San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Desperate wait for U.S. to fulfill evacuation vow
KABUL — Tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan waited nervously on Saturday to see whether the United States would deliver on President Biden’s new pledge to evacuate all Americans and all Afghans who aided the war effort.
But potential Islamic State threats against Americans in Afghanistan are forcing the U.S. military to develop new ways to get evacuees to the airport in Kabul, a senior U.S. official said Saturday, adding a whole new layer of complexity to the already chaotic efforts to get people out of the country after its swift fall to the Taliban.
The official said small groups of Americans and possibly other civilians will be given specific instructions on what to do, including movement to transit points where they can be gathered up by the military. The official spoke on condition of anonymity.
The changes come as the U.S. Embassy issued a new security warning Saturday telling citizens not to travel to the Kabul airport without individual instruction from a U.S. government representative. Officials declined to provide more specifics about the Islamic State threat but described it as significant.
Time is running out ahead of Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline to withdraw most remaining U.S. troops. In his remarks on the situation Friday, he did not commit to extending it, though he did issue a new pledge to evacuate not only all Americans in Afghanistan, but also the tens of thousands of Afghans who have aided the war effort since the terror attacks against the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001. That promise would dramatically expand the number of people the U.S. evacuates.
Biden faces growing criticism as videos depict pandemonium and occasional violence outside the airport, and as vulnerable Afghans who fear the Taliban’s retaliation send desperate pleas not to be left behind.
The Islamic State group — which has long declared a desire to attack America and U.S. interests abroad — has been active in Afghanistan for a number of years, carrying out waves of horrific attacks, mostly on the Shiite minority. The group has been repeatedly targeted by U.S. air strikes in recent years, as well as Taliban attacks. But officials say fragments of the group are still active in Afghanistan, and the U.S. is concerned about it reconstituting in a larger way as the country comes under divisive Taliban rule.
Despite the U.S. Embassy warning, crowds remain outside the Kabul airport’s concrete barriers, clutching documents and sometimes stunnedlooking children, blocked from flights by coils of razor wire.
Meanwhile, the Taliban’s top political leader arrived in Kabul for talks on forming a new government. The presence of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who returned to Kandahar earlier this week from Qatar, was confirmed by a Taliban official who spoke on condition of anonymity. Baradar negotiated the religious movement’s 2020 peace deal with the U.S., and he is now expected to play a key role in negotiations between the Taliban and officials from the Afghan government that the militant group deposed.
Afghan officials familiar with talks held in the capital say the Taliban have indicated they will not make announcements on their government until the Aug. 31 deadline for the troop withdrawal passes.
Abdullah Abdullah, a senior official in the ousted government, tweeted that he and exPresident Hamid Karzai met Saturday with Taliban’s acting governor for Kabul, who “assured us that he would do everything possible for the security of the people” of the city.
Evacuations continued, though some outgoing flights were far from full because of the airport chaos. The German military said in a tweet that a
plane left Kabul on Saturday with 205 evacuees. Two earlier flights carried out just seven and eight people, respectively.
On Friday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said around 1,000 people a day were being evacuated amid a “stabilization” at the airport. But on Saturday, a former Royal Marine-turned charity director in Afghanistan said the situation was getting worse, not better.
“We can’t leave the country because we can’t get into the airport without putting our lives at risk,” Paul Farthing told BBC radio.
Army Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor told Pentagon reporters Saturday that the U.S. has evacuated 17,000 people through the Kabul airport since Aug. 15. About 2,500 have been Americans, he said. U.S. officials have estimated there are as many as 15,000 Americans in Afghanistan, but acknowledge they don’t have solid numbers. In the past day, about 3,800 civilians were evacuated from Afghanistan through a combination of U.S. military and charter flights, Taylor said.