2003 for the Iraq War.
Addressing a criticism cited by many Republicans, Biden said no Afghan evacuees are being flown directly to the U.S. from Afghanistan without prior screening. He said they are being screened in third countries.
‘THREAT IS REAL’
Biden and his top aides have repeatedly cited their concern that extremist groups in Afghanistan will attempt to exploit the chaos around the Kabul airport.
“The threat is real, it is acute, it is persistent and something we’re focused with every tool in our arsenal,” Sullivan said Sunday.
There also have been concerns about a potential attack on the airport by a local Islamic State affiliate. U.S. military planes have been executing corkscrew landings, and other aircraft have fired flares upon takeoff, measures used to prevent missile attacks.
Neither Sullivan nor other senior American military or intelligence officials provided details about the threats or their specificity. Current and former officials say, however, that they range from a missile attack against a transport plane taking off or landing at Hamid Karzai International Airport to a bomb-laden truck or suicide bombers infiltrating the crowd outside the airport.
Biden said Friday that U.S. military and counterterrorism officials were closely watching for threatened ISIS attacks, noting that thousands of prisoners had been released in Kabul and other locations. While the Taliban are unlikely to have consciously let out the Islamic State group fighters, the chaos in Afghanistan in recent weeks allowed all manner of prisoners to be freed from custody, including the Taliban’s enemies.
“ISIS-K has been waiting for an opportunity like this, where its fighters can exploit the chaos of the situation on the ground for a chance to kill American soldiers,” said Colin P. Clarke, a counterterrorism analyst at the Soufan Group, a New York-based security consulting firm, referring to the Islamic State group’s Khorasan affiliate in Afghanistan.
DEATHS NEAR AIRPORT
The British military said Sunday that at least seven people had been killed in the unceasing crush of crowds outside the airport.
Others may have been trampled, suffocated or suffered heart attacks as Taliban fighters fired into the air to try to drive back the crowds. Soldiers covered several corpses in white clothing. Other troops stood on concrete barriers, trying to calm the crowd.
Kabul’s airport, now one of the only routes out of the country, has seen days of chaos since the Taliban entered the capital. Thousands poured onto the tarmac last week, and several Afghans plunged to their deaths after clinging to a U.S. military cargo plane as it took off, some of the seven killed on Aug. 16.
Outside the airport Saturday, Western troops in full combat gear tried to control crowds big enough to be seen in satellite photos. They carried away some who were sweating and pale. With temperatures reaching 93 F, the soldiers sprayed water from a hose on those gathered and gave out bottled water.
“The situation at Kabul airport remains extremely challenging and unpredictable,” a NATO official said on condition of anonymity in keeping with regulations. The official was not able to confirm a precise number of casualties.
The Taliban blame the chaotic evacuation on the U.S. military, saying there’s no need for Afghans to fear them, even though their fighters shoot into the air and beat people with batons as they try to control the crowds outside the airport.
“All Afghanistan is secure, but the airport, which is managed by the Americans, has anarchy,” Amir Khan Motaqi, a senior Taliban official, said Sunday. The U.S. “should not embarrass itself to the world and should not give this mentality to our people that [the Taliban] are a kind of enemy.”
The Taliban have pledged amnesty to those who worked with the U.S., NATO and the toppled Afghan government, but many Afghans still fear revenge attacks. There have been reports in recent days of the Taliban hunting down their former enemies. It’s unclear if Taliban leaders are saying one thing and doing another, or if fighters are taking matters into their own hands.
The U.S. Embassy, which has relocated to the military side of the airport, has told American citizens and others not to come to the airport until they receive precise instructions.
Republicans in Congress stepped up their criticism of Biden’s response. “If the Taliban is saying that Americans can travel safely to the airport, then there is no better way to make sure they get safely to the airport than to use our military to escort them,” GOP Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, an Army veteran, said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Ryan Crocker, who served as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan under Presidents George W, Bush and Barack Obama, told CBS’ “Face the Nation” that Biden’s management of the withdrawal was “catastrophic” and had unleashed a “global crisis.”
BLAIR CONDEMNATION
Tony Blair, the British prime minister who deployed troops to Afghanistan 20 years ago after the 9/11 attacks, says the U.S. decision to withdraw from the country has “every Jihadist group round the world cheering.”
In a lengthy essay posted on his website late Saturday, the former Labor Party leader said the sudden and chaotic pullout that allowed the Taliban to reclaim power risked undermining everything that had been achieved in Afghanistan over the past two decades, including advances in living standards and the education of girls.
“The abandonment of Afghanistan and its people is tragic, dangerous, unnecessary, not in their interests and not in ours,” said Blair who served as prime minister during 1997-2007, a period that also saw him back the U.S.-led war in Iraq in 2003.
“The world is now uncertain of where the West stands because it is so obvious that the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan in this way was driven not by grand strategy but by politics,” he added.
Blair also accused Biden of being “in obedience to an imbecilic political slogan about ending ‘the forever wars’, as if our engagement in 2021 was remotely comparable to our commitment 20 or even 10 years ago.”
Blair conceded that mistakes were made over the past two decades but added that military interventions can be noble in intent, especially when challenging an extreme Islamist threat.
“Today we are in a mood which seems to regard the bringing of democracy as a utopian delusion and intervention virtually of any sort as a fool’s errand.” he said.
The former prime minister, whose reputation in the U.K. took a dive from the failure to find the alleged weapons of mass destruction that were cited as justification for U.S. coalition’s invasion of Iraq, said Britain has a “moral obligation” to stay in Afghanistan until everyone who needs to be evacuated is taken out.
HALEY: NO TO TALIBAN
Nikki Haley, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2017 to 2019, urged the Biden administration not to legally recognize the Taliban government.
In a statement in The Washington Post, Haley said Biden “badly bungled” the withdrawal from Afghanistan. She spoke in no uncertain terms about any government the Taliban establishes.
“[Biden] must not also bungle the coming decision on whether to recognize these barbarians as Afghanistan’s legitimate government,” Haley wrote. “Doing so would bring the United States even lower while raising up a regime that deserves nothing but scorn and isolation.”
In fact, Haley said it was shocking that the Biden administration has not yet ruled out recognizing the Taliban, writing that she hoped Biden is “just posturing.”
“Recognizing the Taliban would ignore how sick and twisted it truly is,” Haley wrote. “The Taliban of 2021 is little different from the Taliban of 2001.”
“They are already chanting “Death to America” on the streets of Kabul,” she added, without citing specific reports. “And they refuse to cut ties with al-Qaeda, which is still active in Afghanistan. Jihadist groups around the world are cheering the Taliban’s victory.”
Haley cited U.S. policy dealing with the communist governments of China and Vietnam in calling for Biden to not recognize the Taliban until the group “proves over many years that it’s part of the civilized world.”
“There are no words to describe how much worse it would be if Biden rewarded the enemy they sacrificed so much to defeat by recognizing it as a legitimate government,” she concluded.
Information for this article was contributed by Robert Burns, Darlene Superville, Aamer Madhani, Lolita C. Baldor, Ellen Knickmeyer, Hope Yen, Matthew Lee, Ahmad Seir, Tameem Akhgar, Jon Gambrell, Joseph Krauss, Amir Vahdat and Pan Pylas of The Associated Press and by Eric Schmitt of The New York Times.