Tag: Afghanistan

All in or All Out? Biden Noticed No Center Floor in Afghanistan

Post author By
Post date August 28, 2021

Mr Biden hired Jake Sullivan, his national security advisor, to conduct an inter-agency inquiry into Afghanistan policy, which resulted in 10 departmental meetings, three cabinet-level meetings, and four meetings in the camp room attended by the president.

The Biden team considered other options, including maintaining a small troop presence for counter-terrorism operations or in support of the Afghan security forces, but argued that this was just “magical thinking” and would require more troops than was bearable. They debated whether to renegotiate the Trump deal to make further concessions, but the Taliban made it clear they would not return to the negotiating table and considered the Trump deal binding.

Mr Biden’s advisors also considered extending the withdrawal period until winter, after the traditional fighting season was over, to make the transition less dangerous for the Afghan government. The Afghanistan Study Group, a bipartisan, Congressional chartered body led by General Joseph F. Dunford Jr., a retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and which included Ms. O’Sullivan, recommended the deadline for the February May 1st extend out and seek better conditions.

But Mr Biden was warned by security experts that the longer it took for a decision to be announced, the aides said, the more dangerous it would get, so he only extended it until August 31.

Particularly influential on Mr Biden, aides said, were a series of intelligence assessments he had requested of Afghanistan’s neighbors and close neighbors, which revealed that Russia and China wanted the United States to remain stuck in Afghanistan.

At the end of the day, officials said that either option eventually led to one of the two ultimate alternatives – wholly out, as Mr. Trump had agreed, or preparing for a longer and more dangerous gun war with many other troops. Although not everyone in the room preferred Mr. Biden’s path, officials claimed everyone was heard.

“Biden faced basically the same problem as Trump,” said Vali Nasr, a senior adviser to Richard C. Holbrooke, Obama’s special envoy on Afghanistan and Pakistan, “and his answer was the same – we’re not going.” To get back in, you have to we out. “

Tags Afghanistan, Biden, Ground, Middle

World News

Afghanistan Reside Updates: Kabul Airport, Withdrawal and Evacuation Information

Post author By
Post date August 27, 2021

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

The reported toll of the bombing outside Kabul’s airport rose sharply on Friday, with local health officials saying that as many as 170 people were killed and at least 200 were wounded. Yet less than a day after the attack, crowds on Friday sought once again to reach the airport, their desperation to flee the Taliban blending with grief at the enormous scale of the violence.

Health officials’ estimate of the number of bombing victims, which did not include the 13 U.S. service members killed and 15 wounded, was supported by interviews with hospital officials. The hospital officials, who requested anonymity because the Taliban had told them not to speak with the media, said some of the dead civilians were Afghan Americans, with U.S. citizenship.

The revised estimates made Thursday’s attack one of the deadliest in the nearly two decades since the U.S.-led invasion. American officials believe “another terror attack in Kabul is likely,” the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said on Friday afternoon. “The threat is ongoing and it is active. Our troops are still in danger.”

At the airport and in the streets, the U.S. military and the Taliban tried to exert what authority they could. Militants with Kalashnikov rifles kept crowds farther away from the airport’s entrance gates, guarding checkpoints with trucks and at least one Humvee parked in the roads. The American military resumed evacuation flights, and the White House said early Friday that 12,500 people had been evacuated from Afghanistan in the previous 24 hours, despite the attacks.

The waiting crowds, many standing by buses with bags at their sides, numbered in the hundreds, not the thousands of previous days. An estimated hundreds of thousands remain in the country who are desperate for escape from the Taliban rule of Afghanistan, but very few appeared to be getting to the airport gates on Friday.

The airport itself appeared to be largely, if not entirely, locked down. At the airport’s southern and eastern gates, Taliban guards told a reporter that no one was allowed to go near the airport and that all entrance gates were closed. About 5,400 people remained inside waiting evacuation, the Pentagon said Friday.

The grisly scenes on Thursday, when children were among those killed in the crowds, illustrated the intense danger for those braving the high-risk journey to the airport.

On Friday, the U.S. military revised its account of what happened at the airport a day earlier, with Maj. Gen. William Taylor of the Joint Staff saying, “we do not believe that there was a second explosion at or near the Baron Hotel, that it was one suicide bomber.” But many witnesses reported hearing two blasts.

With four days remaining until an Aug. 31 deadline for the United States withdrawal, a date that President Biden has said he intends to keep despite domestic and international pressure to extend the evacuation operations, Afghans are scrambling to find a way out of the country.

The task is becoming increasingly difficult.

Mr. Biden vowed retribution against ISIS-K, the Afghan affiliate of the Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for the attacks on behalf of its loyalists in Afghanistan. But there was little information on how the attacks would affect the immediate rescue operations, which had picked up speed in recent days but were still on pace to fall well short of providing an exit for everyone who wants to leave.

A man who identified himself as Mohammad, from Khost, said that he had hoped to fly out on Friday but that he felt “stuck.” He was unable to get into the airport, and said the Taliban had been looking for former soldiers and media workers.

“I don’t feel safe here anymore,” he said.

General Taylor said some 111,000 people — American citizens, Afghan allies and foreign nationals — have been evacuated from the country since Kabul fell to the Taliban this month.

British officials at Kabul’s airport stopped accepting new evacuation requests from Afghan allies on Friday and began preparing to fly out some 1,000 British troops and civilian officials ahead of the Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline set by the United States.

“We’re nearing the end,” Air Chief Marshal Mike Wigston, the chief of Britain’s air staff, said in a telephone interview. “Overnight, we closed the doors at our processing center.”

By the time the last several hundred Afghans now inside the airport board evacuation flights from Hamid Karzai International Airport, Britain will have flown about 15,000 people to safety in the operation, the air chief said. About 4,500 are British passport and visa holders, and the rest are Afghans who served alongside British troops in Afghanistan, and their families, he said.

Britain and the United States are closely synchronizing their operations, so the British shift to prioritizing flights carrying out its troops and government civilians foreshadows the same transition that the American military is likely to make over the weekend.

Air Chief Marshal Wigston expressed his condolences for the death of 13 American Marines and other American troops who served alongside British soldiers at the airport’s entry gates.

“We would not have been able to conduct our mission on the scale we did except for the Americans,” he said.

Earlier Friday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson vowed to continue working to help more Afghans leave after the deadline.

“Of course, as we come down to the final hours of the operation there will sadly be people who haven’t got through, people who might qualify,” he said. “What I would say to them is that we will shift heaven and earth to help them get out, we will do whatever we can in the second phase.”

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

Taliban fighters have continued to search for officials of Afghanistan’s former government, causing fear among Kabul residents, even after the group declared a general amnesty for those once in power when they entered the capital nearly two weeks ago, former officials say.

“This is the eighth time that the Taliban came to my home in Kabul, searched for me and have taken my private vehicle, and directly threatened my children,” Halim Fidai, a former official who served as an adviser to the president and as a governor of eastern Khost Province, said on Twitter on Thursday.

Fearing retribution from the Taliban, thousands of employees of the collapsed Afghan government, interpreters for U.S. and NATO forces, civil society activists and journalists have flooded Kabul’s airport in recent days along with their families in a desperate attempt to flee the country. Tens of thousands have been evacuated by the U.S. and other Western countries, but the area around the airport has grown increasingly perilous, with a terrorist attack on Thursday killing dozens.

Ahmadullah Waseq, the deputy of Taliban’s culture committee, rejected reports that the Taliban had conducted house-to-house searches in Kabul. He said the “allegation” made by Mr. Fidai would be investigated.

Mr. Waseq noted that Haibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban’s reclusive leader, had ordered a general amnesty. “We assure all members of security forces and former officials to stay in their homeland and that they are safe in their houses,” he said.

He said that criminals, introducing themselves as Taliban members, had carried out searches and armed robberies, and that some of them had been detained by the Taliban.

People on the ground tell a different story.

Bismillah Taban, the head of the Interior Ministry’s police criminal investigation unit under President Ashraf Ghani, said his assistant had handed over all of the equipment and weapons he had in his possession to the Taliban a day after they entered Kabul.

But the Taliban are still looking for him.

“The Taliban detained my former aide in Kabul, held him for five hours, tortured him to force him reveal my hiding place,” he said in a phone call from an undisclosed location. “I don’t believe their promise of general amnesty. They killed one of my colleagues after they took over the government. They will kill me, too, if they find me.”

Despite the Taliban’s efforts to reassure Afghans that the group has evolved and will not rule with the violence that marked its time in power in the 1990s, former government officials and people who worked with the United States and NATO allies are still worried. Many have either been living in hiding or trying to flee the country.

There have also been reports of attacks by the Taliban on journalists, including one on Monday in which Tolo News journalists and administrators described how the Taliban beat one of the channel’s reporters in Kabul.

Mr. Waseq said that the fighter who had beat the journalist was identified and that a criminal case had been opened against him. “He will soon face trial,” he said.

Credit…via the McCollum Family

After Lance Cpl. Rylee McCollum, 20, landed in Afghanistan with his Marine unit, his father, Jim, began checking his phone for a little green dot. Mr. McCollum had not been able to talk with his son, but the green dot next to Rylee’s name on a messaging app meant that he was online. That he was still OK.

When news came that a suicide bomber killed 13 American service members outside the airport in Kabul on Thursday, Mr. McCollum checked again for the dot. His son was on his first overseas deployment, had gotten married recently, and was about to become a father. Mr. McCollum messaged his son: “Hey man, you good?”

But the green dot was gone.

“In my heart yesterday afternoon, I knew,” Mr. McCollum said.

On Friday, Lance Corporal McCollum became one of the first American victims to be publicly identified in the attack that also killed at least 170 Afghans. It was the highest U.S. death toll in a single incident in Afghanistan in 10 years. His death was confirmed by his father and by the governor of Wyoming, Mark Gordon.

While the Department of Defense has not released an official accounting of the victims, their names began to emerge on Friday. They appeared in social media posts from family and friends and somber announcements from the high schools where the young men had played football or wrestled just a few years earlier.

Some of them, like Lance Corporal McCollum, who was born in February 2001, were still babies when the United States invaded Afghanistan. Others were not yet born. Now, they are among the last casualties of America’s longest war.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

Lance Corporal McCollum’s unit had deployed from Jordan to Afghanistan to provide security and help with evacuations, his father said in a phone interview on Friday. He had been guarding a checkpoint when the explosion tore through the main gate where thousands of civilians have been clamoring to escape the country’s new Taliban rulers.

“He was a beautiful soul,” Mr. McCollum said from his home in Wyoming.

Mr. McCollum’s fears for his son’s fate were confirmed when two Marines knocked on the door of the family’s home at 3:30 a.m. to deliver the news. Mr. McCollum said becoming a Marine had been his son’s dream ever since he was 3 years old.

That night other families in communities large and small were getting the same grim news.

In one small northern Ohio community where Maxton Soviak grew up playing football, his death left a “Maxton-sized hole” in the lives of the people who loved him, his sister Marilyn wrote in an Instagram post.

Mr. Soviak served as a Navy medic when he was killed, according to a statement from the Edison Local School District announcing his death. Mr. Soviak graduated from Edison High School in 2017, the district said.

“Everybody looked to Max in tough situations,” said Jim Hall, his high school football coach, who described Mr. Soviak as a deeply loyal friend. “He was energetic. He wore his emotions on his sleeve. He was a passionate kid. He didn’t hold anything back.”

Mr. Soviak’s social media profile showed an exuberant young man charging into the world — diving off a rocky precipice, rock-climbing, hiking the Grand Canyon. “If the world was coming to an end, I don’t wanna close my eyes without feeling like I lived,” he wrote in one post.

On Friday, Mr. Hall’s phone rang with people calling to mourn and share memories, and one image of Mr. Soviak kept returning to Mr. Hall’s mind. It was from a snowy regional playoff game a few years ago in which Mr. Soviak helped sack a quarterback to win the game.

Mr. Hall remembered watching Mr. Soviak celebrate on the field, exultant, snow swirling around him.

At least two of the slain service members were from California. They were identified by local law enforcement and a U.S. congressman as Hunter Lopez, 22, a Marine who is the son of two officers of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, and Marine Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui, a young martial arts champion from Norco, according to his social media accounts.

Credit…Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, via Facebook

On Friday, Kareem Nikoui’s mother, Shana Chappell, posted a photo on her Instagram account of her son with a broad smile, cradling his rifle amid the crowds of civilians and razor wire at the gate of the airport in Kabul. “This is the last picture my son sent me of himself. It was taken on Sunday. I know i am still in shock right now. I felt my soul leave my body as i was screaming that it can’t be true! No mother, no parent should ever have to hear that their child is gone,” she wrote in the post.

Some of the dead were assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment based at Camp Pendleton, Calif. On Thursday evening, as many families were being notified, the Marine base held a candlelight vigil.

Lance Corporal McCollum loved the mountains where he grew up but could not wait to join the Marines, his father said. Since he was a boy, he could not stand injustice and would stand up for bullied classmates. So on his 18th birthday, he called his father from his school in Jackson Hole to ask him to come sign his enlistment papers.

“He wanted to get in there as quickly as he could,” Mr. McCollum said.

Mr. McCollum said his son had been deeply patriotic and had, from a young age, loved going to Fourth of July and Memorial Day parades and learning about the ceremonies surrounding the American flag. He was a successful wrestler who graduated in 2019, school officials said.

“He’s the most patriotic kid you could find,” Mr. McCollum said. “Loved America, loved the military. Tough as nails with a heart of gold.”

Credit…Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images

Regi Stone, a pastor whose son, Eli, was one of Lance Corporal McCollum’s best friends, described him as fiercely devoted. The two young men always had each other’s backs, he said, whether it was at bonfire parties in the Wyoming woods or in their decision to enlist in the Marines at about the same time.

“He wouldn’t back down from anything,” Mr. Stone said.

Mr. McCollum said it was wrenching to watch the chaos unfolding in Afghanistan after so many years of American military occupation and so many deaths.

“It kills me and pains me that we spent 20 years there, and all the lives that were lost there, including my son’s. And we’re back to square one,” he said.

He said he found some comfort in the fact that his son had died helping people — “doing good things,” as Lance Corporal McCollum put it.

“I couldn’t be more proud of him,” his father said. “He’s a hero.”

Sheelagh McNeill and Alain Delaquérière contributed research.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

The bombing outside Hamid Karzai International Airport on Thursday brought an almost unmanageable flood of victims to the Emergency N.G.O. Hospital in Kabul.

“Last night was a disaster,” Alberto Zanin, the hospital’s medical coordinator, said in an interview with The New York Times on Friday. “We are not used to casualty numbers this high. Our hospital is over capacity at the moment. We had to add extra beds.”

The hospital received 62 victims from the attack, he said, 14 of whom were dead on arrival. Two others died almost immediately after arrival and four more died overnight. Thirty-four patients were admitted for treatment, and the situation was exacerbated by casualties from another explosion in Kote Sangi, a densely populated neighborhood southwest of the airport.

“One fatality came in, and one of the nurses working at the tent by the entrance, the first patient reception, realized it was a relative of his,” Dr. Zanin said. “When that happened, there was a lot of panic, screaming. It was difficult to manage that.”

Dr. Zanin said this was the worst attack he had experienced in the roughly four years he had worked at the hospital in Kabul.

“A lot of them had head injuries,” he said of the victims. “There was also something about the state of the people that arrived. They seemed shocked. Everyone was completely absent, not listening, not able to respond.”

In the face of the catastrophe, the hospital’s staff and members of the community came together. Many employees had gone home for the night when the attack happened, but returned to the hospital without having to be asked, Dr. Zanin said. The last surgery of the night was performed at 5 a.m. on Friday.

“A lot of people came to our gate to inquire about relatives. There was a lot of chaos,” he said. “But there were also signs of humanity, of community. Many came to donate blood. We had Taliban coming to donate blood.”

One of the wounded was Asadullah Hossaini, 31, a medical doctor who had been standing near the U.S. Marines who were killed when the explosion went off.

Mr. Hossaini said that he and his family — 15 people total — had fled about 90 miles west to Behsud, where they are from, when the Taliban entered Kabul. They are Hazaras, a predominantly Shia ethnic group that was brutally oppressed when the Taliban were in power a generation ago.

But when a cousin called to say he had an American visa and could get the family into the airport, they returned.

“I had a passport and my cousin had a U.S. visa,” he said. “He wanted to transfer us to America because the situation here has become unacceptable to us. I saw on Facebook that Taliban fighters request young women to marry them. This is unacceptable. We have many young women in our family.”

The family went to the airport on Wednesday but had to spend the night outside because the crowd was impenetrable, Mr. Hossaini said. On Thursday, they made their way closer to the airport gate. Even before the explosion, he said, people were packed together so tightly that a woman died from suffocation.

“I saw her die with my own eyes,” he said.

When the bomb went off, he was knocked unconscious. Two people put him in a wheelbarrow and pushed him to the main airport gate, from which a car took him to the hospital. He underwent surgery on his leg and back.

“I don’t know what happened to my family,” he said. “I know my wife and my daughter are outside the hospital. But I don’t know what happened to the rest of them.”

Credit…Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Pakistan has insisted that it will not accept any more refugees from Afghanistan. The refugees are coming anyway.

Thousands of people have been streaming into Pakistan through a major southwestern border crossing since the Taliban took over Kabul two weeks ago. While the evacuations from Kabul airport have drawn global attention, large numbers of people trying to flee the country have been gathering daily near Spin Boldak-Chaman, the only designated — and open — border crossing for refugees.

About 4,000 to 8,000 people crossed the border there in normal times. Since the Taliban seized Kabul, the number of Afghans entering Pakistan has jumped threefold, according to Pakistani officials and tribal leaders. They fear that the attacks at Kabul’s airport will spur even more people to use the border crossing instead.

Other border crossings, like the one at Torkham, a site roughly 140 miles east of Kabul, have been closed. That leaves the southern crossing of Spin Boldak, which is roughly 70 miles southeast of Kandahar.

One resident of Parwan Province north of Kabul, surnamed Ali, traveled with his family through Spin Boldak. They arrived at the Pakistani port city of Karachi on Monday.

“The uncertainty and unemployment in Afghanistan have been forcing us to leave the country,” Mr. Ali said.

No official statistics about how many people recently entered Pakistan are available. An official at a ministry overseeing the flow of refugees said that the Pakistan government is allowing only Pakistani citizens, Afghan patients seeking medical treatment and people with proof of a right to refuge.

Pakistan has long had a complicated relationship with Afghanistan and their shared, porous border. The Taliban have long crossed back and forth, for example. But the Pakistan government has increasing worried about refugees pouring into the country from its troubled western neighbor.

In recent years it built up a fence 1,600 miles long with Afghanistan mainly to regularize cross-border movement. It designated specific point, like Spin Boldak, where crossings were allowed.

Photos and videos of crowds at the Spin Boldak border crossing have circulated in recent days. But crowds were already a daily phenomenon, said the government official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the media. On a daily basis, the official said, people gather to cross for work, trade, medical treatment or to visit family on the other side of the border.

Rising refugees may force the Pakistan government to take further action. Officials have said repeatedly said that they would not allow any new refugees to enter Pakistan’s cities. The government is instead planning on establishing refugee camps near the border inside Afghanistan’s territory.

Officially, about 1.4 million Afghan refugees live in Pakistan, making it one of the largest refugee populations in the world. A spokesperson for the United Nations Human Rights Council said as many as another one million may live there too.

Credit…Aaron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post, via Associated Press

Just three months after the killing of Osama bin Laden, the U.S. military endured its biggest single-day loss of life during its two-decade war in Afghanistan. On Aug. 6, 2011, insurgents shot down a transport helicopter, killing 30 Americans and eight Afghans.

The Taliban, who claimed responsibility for the attack, had found an elite target: U.S. officials said that 22 of the dead were Navy Seal commandos, including members of Seal Team 6. Other commandos from that team had conducted the raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that killed Bin Laden in May of that year.

The helicopter, on a night-raid mission in the Tangi Valley of Wardak Province, to the west of Kabul, was most likely brought down by a rocket-propelled grenade, an official said then. It was the second helicopter to be shot down by insurgents within two weeks.

The deadly attack, which came during a surge of violence that accompanied the beginning of a drawdown of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, showed how deeply entrenched the insurgency remained even far from its main strongholds in southern Afghanistan and along the Afghan-Pakistani border in the east.

The Tangi Valley traverses the border between Wardak and Logar Province, an area where security worsened over the years and brought the insurgency closer to the capital, Kabul. It was one of several inaccessible areas that became havens for insurgents.

President Barack Obama offered his condolences at the time to the families of the Americans and Afghans who died in the attack. “Their death is a reminder of the extraordinary sacrifice made by the men and women of our military and their families,” he said.

President Biden echoed Mr. Obama’s words after an attack by Islamic State Khorasan killed 13 U.S. service members.

“The lives we lost today were lives given in the service of liberty, the service of security and the service of others,” Mr. Biden said.

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‘We Will Hunt You Down,’ Biden Vows After Kabul Explosions

President Biden condemned a terrorist attack near the Kabul airport that killed scores of people, including at least 13 American service members, pledging to retaliate against the attackers and continue evacuations.

To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this: We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay. These American service members who gave their lives — that’s an overused word, but it’s totally appropriate here — were heroes. Heroes who’ve been engaged in a dangerous, selfless mission to save the lives of others. They’re a part of an airlift and evacuation effort, unlike any seen in history. We will not be deterred by terrorists. We’ll not let them stop our mission. We will continue the evacuation. I’ve also ordered my commanders to develop operational plans to strike ISIS-K assets, leadership and facilities. We will respond with force and precision at our time, at the place we choose and the moment of our choosing. Here’s what you need to know: These ISIS terrorists will not win. We will rescue the Americans in there. We will get our Afghan allies out, and our mission will go on. America will not be intimidated.

President Biden condemned a terrorist attack near the Kabul airport that killed scores of people, including at least 13 American service members, pledging to retaliate against the attackers and continue evacuations.CreditCredit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Biden’s decision to end America’s longest war was driven, he had said repeatedly, by his determination not to sacrifice even one more member of the military on behalf of an effort that he had long believed was no longer in the interests of the United States.

But on Thursday, the withdrawal from Afghanistan claimed the lives of 13 U.S. troops, along with scores of Afghan civilians — the first American casualties there in 18 months and the deadliest day there for the U.S. military since 2011.

In searing remarks from the East Room of the White House, Mr. Biden pledged to “hunt down” the terrorists who claimed credit for the bombing.

“To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this: We will not forgive,” Mr. Biden said, using language that had grim echoes of warnings President George W. Bush made after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

America’s tumultuous exit from Afghanistan has dragged down Mr. Biden’s approval ratings, and the bombing on Thursday will surely open him up to political criticism. But it is unclear what the damage will be to his presidency in the long term, as he exits a war that most Americans want out of as well.

Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

Omar Zakhilwal, a former Afghan finance minister, continues to walk to his office in downtown Kabul every day, even as he is meeting with Taliban officials, trying to nudge them toward what he calls a more “inclusive” government.

Both exercises are proving to be challenges. On his daily walk in the normally bustling and noisy Shar-e Naw neighborhood, once alive with street vendors and jostling pedestrians, there is now an unsettling silence. And so far his encounters with the Taliban have not yielded the results he is hoping for.

“It’s awfully quiet,” he said in a phone interview from Kabul on Friday. “It’s really calm. You don’t see many women out there. Not even close to the usual number. And the market looks depressed. You don’t see people shopping. There are the juice sellers in Shar-e Naw, but not many people drinking juice.”

“We’re in a very depressed economic situation,” said Dr. Zakhilwal, an economist who was sharply critical of the government of President Ashraf Ghani in the days before it fell.

So far, the worst fears about the Taliban appear not to have been realized, Dr. Zakhilwal said. “By and large, their treatment of the population is not as bad as expected,” he said. “They are not very visible. You don’t see a heavy presence of them in the city.”

But “the mental security is not there,” he said.

Along with other Afghan officials from previous governments, he has been meeting with Taliban representatives. One of the officials is his old boss, former President Hamid Karzai. All are hoping the Taliban will include former officials in their government. The signs so far are not encouraging.

“Now that they have taken the whole thing, there might be temptations within them not to go for the type of inclusive government that would be the result of a political settlement,” Dr. Zakhilwal said.

A few appointments so far suggest that the Taliban are more interested in appointing from within their ranks than naming “professionals,” he said, noting the Taliban’s choice for acting head of the central bank: Haji Mohammad Idris, a member of the movement. News reports have indicated that Mr. Idris has no formal financial training.

“They haven’t shown inclusivity in these temporary appointments,” Dr. Zakhilwal said.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

The Afghan parents of a baby born on a C-17 aircraft evacuating passengers to Germany named their daughter after the aircraft’s call sign, a senior U.S. general said this week.

“They named the little girl Reach, and they did so because the call sign of the C-17 aircraft that flew them from Qatar to Ramstein was Reach,” Gen. Tod Wolters, the commander of U.S. European Command, said in a Pentagon news conference on Wednesday.

The Afghan mother, who has not been named, went into labor and began experiencing complications on a flight leaving a base in Qatar for Ramstein Air Base in southwestern Germany on Saturday, the U.S. Air Force said on Twitter.

In response, the C-17 — identified as Reach 828 in radio transmission — descended in altitude to increase air pressure inside the aircraft, “which helped stabilize and save the mother’s life,” the Air Force said.

After the plane landed, medics boarded and helped deliver the baby in the cargo bay. A group of women had protected the mother’s privacy with their shawls, Capt. Erin Brymer, a nurse who helped deliver the child, told CNN.

By the time they reached her, the woman had been “past the point of no return,” she said. “That baby was going to be delivered before we could possibly transfer her to another facility.”

Pictures released by the U.S. Air Force showed the woman being transported, shortly after her daughter’s birth, from the aircraft to a nearby medical facility.

General Wolters said the baby was one of three — all in good condition — born to women who boarded evacuation flights out of Afghanistan. Two others were delivered at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, a military hospital in southern Germany.

“It’s my dream to watch that young child, called Reach, grow up and be a U.S. citizen and fly United States Air Force fighters in our air force,” General Wolters told reporters.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan hardly assures that all militants in the country are under their control.

To the contrary, the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan — known as Islamic State Khorasan or ISIS-K — is a bitter, albeit much smaller, rival that has carried out dozens of attacks in Afghanistan this year against civilians, officials and the Taliban themselves.

In recent months as U.S. forces have been departing, about 8,000 to 10,000 jihadi fighters from Central Asia, the North Caucasus region of Russia, Pakistan and the Xinjiang region in western China have poured into Afghanistan, a United Nations report concluded in June.

Most are associated with the Taliban or Al Qaeda, which are closely linked, but others are allied with ISIS-K, presenting a major challenge to the stability and security that the Taliban promise to provide.

While terrorism experts doubt that ISIS fighters in Afghanistan have the capacity to mount large-scale attacks against the West, many say that the Islamic State is now more dangerous, in more parts of the world, than Al Qaeda.

Created six years ago by disaffected Pakistani Taliban fighters, ISIS-K has vastly increased the pace of its attacks this year, the U.N. report said.

The group’s ranks had fallen to about 1,500 to 2,000 fighters — about half that of its peak in 2016 before U.S. airstrikes and Afghan commando raids took a toll, killing many of its leaders.

But since June 2020, the group has been led by an ambitious commander, Shahab al-Muhajir, who is trying to recruit disaffected Taliban fighters and other militants. ISIS-K “remains active and dangerous,” the U.N. report said.

The Islamic State in Afghanistan has mostly been antagonistic toward the Taliban. At times the two groups have fought for turf, particularly in eastern Afghanistan, and ISIS recently denounced the Taliban’s takeover of the country. Some analysts say that fighters from Taliban networks have even defected to join ISIS in Afghanistan, adding more experienced fighters to its ranks.

In general, Al Qaeda did not maintain the same operational control over its affiliates as the Islamic State did, which may have given the latter an advantage, said Hassan Hassan, the co-author of a book about the Islamic State and the editor in chief of Newlines Magazine.

For Al Qaeda, “it’s like opening a Domino’s franchise and you send someone out for quality control,” he said. The Islamic State, on the other hand, would “take it one step further and appoint a manager from the original organization.”

Credit…M Sadiq/EPA, via Shutterstock

Humanitarian organizations, which provide vital aid for millions in Afghanistan, are finding alternative routes to ensure the continued delivery of supplies to a country in crisis.

Desperate to keep channels into the country open, some have looked to alternatives to Kabul’s airport, where the deadly attack on Thursday and ongoing evacuations have hampered deliveries.

The World Health Organization is working with Pakistan to enable an airlift of medical supplies to the northern Afghan city Mazar-i-Sharif. The hope is to bypass the security and logistics challenges that have prevented deliveries to Kabul’s airport.

Most of Afghanistan’s 2,200 health facilities are functioning, said Richard Brennan, the W.H.O.’s regional emergencies director. But stocks of trauma kits to treat wounded people and of other medical supplies have dwindled to a few days’ supply.

“Kabul airport is not an option for bringing in humanitarian supplies at this stage,” he told reporters by video link from Cairo on Friday. “So we are likely to use Mazar-i-Sharif airport, with our first flight going in the next few days.”

Afghanistan’s Civil Aviation Authority is not functioning, but Pakistan International Airlines is working with colleagues in Mazar-i-Sharif to ensure that cargo aircraft can land. The W.H.O. expected to bring in 20 to 30 tons of supplies on each flight, he noted.

Another challenge has arisen, however. In the hours after the terrorist attack outside Kabul’s airport, insurance costs for bringing a plane into Afghanistan have “skyrocketed to prices we have never seen before,” Mr. Brennan said, although he said he expected that problem to be resolved and aircraft dispatched in the next two to three days.

The World Food Program also expects to start an emergency airlift of food supplies to Afghanistan in the coming days, Mr. Brennan said. It warned this week that it could run out of supplies by September as it copes with the new reality of need on the ground.

“Humanitarian catastrophe awaits the people of Afghanistan this winter unless the global community makes their lives a priority,” Anthea Webb, the organization’s regional deputy director for Asia and the Pacific, said in a statement.

At this time of year, the program is typically positioning food stocks in warehouses across Afghanistan so that they can later be distributed when winter snows make some roads impassable.

Now, Ms. Webb said, limited funding and increased need mean that some supplies could run out.

Credit…Wojtek Radwanski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

BRUSSELS — About 37 Afghan asylum seekers who left their country before the Taliban takeover this month have been stuck at the border between Belarus and Poland for two weeks without easy access to food, water or toilets, highlighting the European Union’s struggle with migration.

With Poland’s governing Law and Justice party advertising its toughness on migrants, the government has sent troops to the area while building a variety of border fences. Belarus, which initially granted the asylum seekers visas, won’t let them return from the border.

Various opposition politicians in Poland, some of whom have visited the migrants, have criticized the inhumanity of the government’s position while trying to avoid appearing to favor a policy of open borders.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees on Tuesday called on Poland to abide by its international obligations.

But as European Union member states worry about a new flow of asylum seekers from Afghanistan, they are accusing Belarus, which is not a member, of weaponizing migrants to destabilize the bloc by encouraging them to cross the border.

Critics of President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus say he has done the same thing on the borders of Lithuania and Latvia, apparently to retaliate against the European Union for its increasingly harsh sanctions against him and his government over fraudulent elections and a fierce crackdown on the opposition.

Belarus has denied that it is using migrants as a weapon against the European Union.

Credit…Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times

Hours after the deadly explosion outside the Kabul airport on Thursday, people were gathered at another airport back in the United States, anxiously awaiting the arrival of their loved ones from Afghanistan.

Many expressed grief over the attack, which killed at least 13 U.S. service members and scores more, and wondered what would happen to their relatives trapped in Afghanistan.

Baryalai, 31, drove six hours from Brooklyn to Northern Virginia to help a friend pick up his wife and three children at Dulles International Airport. The two men arrived at 1:30 a.m. on Thursday and were still waiting for the family to be released from the processing center at 2 p.m.

Baryalai said he was “heartbroken” over the bombing and worried about his mother and brother, who are stuck in Afghanistan.

“They are home. I cannot send them to the airport because it’s so bad,” he said. “I cannot take the risk.”

Joe, a 35-year-old hospitality worker who lives in Prince William County, Va., arrived at Dulles on Wednesday morning to pick up his wife and two daughters, who were returning from a visiting to Afghanistan for a wedding that was scheduled for Aug. 15, the day the Taliban took control of Kabul.

He was still waiting on Thursday evening after spending the night sitting in a cafe and wandering around the airport. Although they had landed the day before at 4:30 p.m., they were not able to get off the tarmac until 8 a.m. on Thursday.

Joe said that the attack was devastating but that he was not surprised it had occurred.

“The writing was on the wall,” he said. “They’ve pretty much been announcing it, that threats have been active and present.”

Holding a bouquet of roses and two balloons, Joe said that he was relieved to get his wife and children out before the attack, but that he was worried about his wife’s two sisters, who had not yet decided whether to risk their lives trying to get into the airport.

“They still haven’t left the house,” he said. “They’re ready to leave, but they can’t.”

Credit…Mahboob Shah

Since the Taliban captured Kabul on Aug. 15, Lt. Gen. John A. Bradley, a retired Air Force officer, and his wife, Jan, have spent nearly every waking moment submitting reams of paperwork to various government agencies to help about 500 Afghans trying to evacuate the country.

So far, only one family they have helped has made it out.

“Nothing is working,” Ms. Bradley said on Thursday. “It’s a broken system, and it’s heartbreaking.”

The couple’s frustrations reflect the broader challenges facing those who once helped Americans and those who are now in turn trying to help those people. With President Biden’s Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline fast approaching, many Afghans are desperate to get out.

In 2008 the Bradleys founded the Lamia Afghan Foundation, a nonprofit group, to help people in Afghanistan. Necessity has turned it into an impromptu refugee resettlement organization.

General Bradley served in the Air Force for more than four decades before he started the foundation, which he said had built seven schools for girls and distributed 3.5 million pounds of humanitarian aid in Afghanistan. The foundation is named for a young woman whom General Bradley met near Bagram Air Base while he was still in the service.

“I think she’s under threat because her name’s on our foundation,” General Bradley said.

Lamia’s family is still in Afghanistan and is one of many that the Bradleys are trying to help.

That is never easy on the best of days, and Thursday was not the best of days, especially in Kabul.

In the morning, General Bradley got a phone call from a young Afghan American woman in Virginia whose family had been working with the foundation. She told him her brother had gone to the Kabul airport with his wife and three children that day to try to secure a flight out of the country, even though they had not yet been approved for one.

The Bradleys had submitted paperwork to the Defense Department to request a noncombatant evacuation for the family. They also provided the young Afghan man with copies of General Bradley’s redacted passport and driver’s license, as well as a letter on his military letterhead to present to guards at the airport.

On Thursday, the whole family was standing near the Abbey Gate, a main entry to the international airport, when an explosion tore through the crowd. Dozens were killed and many more wounded in the terrorist attack.

The young woman, who declined to be interviewed, initially thought that most of her brother’s family had been killed, the Bradleys said.

But over the course of the day, and with the couple’s help, she learned that her brother and his wife had initially survived the blast. By Thursday night in the United States, however, the wife had died in the hospital and the family had not found their two younger children.

“We don’t know anything on their status: whether they are hurt, killed or someone took them away to help them,” General Bradley said.

General Bradley said he hoped that his charity could resume something close to normal operations once conditions on the ground calm down. And he said he would keep up his efforts to get people out, hopeless as it often feels.

He also said he understood the United States’ rationale for leaving Afghanistan, but took issue with the way the Biden administration has carried it out.

“I don’t know why it wasn’t started earlier,” General Bradley said of the evacuation. “That’s the baffling thing to me, and I’d love to have an answer someday on that.”

Tags Afghanistan, airport, Evacuation, Kabul, Live, News, Updates, withdrawal

Politics

U.S., allies warn extra terrorist assaults possible as Afghanistan withdrawal deadline nears

Post author By
Post date August 27, 2021

Afghans trying to leave the country continue to wait around Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan on August 26, 2021.

Haroon Sabawoon | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

The US and its allies have warned that further terrorist attacks are likely in Kabul as the deadline for military withdrawal from Afghanistan draws nearer.

Two suicide bombers struck on Thursday near the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, where thousands of people are still hoping to be evacuated after the Taliban came to power.

The US Central Command confirmed on Thursday evening that 13 US soldiers were killed and 18 wounded. British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said Friday that between 60 and 80 Afghans were also killed in the explosions.

ISIS-K, an Afghan-based branch of the terrorist group, has claimed responsibility for the attack.

The warnings came as the US and allies resumed evacuations from Kabul. About 12,500 were flown out in the 24-hour period that ended at 3 a.m. ET on Friday. Coalition forces have evacuated around 105,000 people in the past two weeks. Around 110,600 evacuations have been carried out since the end of July.

President Joe Biden said earlier this week that ISIS-K was a growing threat to the airport, adding that it was because of this that he was “so determined to limit the duration of the mission”.

U.S. Marine Corps General Kenneth McKenzie, Jr. said in a Pentagon briefing Thursday that ISIS will likely attempt to continue the attacks before the evacuations are complete.

On Friday, Wallace said the threat of further attacks in the area increases as the deadline for Western troops to leave the country draws nearer.

“The threat will obviously increase the closer we get to our exit,” he told Sky News. “The narrative will always be that certain groups like IS want to claim when they leave the US that they have driven the US or the UK.”

Wallace also shot at the Biden administration, saying that the West “seems to think that it is fixing problems; it is not, it is managing them”. He added that nation-building support should be carried out “in the long run as an international force”.

British forces evacuations ended

At around 4:30 a.m. on Friday, the UK approved the closure of its processing center at the Baron’s Hotel in Kabul and evacuated its officers. Wallace told BBC News that the last 1,000 eligible people at the airfield would be processed and flown out on Friday.

However, he admitted that not everyone can get out and told LBC radio that up to 150 UK nationals may not have made it yet as evacuation efforts are in their final hours.

Australia has suspended all evacuation flights from Afghanistan following the bombings, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced on Friday, claiming it is no longer safe to continue evacuation.

Tags Afghanistan, Allies, Attacks, Deadline, Nears, terrorist, Warn, withdrawal

World News

Afghanistan Stay Information: Explosions Close to Kabul Airport; Casualties Embody U.S. Service Members

Post author By
Post date August 26, 2021

Here’s what you need to know:

VideoThe Defense Department said 12 U.S. service members were killed and 15 wounded in an ISIS suicide bomb attack near an airport gate on Thursday. Many more Afghan civilians were killed and wounded.CreditCredit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

Two suicide bombers struck within a dense crowd outside the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on Thursday, killing at least 12 American service members and scores of Afghan civilians, officials said.

In the final days of the 20-year U.S. presence in Afghanistan, the bombing caused one of the highest single American tolls of the war. The blasts struck in the middle of a dense crowd of families at the airport gates who were desperately hoping to make one of the last evacuation flights out. Gunfire was reported in the aftermath of the explosions.

The American toll was confirmed by Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., head of the United States Central Command. He said that 15 more American troops were wounded, and warned Thursday’s attack may not be the last one.

“We have other active threats against the airfield,” he told reporters during a news conference in Washington.

The American troops, mostly Marines, were part of the deployment of 5,800 sent by President Biden to help evacuate Americans and Afghan allies from the country after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban.

Estimates of the total dead and wounded differed, and were rising quickly as different hospitals and officials reported in.

One Afghan health official said at least 60 people were confirmed dead and at least 140 wounded. Another health official said at least 40 were dead and 120 wounded. Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the Taliban told them not to brief the press, they said.

The Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, condemned the attack, and said that at least 13 civilians had been killed and 60 wounded.

In one part of one hospital alone, a New York Times journalist saw dozens of severely wounded or killed people.

Crowds gathered

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There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombings. But the night before, a senior U.S. official warned of a “specific” and “credible” threat at the airport by an affiliate of the Islamic State, the Islamic State Khorasan, or ISIS-K, and Western governments began urging people to leave the area.

Even with such a specific warning, military officials said, it would be very difficult to pick out a suicide bomber with a concealed explosive vest in a huge throng of people, like that at the airport.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said of the American service members, many of them Marines, that “terrorists took their lives at the very moment these troops were trying to save the lives of others.”

In a statement Thursday, Mr. Austin said that “we will not be dissuaded from the task at hand,” seeming to indicate that evacuations from Kabul airport would continue in the last four days before the Aug. 31 deadline. “To do anything less — especially now — would dishonor the purpose and sacrifice these men and women have rendered our country and the people of Afghanistan.”

Since the Taliban takeover earlier this month, thousands of Afghan civilians and foreign citizens have gathered at the gates of the airport, which has a military and civilian side, desperate to be airlifted out of the country. At times, the area has descended into chaos as people scrambled toward evacuation flights.

Two U.S. military officials said evacuation flights were continuing, though it was not clear whether any gates at the airport were open.

“We can confirm that the explosion at the Abbey Gate was the result of a complex attack that resulted in a number of US & civilian casualties,” John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said in a post on Twitter. “We can also confirm at least one other explosion at or near the Baron Hotel, a short distance from Abbey Gate.”

The Abbey Gate is a main entryway to the international airport. The U.S. Embassy in Kabul warned citizens to avoid traveling to the airport and avoid airport gates, and urged Americans who were at the Abbey Gate, East Gate or North Gate entrances to leave immediately.

U.S. military officials at the airport said that an attack, given the speed and confusion surrounding the entire evacuation, was never a matter of if, but when. The U.S. Marines guarding Abbey Gate had been briefed on the potential of a suicide bomber striking near their position, but continued processing those trying to gain entry.

One Afghan, Barat, who had traveled to the airport with his cousin to show documents to foreign soldiers, said he was about 30 feet away from one of the blasts.

“The crowd was packed and people were pushing,” he said. “I tripped — and that’s when the explosion happened. I think four or five soldiers were hit.”

Then chaos.

“We fell to the ground and the foreign soldiers started shooting,” Barat said. “There were bodies everywhere, people were running.”

Fahim, a shopkeeper from Kunduz Province, came to Kabul two weeks ago in an attempt to leave the country, and was outside the airport when he witnessed what he described as “two big explosions” nearby. “People were fleeing and the Taliban forced us to leave the area,” he said.

“Americans were firing to disperse people,” Fahim said.

Elsewhere in the city, sporadic gunfire and alarms could be heard from the airport.

Eric Schmitt, Helene Cooper, Megan Specia, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Jim Huylebroek, Matthieu Aikins, Victor J. Blue, Fatima Faizi, Najim Rahim, Fahim Abed and Sharif Hassan contributed reporting.

Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

For more than a week, the roadways outside the Kabul airport had been a scene of desperation and chaos, but in a single instant Thursday, unspeakably bad somehow found a way to become even worse.

At least two blasts tore through crowds of people trying to flee Afghanistan, killing dozens and wounding well over a hundred others, including U.S. service members.

The explosions happened at Abbey Gate, one of Hamid Karzai International Airport’s main entries, and the Baron Hotel, which boasts of “the most secured lodging arrangement in Kabul” on its website.

After the explosion at Abbey Gate, sounds of gunfire and sirens could be heard.

Taliban fighters, wearing a medley of uniforms, brandished lengths of pipe and cables in an attempt to clear the crowds that had gathered earlier to try to enter the airport.

“There was an explosion against the Americans, a bunch of people were killed, civilians and military,” said one Taliban fighter at the gate, who declined to give his name. “The situation is out of control. There’s a lot of dead people on the ground there.”

The Taliban condemned the attack, and U.S. officials said they did believe the organization was not behind it, given its desire to maintain an orderly evacuation. Officials this week warned about potential attacks by a Taliban rival, the Islamic State Khorasan, or ISIS-K, the terrorist group’s affiliate in Afghanistan.

A number of U.S. service members were among the dead, and others were being treated for wounds, the Pentagon press secretary John F. Kirby said in a statement. They appeared to be the first American service members killed in Afghanistan since February 2020.

“Our thoughts and prayers go out to the loved ones and teammates” of those killed, Mr. Kirby said.

Estimates of the number of casualties varied. But video posted on Twitter after the explosions appeared to show bloodied bodies piled on a sidewalk and floating in a canal near the entrance to the airport.

At one emergency hospital, ambulance after ambulance could be seen arriving under the glare of floodlights and the eyes of an anxious crowd, some of them children.

A journalist and former government worker wept as she described how she had received a call from a taxi driver, informing her that her husband was among the wounded.

“I begged him not to go, but he went this morning with his government I.D. card to try to show the foreigners,” she said. “We have four children. What will happen to us now?”

Seth Eden, a former U.S. Agency for International Development contractor who worked for years in Afghanistan, said he had been helping an Afghan friend, a former deputy minister, try to get out of the country. His friend was told to go to the Abbey Gate to get into the airport.

But when the former minister arrived with his family on Thursday, the gate was closed.

Mr. Eden got on the phone with the Marines guarding it, who had been warned of a possible attack, and persuaded them to let his friend in. Two minutes after the former minister and his family were let through, a bomb went off.

“It is a really, really bad situation right now,” said Mr. Eden, who has worked over the last two weeks to get some 100 former colleagues and family members through the American bureaucracy and on the airport.

Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Biden huddled with his national security team at the White House on Thursday, getting updates about the explosions near the Kabul airport and what they might mean for the last days of the frantic evacuation effort underway in Afghanistan.

White House officials said Mr. Biden was being briefed by Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, and other top aides.

Mr. Biden had already been scheduled to receive an update on the evacuation. But after word came of the attack, and reports of American casualties, the president’s schedule was upended.

Less than 15 minutes before Mr. Biden was set to meet with Naftali Bennett, the new prime minister of Israel, the White House announced that the meeting had been delayed, probably until later in the afternoon, and then said it would take place Friday. And a meeting between Mr. Biden and some of the nation’s governors was canceled.

The daily briefing by Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, was delayed.

White House officials said there would be additional changes announced to the president’s schedule, perhaps an indication that Mr. Biden was preparing to address the nation.

The changes in the schedule underscored the anxiety in the administration. American officials had warned late Wednesday of an imminent attack at the Kabul airport.

On Thursday morning, one came.

Pentagon officials described it as a “complex attack” that included at least two explosions. John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said the blasts caused “a number of U.S. and civilian casualties.”

Mr. Biden had said earlier this week that he intended to evacuate all Americans, including the troops securing the airport, by Aug. 31. Officials said at the time that Mr. Biden’s decision was based in large part on concerns about terrorist attacks that might threaten Americans and their Afghan allies.

Now, Mr. Biden faces an urgent decision about whether to try and pull the American troops out even more quickly.

Officials said the situation was still in flux.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

DOHA, Qatar — Since the Taliban returned to power after two decades underground, counterterroism experts have feared that Afghanistan will become a fertile environment for terrorist groups, notably Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.

Driving home that threat on Thursday were two explosions near the Kabul airport that killed dozens of people and injured scores of others, just hours after U.S. officials warned of just such a scenario.

While there was no immediate claim of responsibility, the U.S. warnings had mentioned the Afghanistan branch of the Islamic State, the jihadist organization that once ruled large swaths of Syria and Iraq and created franchises in other countries in an effort to globalize its violent ideology.

On Thursday, after blasts tore through crowds outside the airport in Kabul, many speculated that the Islamic State Khorasan, or ISIS-K, the terrorist group’s affiliate in Afghanistan was behind them.

But officials say one thing appears clear: For all the years of bloodshed the Taliban caused in Afghanistan, they were not responsible for this new attack. The Taliban, officials said, want to maintain an orderly evacuation at the airport, at least until the end of the month.

Both the Islamic State and Al Qaeda remain a potent threat in the country, terrorism experts say, despite having their numbers ground down by years of military action by the United States and a range of partners.

Yet the two are bitter rivals and operate in different ways.

Al Qaeda has changed substantially since Osama bin Laden oversaw the organization and plotted the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In the years since, the stature of its central leadership has declined while local militant groups in Syria, Iraq, West Africa and parts of Asia have adapted, sometimes jettisoning Al Qaeda ideology in pursuit of local goals.

The Islamic State, which itself defected from Al Qaeda, has maintained a more centralized leadership, with its local branches maintaining not just the ideology of the original organization, but also strong operational links to it.

That difference has allowed the Islamic State to maintain unity in a way that Al Qaeda has not, said Hassan Hassan, the co-author of a book about the Islamic State and the editor-in-chief of Newlines Magazine.

For Al Qaeda, “it’s like opening a Dominoes’ franchise and you send someone out for quality control,” he said.

The Islamic State, on the other hand, would “take it one step further and appoint a manager from the original organization,” he said.

In Afghanistan, Al Qaeda is still believed to operate under the umbrella of the Taliban, who vowed in an agreement last year with the Trump administration not to allow the group to use Afghan territory to attack the United States.

How closely the Taliban will respect that commitment remains an open question — but the Islamic State, which has condemned the Taliban as not hard line enough, has no such constraints.

That could leave it better positioned to exploit the chaos surrounding the Aug. 31 deadline for the United States’ withdrawal and the transition from a United States-backed government to the Taliban.

“The changeover from one security force to another, by default, provides an opportunity for ISIS,” Mr. Hassan said, using an acronym for the Islamic State.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

Several nations announced on Thursday that they were halting their evacuations from the Kabul airport, as governments around the world gave dire warnings about threats to the crowds gathered there in an attempt to flee Afghanistan.

By nightfall, at least two explosions struck the area: one at the Abbey Gate and another by the nearby Baron Hotel. A Pentagon spokesman said the blasts were “a complex attack that resulted in a number of US & civilian casualties.”

Even before the blasts, world leaders were deciding they could no longer assist the evacuations. Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands all said that they would no longer be able to facilitate airlifts from Hamid Karzai International Airport, which has both civilian and military sections.

“We stayed in Afghanistan as long as we could,” Gen. Wayne Eyre, Canada’s acting chief of the defense staff, told a news conference on Thursday. “We wish we could have stayed longer and rescued everyone who was so desperate to leave. That we could not is truly heartbreaking.”

General Eyre said Canada had airlifted about 3,700 people out of Afghanistan on a combination of military flights and planes of allied nations. The exact number of Canadians, permanent residents and others assisted by the Canadian military was not immediately clear, nor was the number of people left behind.

After warnings of suicide attacks in the vicinity of the airport, Belgium decided to end its evacuation flights from Kabul on Wednesday night, Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said Thursday morning.

“On Wednesday, during the day, the situation quickly got worse,” Mr. De Croo said. “We learned that there was a threat of suicide-bomb attacks in the vicinity of the airport and in the crowds. We also saw that access to the airport gates became more difficult and even impossible as a result.”

Defense officials from the Netherlands and Denmark made similar calculations. Before the explosions on Thursday, Britain urged people trying to flee Afghanistan to head for international land borders, like those with Pakistan or Iran, and to avoid the Kabul airport.

“We couldn’t do anything but change the travel advice last night to advise people against moving to Kabul airport and if they are at the airport to move away to a place of safety,” James Heappey, the armed forces minister, said in an interview with LBC Radio.

Speaking to the BBC, Mr. Heappey said that Britain had evacuated just fewer than 2,000 people in the previous 24 hours but said that perhaps a further 1,000 of those it wants to extract remained inside the country.

Evacuations had continued through the increasing alarm about security. White House officials said early on Thursday that 13,400 people had been evacuated from the Kabul airport in the previous 24 hours, bringing the total since the Taliban retook the city to 95,700.

The Pentagon vowed that the U.S. civilian airlift would continue, with a spokesman, John F. Kirby, saying, “we will continue to evacuate as many people as we can until the end of the mission.”

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

The Pentagon flew out 13,400 people from Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul in the past 24 hours, military officials said on Thursday, a sharp decline from the past few days largely because receiving bases in the Middle East are again filling up. Of that 24-hour total, coalition flights carried out 8,300 passengers — about the same as in recent days.

But the number of U.S. military flights on Thursday dropped to 17, carrying 5,100 people, from 42 military flights carrying 11,200 people the previous day, a military official said. Military officials blamed the decline largely on bottlenecks at bases like Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, where officials are taking up to 12 hours to check arriving Afghans against American counterterrorism watch lists.

The massive civilian airlift will continue until the Aug. 31 deadline set by President Biden to withdraw U.S. forces, John F. Kirby, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said on Wednesday, but the mission was complicated even further by at least two blasts outside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on Thursday, just hours after Western governments had warned of a security threat there.

About 5,400 American troops are now at the airport after 400 troops not essential to the evacuation left the country in recent days, Mr. Kirby said.

Over the past few days, the military and its foreign partners had been flying out around 20,000 people a day as the military operation raced to fly out as many Americans and Afghan allies as possible before the Aug. 31 deadline.

Thursday’s 13,400 new evacuations brought the total since the Taliban retook the city to 95,700 people.

Credit…Turkish Defense Ministry, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Turkey’s troops are withdrawing from Afghanistan, where they have run Kabul’s international airport for the last six years, abandoning a plan to remain after the U.S. withdrawal.

“We aim to complete the transfer of soldiers in the shortest possible time,” Hulusi Akar, Turkey’s defense minister, said in a statement on Thursday. He thanked Pakistan and Tajikistan for their cooperation in the evacuation of troops.

The Turkish Defense Ministry announced on Twitter on Wednesday the return of the first troops to Turkish soil that same day, adding that the whole operation would take just 36 hours.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had offered to keep Turkish troops at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Kabul’s main airport with both a civilian and military sections, after the departure of American troops by the Aug. 31 deadline, in order to support the Afghan government and maintain access by air for Western embassy personnel and international aid organizations.

The Taliban had repeatedly demanded that Turkey, a member of the NATO mission in Afghanistan for the last 20 years, should leave. But Mr. Erdogan had continued to hold discussions with Taliban representatives and regional countries, in particular Pakistan, which has close ties with the Taliban, to explore the possibility for a continued Turkish presence.

When the Taliban seized control of the capital earlier this month and the United States and NATO partners accelerated their departures from the country, Turkey increased its force of some 600 personnel to 3,000 to assist with the evacuations.

But in the face of chaos at the airport during the last 10 days, worsening security concerns and the unyielding stance of the Taliban — as well as a growing chorus of opposition at home arguing that Turkey should not bear the risk of securing the airport on its own — Mr. Erdogan decided to withdraw troops.

Ibrahim Kalin, a spokesman for the president and national security adviser, said that Turkey was still offering the Taliban government technical assistance to run the airport.

“After our soldiers withdraw, we can keep the duty of managing the airport,” he said in an interview on the Turkish news channel NTV. “There is a dimension of logistical capacity of running an airport. Negotiations on that are ongoing,” he said.

The Turkish help would be a professional service which the Taliban lacked, he added.

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Kamala Harris Pledges Support to Afghan Women and Children

During a trip to Vietnam, Vice President Kamala Harris said the first priority for rescue missions in Afghanistan are American citizens and women and children in the region.

Our highest priority right now is evacuating American citizens, evacuating Afghans who worked with us and Afghans who are at risk, with a priority around women and children, and we have made significant progress in that regard. I believe that since Aug. 14, I believe, we have evacuated over 80,000 people. And as you know, each day and night, we continue to evacuate thousands of people, understanding that it is risky for them to be there. It it is a dangerous and difficult mission, but it must be seen through and we intend to see it through as best as we can.

During a trip to Vietnam, Vice President Kamala Harris said the first priority for rescue missions in Afghanistan are American citizens and women and children in the region.CreditCredit…Pool photo by Evelyn Hockstein

Vice President Kamala Harris said on Thursday that the United States would work with its allies to protect women and children in Afghanistan, as the Taliban takeover forced her to confront troubling historical parallels and diverted attention from her original mission on a five-day trip to Southeast Asia.

“There’s no question that any of us who are paying attention are concerned about that issue in Afghanistan,” said Ms. Harris, referring to the protection of women and children in that country.

The vice president made her comments in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, on the final day of her trip to Southeast Asia, a key part of the Biden administration’s strategy to forge partnerships in the region and refocus American foreign policy on competing with China’s rising influence.

Ms. Harris has faced the steep challenge of reassuring partners in Asia, and across the world, that the United States can still be a credible ally amid the Taliban’s swift takeover of Afghanistan and the United States’ hurried evacuations.

With the Biden administration racing to meet an Aug. 31 deadline to leave Afghanistan, the situation in Kabul, has cast a shadow over a trip meant to focus on public health, supply chain issues and economic partnerships.

Credit…Kiana Hayeri for The New York Times

Almost two dozen students and their parents from San Diego County in California are trapped in Afghanistan after they visited the country this summer, the authorities said.

The 20 students and 14 parents are stuck in Afghanistan and have requested government assistance to fly home, according to a statement from the Cajon Valley Union School District and a tweet from Representative Darrell Issa, who represents the district where the students are from. The children range in age from preschool to high school, said David Miyashiro, the district superintendent.

The students and parents, who make up five families, went to Afghanistan to visit their extended families, the school district said. But they soon realized they wouldn’t make it back for the first day of school on Aug. 17; two days earlier, the Taliban had stunned the world by capturing Kabul at alarming speed.

It became nearly impossible to secure a flight out of the country, and the families could not reach the airport even though they had plane tickets, Cajon Valley School Board President Tamara Otero told the Los Angeles Times.

The families were not among the hordes of people desperately trying to board a plane out of the Kabul airport, Dr. Miyashiro said in an interview on Wednesday night.

“Most of them are hiding and sheltering in place until somebody contacts them to help them get out,” he said.

One of the families asked on Aug. 16 that the school “hold their children’s spots in their classrooms while they were stranded,” the school district said.

However, one family secured passage out of Afghanistan. Four students and two parents, along with one infant, returned home this week after stopping in another country, Dr. Miyashiro said.

Mr. Issa said Wednesday on Twitter that he was “working diligently” to bring the stranded families home.

“I won’t stop until we have answers and action,” he said.

Jonathan Wilcox, a spokesman for Mr. Issa, said in a statement that the congressman is trying to obtain immigration paperwork for his constituents who are stuck in Afghanistan.

“We are in consistent contact with official channels including the State Department and the Pentagon,” the statement said.

Credit…Martial Trezzini/KEYSTONE, via Associated Press

The United Nations leadership faced growing anger from staff unions on Wednesday over what some called its failure to protect Afghan co-workers and their families, who remain stuck in Afghanistan at the mercy of the Taliban even as the majority of the organization’s non-Afghan staff have been relocated to other countries.

Many of the Afghan employees, their foreign colleagues say, are in hiding or are reluctant to keep working, fearful of reprisals by triumphant Taliban militants who may perceive them as apostates, traitors and agents of foreign interference.

That fear has persisted even though the Taliban’s hierarchy has indicated that the U.N. should be permitted to work in the country unimpeded during and after the forces of the United States and NATO withdraw, a pullout that is officially scheduled for completion in less than a week.

An internal U.N. document reported by Reuters on Wednesday said Taliban operatives had detained and beaten some Afghan employees of the United Nations. Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesman for Secretary General António Guterres, did not confirm or deny the report but said it was “critical is that the authorities in charge in Kabul and throughout Afghanistan realize that they have the responsibility to protect U.N. premises and for the safety of U.N. staff.”

Mr. Guterres has repeatedly said the U.N. fully supports the Afghan staff, who are said to number between 3,000 and 3,400, and that he is doing everything in his power to ensure their safety. Mr. Dujarric said about 10 percent of those Afghan workers are women, who are especially at risk of facing Taliban repression.

The secretary general reiterated his assurances during a private virtual town hall meeting on Wednesday with staff members, said Mr. Dujarric, who told reporters that Mr. Guterres “understands the staff’s deep anxiety about what the future holds.”

But rank-and-file staff members of the United Nations have grown increasingly skeptical of Mr. Guterres’s pronouncements. A resolution passed on Tuesday by the U.N. staff union in New York urged Mr. Guterres to take steps that would enable Afghan staff members to avoid “unacceptable residual risks by using evacuation from Afghanistan as soon as possible.”

U.N. officials have said they are powerless to issue visas to Afghan personnel without cooperation from other countries willing to host them. U.N. officials also have said the organization remains committed to providing services in Afghanistan, where roughly half the population needs humanitarian aid. Such services, including food and health care, are impossible to conduct without local staff.

The town hall was held a few days after a second batch of non-Afghan U.N. staff had been airlifted from Kabul. Many of the roughly 350 non-Afghan U.N. personnel who had been in the country, including Deborah Lyons, head of the U.N. Assistance Mission for Afghanistan, are now working remotely from Almaty, Kazakhstan.

The unequal treatment of non-Afghan and Afghan personnel working for the U.N. has become an increasingly bitter sore point between management and staff at the global organization. An online petition started this past weekend by staff union members calling on Mr. Guterres to do more to help Afghan employees and their families had, as of Wednesday, garnered nearly 6,000 signatures.

Correction: Aug. 25, 2021

An earlier version of this item misidentified the U.N. staff union organization that passed a resolution urging the U.N. secretary general to help Afghan employees evacuate Afghanistan. It was the U.N. staff union in New York, not the coordinating committee of the association of staff unions.

Credit…Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

TOKYO — The first time Abbas Karimi jumped into a pool, the water brought fresh relief from the heat of Kabul, the Afghan capital.

For Mr. Karimi, 24, who was born without arms, it conferred a sense of freedom and protection. And it was swimming that would later propel Mr. Karimi — one of six athletes competing for the Refugee Paralympic Team in Tokyo — to flee Afghanistan when he was 16.

After winning a national championship in his homeland, he yearned to train for international competition without the daily fears of war and terrorism.

“I needed to be somewhere I could be safe and keep training and be a Paralympic champion,” he said in an interview on Zoom this month.

On Tuesday night, eight years after leaving Afghanistan, Mr. Karimi led the parade of nations into the stadium at the Paralympics’ opening ceremony as one of two flag bearers for the refugee team.

He is one of millions who fled the violence in Afghanistan long before the current crisis. And because the chaos surrounding the Taliban takeover and the U.S. withdrawal prevented Afghanistan’s Paralympic delegation from flying to Tokyo, he may be the only Afghan athlete to compete at the Games.

Credit…Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times

The resettlement of Afghan allies in the U.S. is exposing an internal divide between the Republican Party’s anti-immigrant wing and conservatives who want to help the refugees.

Many Republican leaders have accused President Biden of abandoning the Afghan interpreters and guides who helped the United States during two decades of war, leaving thousands of people in limbo in a country now controlled by the Taliban.

But others — including former President Trump and Representative Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader — have criticized Mr. Biden for opening the United States up to what they characterized as dangerous foreigners.

“We’ll have terrorists coming across the border,” Mr. McCarthy said last week on a call with a bipartisan group of House members, according to two people who were on the call, where he railed against the Biden administration’s handling of the withdrawal.

The debate is pitting traditional conservatives, who are more inclined to defend those who have sacrificed for America, against the anti-immigrant wing of the party. And it is a fresh test of Mr. Trump’s power to make Republican leaders fall in line behind him.

For now, the faction of Republicans that supports welcoming Afghan refugees to the United States is larger than the one warning of any potential dangers that could accompany their resettlement, according to a poll.

Tags Afghanistan, airport, Casualties, Explosions, include, Kabul, Live, members, News, Service

Politics

U.S. Says 1,500 People in Afghanistan as Withdrawal Deadline Nears

Post author By
Post date August 26, 2021

WASHINGTON – Mindestens 1.500 amerikanische Bürger bleiben nur noch wenige Tage vor dem geplanten US-Abzug aus dem Land in Afghanistan, aber Beamte räumten am Mittwoch die Realität ein, dass Zehntausende afghanische Verbündete und andere, die einem hohen Risiko von Taliban-Repressalien ausgesetzt sind, zurückbleiben würden.

Das Geräusch von Schüssen und Wolken aus Tränengas und schwarzem Rauch erfüllten die Luft um den internationalen Flughafen in Kabul, der Hauptstadt, als sich am Mittwoch Tausende von Afghanen vor den Toren versammelten, um vor dem endgültigen Abflug des amerikanischen Militärs am 8. 31, nach 20 Jahren Krieg.

Als im Rahmen einer Luftbrücke alle 45 Minuten Militär- und Regierungscharterflüge starteten, sagten Beamte der Biden-Regierung, sie hätten seit dem 14. August, dem Tag, bevor Kabul an die Taliban fiel, etwa 82.300 Menschen evakuiert. Rund 4.500 von ihnen waren amerikanische Staatsbürger, 500 weitere sollen bald abreisen.

Außenminister Antony J. Blinken sagte jedoch, die Regierung versuche, rund 1.000 US-Bürger aufzuspüren, die sich immer noch in Afghanistan aufhalten und auf eine hektische Flut von E-Mails, Telefonanrufen oder anderen Nachrichten, die ihre Evakuierung anbieten, nicht reagiert hätten.

„In dieser kritischen Phase konzentrieren wir uns darauf, Amerikaner und ihre Familien so schnell wie möglich aus Afghanistan in Flugzeuge zu bringen“, sagte Blinken vom Außenministerium.

Er versuchte auch, Afghanen, die mit dem US-Militär oder der US-Botschaft zusammengearbeitet hatten, und möglicherweise Hunderttausenden von Menschen, die die extremistische Ideologie der Taliban in Frage stellten, zu versichern, dass „sie nicht vergessen werden“.

Er verglich Bilder und Berichte von Afghanen, die auf dem Flughafen von Kabul im Gedränge zur Evakuierung niedergetrampelt wurden, um „in den Magen geschlagen zu werden“, sagte Blinken, es sei Aufgabe der Taliban, ihre sichere Überfahrt zu gewährleisten.

Er signalisierte, dass eine solche Vereinbarung mit einer Mischung aus wirtschaftlichem und diplomatischem Druck und der Verlockung internationaler Hilfe erreicht werden könnte, aber er würde nicht über sein Vertrauen in die Taliban sprechen, ihr Wort zu halten, außer vage zu zitieren, was er ihre Öffentlichkeit nannte und private Verpflichtungen, um Menschen die Ausreise zu ermöglichen.

„Lassen Sie mich das ganz klar sagen: Es gibt keine Frist für unsere Arbeit, um den verbleibenden amerikanischen Bürgern zu helfen, die sich dazu entschließen, dies zu tun, zusammen mit den vielen Afghanen, die uns in diesen vielen Jahren zur Seite gestanden haben und dies tun wollen gehen und waren dazu nicht in der Lage“, sagte Blinken. „Diese Bemühungen werden über den 31. August hinaus jeden Tag fortgesetzt.“

Ein Taliban-Sprecher, Zabihullah Mujahid, sagte am Mittwoch, Afghanen mit gültigen Reisedokumenten würden nicht daran gehindert, den Flughafen zu betreten, wenn sie dort von amerikanischen und afghanischen Streitkräften eingelassen würden.

In seinem ersten Sit-down-Interview mit einer westlichen Medienorganisation seit der Ankunft der Taliban in Kabul bestritt Mujahid Berichte, wonach die Gruppe beginnen würde, Afghanen vom Flughafen fernzuhalten, die auf seinen Aussagen während einer täglichen Pressekonferenz beruhten früher.

„Wir haben gesagt, dass Leute, die keine richtigen Dokumente haben, nicht gehen dürfen“, sagte er. „Sie brauchen Pässe und Visa für die Länder, in die sie reisen, und können dann mit dem Flugzeug ausreisen. Wenn ihre Dokumente gültig sind, werden wir sie nicht fragen, was sie vorher gemacht haben.“

Er bestand auch darauf, dass die Taliban denen vergeben würden, die gegen sie kämpften, und dass Frauen die Schule und Arbeit besuchen dürfen, im Rahmen dessen, was er als islamische Prinzipien bezeichnete. Menschenrechtsvertreter haben solche Zusicherungen als unaufrichtig abgetan, und viele Afghanen haben sich aus Angst vor Belästigung und Gewalt in ihren Häusern versteckt.

Herr Mujahid räumte ein, dass Frauen auf Reisen von drei Tagen oder länger einen männlichen Vormund brauchen würden. Gerüchte, dass die Taliban Frauen zwingen würden, in ihren Häusern zu bleiben oder ihr Gesicht zu bedecken, seien unbegründet, sagte er, aber er bestätigte, dass Musik in der Öffentlichkeit nicht erlaubt sei.

„Musik ist im Islam verboten“, sagte er, „aber wir hoffen, dass wir die Leute davon überzeugen können, solche Dinge nicht zu tun.“

Beamte des Weißen Hauses sagten am Mittwoch, dass 90 US-amerikanische und alliierte Flugzeuge innerhalb von 24 Stunden schätzungsweise 19.200 Menschen ausgeflogen hätten.

Mindestens 500 waren amerikanische Staatsbürger und ihre Familien, sagte Blinken und schlossen sich Afghanen an, die Angestellte der jetzt geschlossenen US-Botschaft in Kabul waren, und anderen, die für das amerikanische Militär und andere Regierungsbehörden gearbeitet hatten, einige seit 2001, die sich für die Teilnahme qualifizieren ein spezielles Einwanderungsvisum, um in den Vereinigten Staaten zu leben.

Kongressbeamte sagten Anfang dieser Woche, dass die Biden-Regierung schätzungsweise 50.000 Afghanen identifiziert habe, die für das Sondervisum in Frage kommen. Auch ehemalige Sicherheitskräfte, Regierungsbeamte und Menschen, die sich für Frauenrechte, Rechtsstaatlichkeit und andere Säulen der Demokratie einsetzten, wurden evakuiert.

Eine am Mittwoch veröffentlichte neue Schätzung des Verbands der Kriegsverbündeten kam zu dem Schluss, dass mindestens 250.000 Afghanen – und vielleicht mehr als eine Million – Anspruch auf einen beschleunigten Einwanderungsstatus haben könnten. Die Interessenvertretung arbeitete mit der American University zusammen, um Arbeitsverträge und andere Dokumente zu analysieren, die diese Afghanen benötigen, um ihre Berechtigung nachzuweisen.

Herr Blinken konnte keine genauere Zahl nennen und stellte fest, dass es für die US-Regierung schwierig gewesen sei, selbst herauszufinden, wie viele Amerikaner sich in Afghanistan aufhalten könnten.

Er sagte, das Außenministerium habe mindestens 6.000 Amerikaner – viele von ihnen mit doppelter afghanischer Staatsbürgerschaft – durch das Durchsuchen verschiedener Datenbanken identifiziert. Beamte haben mehr als 20.000 E-Mails verschickt und 45.000 Telefonanrufe in ganz Afghanistan getätigt, um US-Bürgern die Möglichkeit zu geben, das Land zu verlassen, sagte er.

Aktualisiert

August 25, 2021, 7:58 Uhr ET

Tausende weitere US-Bürger könnten in Afghanistan leben, hätten sich aber nicht bei der US-Botschaft registriert und könnten sonst nicht gefunden werden, räumte ein hochrangiger Beamter des Außenministeriums später ein.

Stunden bevor Herr Blinken sprach, forderten die Abgeordneten des Kongresses die Biden-Regierung auf, die Frist vom 31. August zu verlängern, um sicherzustellen, dass alle Amerikaner und afghanischen Verbündeten Afghanistan sicher verlassen können.

„Die Berichte, die ich vor Ort bekomme, sind, dass unsere amerikanischen Bürger versuchen, herauszukommen“, sagte der Abgeordnete Michael McCaul aus Texas, der oberste Republikaner im Ausschuss für auswärtige Angelegenheiten des Repräsentantenhauses. „Unsere afghanischen Partner und Dolmetscher, die bei unseren Spezialeinheiten gedient haben, haben ihr Leben aufs Spiel gesetzt. Wir haben die moralische Verpflichtung, sie zu retten.“

Herr Blinken würde nicht diskutieren, ob auch nach dem Militäraustritt nächste Woche der Anschein der US-Botschaft in Kabul – einst eine der größten amerikanischen diplomatischen Vertretungen der Welt – geöffnet bleiben würde. Eine kleine Gruppe von US-Diplomaten bleibt in Afghanistan auf einer sicheren Basis am Flughafen in Kabul, um die Evakuierung zu überwachen und die Verhandlungen mit den Taliban fortzusetzen.

Während die Evakuierungsmission ablief, warteten die Staats- und Regierungschefs der Welt – und Millionen von Afghanen – mit Besorgnis darauf, die wahre Gestalt der Taliban-Herrschaft zu erkennen.

Während der letzten Machtübernahme der Gruppe riskierten afghanische Frauen, geschlagen, gefoltert oder hingerichtet zu werden, wenn sie ihre Häuser verließen. In den zwei Jahrzehnten, seit amerikanisch geführte Kräfte die Militanten von der Macht verdrängt haben, erwarten viele junge Frauen Grundrechte.

In den ersten Tagen, nachdem die Taliban Kabul und die nationale Macht am 15. August erobert hatten, forderten afghanische Demonstranten, dass die Militanten ihre Forderungen nach mehr Freiheit akzeptieren. Zu den Protesten gehörte auch ein Marsch von Frauen, die forderten, dass ihr Recht auf Bildung und Arbeit nicht verletzt wird.

Eine Aktivistin namens Fariha sagte, sie habe letzte Woche an der Demonstration teilgenommen, „um den Taliban zu zeigen, dass sie sich ändern müssen, weil wir es nicht tun werden“.

Die Taliban-Übernahme in Afghanistan verstehen

Karte 1 von 5

Wer sind die Taliban? Die Taliban entstanden 1994 inmitten der Unruhen nach dem Abzug der sowjetischen Streitkräfte aus Afghanistan 1989. Sie setzten brutale öffentliche Strafen ein, darunter Auspeitschungen, Amputationen und Massenhinrichtungen, um ihre Regeln durchzusetzen. Hier ist mehr über ihre Entstehungsgeschichte und ihre Bilanz als Herrscher.

Wer sind die Taliban-Führer? Dies sind die obersten Anführer der Taliban, Männer, die jahrelang auf der Flucht, untergetaucht, im Gefängnis und amerikanischen Drohnen ausgewichen sind. Es ist wenig über sie bekannt oder wie sie zu regieren planen, auch ob sie so tolerant sein werden, wie sie es vorgeben.

Was passiert mit den Frauen Afghanistans? Als die Taliban das letzte Mal an der Macht waren, verboten sie Frauen und Mädchen die meisten Jobs oder den Schulbesuch. Afghanische Frauen haben seit dem Sturz der Taliban viel gewonnen, aber jetzt befürchten sie, dass an Boden verloren wird. Taliban-Beamte versuchen, den Frauen zu versichern, dass die Dinge anders sein werden, aber es gibt Anzeichen dafür, dass sie zumindest in einigen Bereichen begonnen haben, die alte Ordnung wieder einzuführen.

„Wir können nicht atmen, wenn uns unser Recht auf Bildung und Arbeit beraubt wird und wir nicht in der Gesellschaft präsent sind“, sagte sie schluchzend.

„Es gibt Frauen, die nicht nach Europa oder in die USA gegangen sind – sie sind geblieben und bereit, bis zum Tod zu kämpfen“, sagte sie. „Wir haben 20 Jahre lang hart gearbeitet, um Bildung und Arbeit zu erlangen. Wir lassen uns von niemandem ignorieren.“

Trotz der Bemühungen der Taliban, die Afghanen ihrer Sicherheit zu versichern, deuten unheilvolle Anzeichen darauf hin, dass sie ihre brutale Taktik nicht aufgegeben haben. Am Dienstag zitierte der oberste Menschenrechtsbeauftragte der Vereinten Nationen „erschütternde und glaubwürdige“ Berichte, wonach die Taliban Zivilisten und nicht kämpfende Soldaten hingerichtet hätten.

Da die Zukunft der internationalen Hilfe für Afghanistan unklar ist, sagte Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel am Mittwoch, dass ihr Land seine Unterstützung für das afghanische Volk auch nach dem Abzug der US-Truppen beibehalten werde. Sie rief auch zu Gesprächen mit den Taliban auf.

„Unser Ziel muss es sein, so viel wie möglich zu bewahren, was wir in den letzten 20 Jahren an den Veränderungen in Afghanistan erreicht haben“, sagte Merkel in einer Sitzung des Parlaments, in der über die schnelle Übernahme Afghanistans durch die Taliban diskutiert wurde. “Darüber muss die internationale Gemeinschaft mit den Taliban sprechen.”

Deutschland hat im Juni sein letztes Kontingent von rund 570 Soldaten aus Afghanistan abgezogen, aber noch immer waren mehrere hundert Deutsche in der von der Regierung finanzierten Entwicklungsarbeit engagiert.

Zu den Sorgen um Afghanistan trägt auch die untergehende Wirtschaft bei, die für die vergangene Generation durch amerikanische Hilfe gestützt wurde, sich jetzt aber im freien Fall befindet. Banken sind geschlossen. Bargeld wird knapp, Lebensmittelpreise steigen. Kraftstoff wird immer schwerer zu finden. Regierungsdienste sind ins Stocken geraten, da Beamte ihre Arbeit meiden, weil sie Vergeltungsmaßnahmen befürchten.

Menschen, die versuchen zu fliehen, wenn sie es an den Taliban-Checkpoints schaffen, sind auf dem Flughafen von Kabul mit chaotischen Szenen konfrontiert. Mindestens sieben afghanische Zivilisten, darunter ein Kleinkind, wurden zu Tode getrampelt.

Am Mittwoch brachten die Taliban anscheinend etwa 200 Menschen in ein umzäuntes Gebiet, wo sie unter der prallen Nachmittagssonne zusammengepfercht wurden.

Als die Menschenmengen vor dem Flughafen weiter anschwellen, sagten amerikanische Beamte, sie seien besorgt, dass Terroristen, die mit dem Islamischen Staat verbunden sind, das Chaos ausnutzen könnten, indem sie dort einen Bombenanschlag oder einen Mörserangriff auf den Flugplatz veranstalten.

Der Islamische Staat in Afghanistan hat in den letzten Jahren Dutzende von Anschlägen verübt, von denen viele auf ethnische Minderheiten und andere Zivilisten abzielten.

John F. Kirby, der Chefsprecher des Pentagon, sagte Reportern am Mittwoch, dass amerikanische Offiziere in Kabul, darunter Konteradmiral Peter G. Vasely, der oberste Kommandant, und Generalmajor Christopher Donahue, der Chef der 82. Luftlandedivision, im Gespräch seien an ihre Taliban-Kollegen jeden Tag, um die sichere Durchreise von Amerikanern und afghanischen Verbündeten mit den entsprechenden Ausweisen zu Flügen zu gewährleisten, die Kabul verlassen.

Herr Kirby sagte, dass das Pentagon der Evakuierung amerikanischer Truppen und Ausrüstung in den letzten Tagen der Mission Vorrang geben werde. Etwa 5.400 amerikanische Soldaten seien jetzt auf dem Flughafen, nachdem 400 Soldaten, die für die Evakuierung nicht unbedingt erforderlich waren, in den letzten Tagen das Land verlassen hätten, sagte er.

Dennoch gibt es zahlreiche Berichte über Afghanen mit ordnungsgemäßem Papierkram, die an Taliban-Checkpoints und sogar an den Flughafentoren abgewiesen wurden, wo etwa 30 US-Konsularbeamte und Marinesoldaten ihre Ausweise überprüfen. In der vergangenen Woche wurden viele Tore zeitweise geschlossen, um Rückstände zu beseitigen.

Lara Jakes berichtete aus Washington und Michael Levenson aus New York. Die Berichterstattung wurde von Eric Schmitt in Washington, Matthieu Aikins und Jim Huylebroek in Kabul, Sharif Hassan in Kiew, Ukraine, Melissa Eddy in Berlin und Lauren Leatherby in New York beigesteuert.

Tags Afghanistan, Americans, Deadline, Nears, withdrawal

Politics

Fewer than 1,000 Individuals are in search of evacuation from Afghanistan

Post author By
Post date August 25, 2021

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks about refugee programs for Afghans who have helped the US during a briefing at the State Department in Washington, DC, on August 2, 2021.

Brendan Smialowski | Reuters

WASHINGTON – Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that fewer than 1,000 U.S. citizens may be looking for evacuation from Afghanistan.

Blinken said the US is currently “aggressively approaching about 1,000 contacts several times a day through multiple communication channels” to determine if they still wish to leave and give them instructions on how to do so. The final number could be lower, however, Blinken said.

“The US government does not follow the movements of the Americans when they travel around the world,” said Blinken. “There could be other Americans in Afghanistan who have never signed up with the embassy, who ignored public evacuation instructions, and have not yet identified themselves,” he added.

“We have also found that many people who contact us and identify themselves as American citizens, even by filling out and submitting repatriation assistance forms, are in fact not US citizens, which may take some time to decide to verify,” to stay in Afghanistan, “said the country’s top diplomat.

Blinken added that the State Department has been in direct contact with an additional 500 Americans in the past 24 hours to provide instructions on how to safely get to the airport for evacuation.

Blinken’s press conference, his first since the Afghan government collapsed with the Taliban more than a week ago, comes as US and coalition forces step up emergency evacuation flights.

In the past 24 hours, Western forces evacuated 19,000 people from Kabul on 90 military cargo plane flights, which, according to the Pentagon, corresponds to a departure frequency every 39 minutes.

Evacuees wait to board a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on August 23, 2021.

Sgt. Isaiah Campbell | US Marine Corps | via Reuters

Since the mass evacuations began on August 14, around 82,300 people have been flown out of Afghanistan. Around 87,900 people have been evacuated since the end of July, including around 4,500 US citizens and their families.

The Pentagon announced on Wednesday that 10,000 people are currently waiting for a flight at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. Approximately 5,400 U.S. soldiers assist with evacuation efforts using nearly 200 U.S. military aircraft dedicated to the mission.

President Joe Biden reaffirmed Tuesday to leaders of the G-7, NATO, the United Nations and the European Union that the United States will withdraw its military from Afghanistan by the end of the month.

The president warned that staying in Afghanistan for extended periods of time poses serious risks to foreign troops and civilians. Biden said ISIS-K, an offshoot of the terrorist group based in Afghanistan, posed a growing threat to Hamid Karzai International Airport.

“Every day we are there is another day we know that ISIS-K is trying to attack the airport and target both US and Allied forces and innocent civilians,” he said.

Afghanistan, Biden and the Taliban: Reside Updates

Post author By
Post date August 25, 2021

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

U.S. and allied planes have flown an additional 19,200 people out of Kabul in the past 24 hours, officials said on Wednesday, as the Biden administration makes substantial inroads into getting American citizens and Afghans who worked for the United States over the last 20 years out of Afghanistan.

But thousands of U.S. citizens are believed to still be in the country, and President Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline for the withdrawal of American troops is rapidly approaching. Tens of thousands of Afghans who qualify for special immigration visas are also waiting to be evacuated.

As of 3 a.m. in Washington, the United States had evacuated about 82,300 people from Kabul’s international airport since Aug. 14.

Experts estimate that hundreds of thousands of Afghans will be targeted by the Taliban if they stay, including Afghan security forces, government officials, women’s rights advocates and other defenders of democracy. Those Afghans are desperately hoping to join the U.S. military’s airlift before it begins to wind down, potentially as soon as this weekend.

It is not clear how many people want to be evacuated — or can be — by next week’s deadline. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken is set to release more details about the effort, potentially including the numbers of Americans who remain in Afghanistan, on Wednesday.

Though Mr. Biden has vowed to stick to the Aug. 31 exit plan, as the Taliban have demanded, he also has instructed Mr. Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin to draw up plans to push back the date if necessary.

The Taliban have warned of potential reprisals should the United States renege on its deadline, and Mr. Biden on Tuesday noted the danger to American troops should they remain much longer. Beyond the Taliban, extremists affiliated with the Islamic State are also believed to pose a threat to the evacuation effort that has drawn crowds of people to Kabul’s airport gates, clamoring to be allowed on one of the flights that are departing every 45 minutes.

“I’m determined to ensure that we complete our mission,” Mr. Biden said at the White House on Tuesday. “I’m also mindful of the increasing risks that I’ve been briefed on and the need to factor those risks in. There are real and significant challenges that we also have to take into consideration.”

But the dwindling hours are weighing heavily on the minds of people seeking to flee Afghanistan and members of Congress who want the United States to retain a presence there until Americans and high-risk Afghans can get out.

Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

The Americans are all but gone, the Afghan government has collapsed and the Taliban now rule the streets of Kabul. Overnight, millions of Kabul residents have been left to navigate an uncertain transition after 20 years of U.S.-backed rule.

Government services are largely unavailable. Residents are struggling to lead their daily lives in an ecconomy that, propped up for the past generation by American aid, is now in free fall. Banks are closed, cash is growing scarce, and food prices are rising.

Yet relative calm has reigned over Kabul, the capital, in sharp contrast to the chaos at its airport. Many residents are hiding in their homes or venturing out only cautiously to see what life might be like under their new rulers.

Even residents who said they feared the Taliban were struck by the relative order and quiet, but for some the calm has been ominous.

A resident named Mohib said that streets were deserted in his section of the city, with people hunkering down in their homes, “scared and terrorized.”

“People feel the Taliban may come any moment to take away everything from them,” he said.

Credit…Tobias Schwarz/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Germany will maintain support for Afghans who remain in their country after the deadline for the U.S. troop withdrawal and evacuation mission passes in six days, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday. She also called for talks with the Taliban to preserve progress made in Afghanistan in the last two decades.

Speaking to a session of Parliament convened to discuss the Taliban’s rapid takeover of Afghanistan, the chancellor defended Germany’s decision to join the international intervention there in 2001.

“Our goal must be to preserve as much as possible what we have achieved in terms of changes in Afghanistan in the last 20 years,” Ms. Merkel told lawmakers. “This is something the international community must talk about with the Taliban.”

She cited changes such as improved access to basic necessities, with 70 percent of Afghans now having access to clean drinking water and 90 percent having access to electricity, in addition to better health care for women.

“But what is clear is that the Taliban are reality in Afghanistan and many people are afraid,” Ms. Merkel said. “This new reality is bitter, but we must come to terms with it.”

Germany pulled its last contingent of soldiers, about 570 troops, out of Afghanistan in June, but several hundred Germans were still engaged in development work funded by Berlin, and the German government believed they would be able to remain in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of U.S. and international forces.

Ms. Merkel defended her government’s decision to leave development workers on the ground, saying that they had hoped to continue to provide essential support for Afghans after the troop withdrawal, and that an earlier retreat could have appeared as if they were abandoning people.

“At that time there were very good reasons to stand beside the people in Afghanistan after the troops were gone,” Ms. Merkel said.

But the opposition leaders criticized her government for not developing a plan to bring people to safety in the spring, when other European countries were evacuating citizens and Afghan support staff.

“The situation in Afghanistan is a catastrophe, but it did not come out of nowhere,” said Christian Lindner, the head of the Free Democratic Party, which together with the Green Party petitioned Parliament in June to begin evacuations of German staff and Afghans who could be in danger.

Ms. Merkel did not apologize, instead calling for a deeper examination of where the West went wrong in Afghanistan and what lessons could be learned. That will be the work of the next government, as she is stepping down after the German elections on Sept. 26.

“Many things in history take a long time. That is why we must not and will not forget Afghanistan,” said Ms. Merkel, who was raised in communist East Germany.

“Even if it doesn’t look like it in this bitter hour,” she said, “I remain convinced that no force or ideology can resist the drive for justice and peace.”

Credit…Eduardo Verdugo/Associated Press

Five young women who are part of a famed Afghan robotics team — which had been a symbol of opportunities for women and girls in a post-Taliban Afghanistan — have arrived in Mexico as part of the first group of evacuees to land there.

“They will be received with great affection by the people of Mexico,” Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s foreign minister, said at a news conference at Mexico City’s international airport late on Tuesday. “They are bearers of a dream: to show that we can have an egalitarian, fraternal and gender-equal world.”

Mr. Ebrard has led Mexico’s efforts to evacuate people from Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover this month, cutting through a typically lengthy immigration process to provide immediate protection. A group of Afghans who worked for The New York Times, along with their families, also arrived safely in Mexico on Wednesday.

Images shared by the Foreign Ministry showed the group that included the robotics team arriving aboard a Lufthansa plane and being greeted by Mexican officials. Some of the young women, all wearing masks because of the pandemic, put their hands to their hearts and nodded their heads as they disembarked.

▶️ «Serán recibidas con mucho cariño por el pueblo de México […] Ellas son portadoras de un sueño: demostrar que podemos tener un mundo igualitario, fraterno y de igualdad entre los géneros».

Canciller @m_ebrard, en el recibimiento al grupo de mujeres de Afganistán en 🇲🇽. pic.twitter.com/9M4SkMUOsz

— Relaciones Exteriores (@SRE_mx) August 25, 2021

An institution based in Mexico, which was unnamed, has offered accommodations, food and basic services for the young women, according to a statement released by the Foreign Ministry.

Other team members had fled to Qatar earlier in the week, and some remained in Afghanistan, according to a statement issued by the team’s founder, the Afghan tech entrepreneur Roya Mahboob.

Ms. Mahboob said that those who remained behind faced a worrying future under the Taliban, which banned education for girls when the group last ruled the country.

The young women were part of a robotics team that gained international attention in 2017 when they were denied visas to the United States for a competition in Washington.

Members of Congress signed a petition, and President Donald J. Trump intervened to get travel documents for them on humanitarian grounds. Once back in Afghanistan, they were received as icons of progress, though some accused them of dressing immodestly while abroad and said they had compromised their prospects for marriage.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — As the U.S. military undertakes its final withdrawal from Afghanistan, officials are reluctant to offer an estimate of one significant number: how many people ultimately are seeking to be evacuated.

U.S. officials say they believe that thousands of Americans remain in Afghanistan, including some far beyond Kabul, without a safe or fast way to get to the airport. Tens of thousands of Afghans who worked for the U.S. government over the past 20 years, and are eligible for special visas, are desperate to leave.

Refugee and resettlement experts estimate that at least 300,000 Afghans are in imminent danger of being targeted by the Taliban for associating with Americans and U.S. efforts to stabilize Afghanistan.

But administration officials say the numbers are continually changing, especially since other countries have their own evacuation operations. And while the U.S. Embassy in Kabul is contacting Americans who are believed to be in Afghanistan, the alerts are going only to Americans who provided the government their location before Kabul fell or in the week since.

“It’s our responsibility to find them, which we are now doing hour by hour,” Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, said on Monday.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The United States has started to reduce its military presence at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul as President Biden signaled that he will stick to his Aug. 31 deadline for withdrawing from Afghanistan.

A Defense Department official said that of the 5,800 Marines and soldiers at the airport, about 300 who were considered not essential to the evacuation operation had left the country.

Mr. Biden has left the door open to maintaining the U.S. military presence — now at 5,800 Marines and soldiers — at the airport beyond the deadline. But he does not want to do so, administration officials said, and the Taliban has warned of “consequences” if the United States military stays beyond the deadline.

The Pentagon will probably add additional military bases in the United States to provide temporary housing for Afghan refugees, the Pentagon press secretary, John F. Kirby, said. Discussing the evacuations, he said, “our plan is to continue this pace as aggressively as we can.”

Still, bottlenecks at the airport and at the bases around the world where the people are being temporarily housed could stand in the way, officials said. In particular, they pointed to the bureaucratic process of vetting people.

Mr. Kirby said Afghan allies of the United States, who fear reprisals from the Taliban, were still being processed at the Kabul airport, although several times over the past week the airport’s gates have been shuttered because of the surge of people.

And a Taliban spokesman said on Tuesday that the group’s fighters would physically block Afghans from going to the airport.

Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

When the Taliban were last in power, Afghan women were generally not allowed to leave their homes except under certain narrowly defined conditions. Those who did risked being beaten, tortured or executed.

In the days since the Taliban swept back into control, their leaders have insisted that this time will be different. Women, they say, will be allowed to work. Girls will be free to attend school. At least within the confines of their interpretation of Islam.

But early signs have not been promising, and that pattern continued on Tuesday with a statement from a Taliban spokesman that women should stay home, at least for now. Why? Because some of the militants have not yet been trained not to hurt them, he said.

The spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, called it a “temporary” policy intended to protect women until the Taliban could ensure their safety.

“We are worried our forces who are new and have not been yet trained very well may mistreat women,” Mr. Mujahid said. “We don’t want our forces, God forbid, to harm or harass women.”

Mr. Mujahid said that women should stay home “until we have a new procedure,” and that “their salaries will paid in their homes.”

His statement echoed comments from Ahmadullah Waseq, the deputy of the Taliban’s cultural affairs committee, who told The New York Times this week that the Taliban had “no problem with working women,” as long as they wore hijabs.

But, he said: “For now, we are asking them to stay home until the situation gets normal. Now it is a military situation.”

During the first years of Taliban rule, from 1996 to 2001, women were forbidden to work outside the home or even to leave the house without a male guardian. They could not attend school, and faced public flogging if they were found to have violated morality rules, like one requiring that they be fully covered.

The claim that restrictions on women’s lives are a temporary necessity is not new to Afghan women. The Taliban made similar claims the last time they controlled Afghanistan, said Heather Barr, the associate director of women’s rights at Human Rights Watch.

“The explanation was that the security was not good, and they were waiting for security to be better, and then women would be able to have more freedom,” she said. “But of course in those years they were in power, that moment never arrived — and I can promise you Afghan women hearing this today are thinking it will never arrive this time either.”

Brian Castner, a senior crisis adviser at Amnesty International who was in Afghanistan until last week, said that if the Taliban intended to treat women better, they would need to retrain their forces. “You can’t have a movement like the Taliban that has operated a certain way for 25 years and then just because you take over a government, all of the fighters and everyone in your organization just does something differently,” he said.

But, Mr. Castner said, there is no indication that the Taliban intend to fulfill that or any other promises of moderation. Amnesty International has received reports of fighters going door to door with lists of names, despite their leaders’ public pledges not to retaliate against Afghans who worked with the previous government.

“The rhetoric and the reality are not matching at all, and I think that the rhetoric is more than just disingenuous,” Mr. Castner said. “If a random Taliban fighter commits a human rights abuse or violation, that’s just kind of random violence, that’s one thing. But if there’s a systematic going to people’s homes and looking for people, that’s not a random fighter that’s untrained — that’s a system working. The rhetoric is a cover for what’s really happening.”

In Kabul on Wednesday, women in parts of the city with minimal Taliban presence were going out “with normal clothes, as it was before the Taliban,” said a resident named Shabaka. But in central areas with many Taliban fighters, few women ventured out, and those who did wore burqas, said Sayed, a civil servant.

Ms. Barr, of Human Rights Watch, said that in the week since the Taliban said the new government would preserve women’s rights “within the bounds of Islamic law,” the Afghan women she has spoken to offered the same skeptical assessment: “They’re trying to look normal and legitimate, and this will last as long as the international community and the international press are still there. And then we’ll see what they’re really like again.”

It might not take long, Ms. Barr suggested.

“This announcement just highlights to me that they don’t feel like they need to wait,” she said.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

At least 51 people who fled from Afghanistan landed in Uganda on Wednesday, the authorities said, the first to arrive in an African nation amid the race to complete such evacuations before the United States withdraws its military from Afghanistan by the month’s end.

Uganda said last week that it was preparing to temporarily host evacuees from Afghanistan after a request from the U.S. government. The East African nation is Africa’s top refugee-hosting nation — with nearly 1.5 million displaced people living within its borders — and the top fourth refugee host in the world, according to the United Nations’ refugee agency.

The evacuees’ arrival came 10 days after the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan and hours after President Biden said the United States was on pace for its withdrawal by the Aug. 31 deadline. Their arrival also came as the Pentagon said it had airlifted its biggest daily number of evacuees from Kabul’s airport on Tuesday. Some of those are now reaching countries that, like Uganda, agreed to serve as temporary transit stops.

In Uganda on Wednesday morning, the evacuees underwent a security screening and were tested for the coronavirus, the Foreign Ministry said. News outlets shared photos on social media of them arriving at a local hotel.

Ugandan officials have said that the United States is paying for the evacuees’ upkeep, with aid groups like Mercy Corps also promising to step in.

The evacuees arrived on a flight privately chartered by The Rockefeller Foundation and other funders, according to Ashley E. Chang, the head of the foundation’s media relations.

The Ugandan Foreign Ministry said there had also been plans to have some Ugandans travel on the chartered flight, but because of “challenges of accessing the airport in Kabul, they were unable to make it.”

Arrangements were being made to evacuate those Ugandan citizens on a subsequent flight, the ministry said.

The authorities did not specify the nationalities of the people who arrived in Uganda on Wednesday. But Okello Oryem, a junior minister in the Foreign Ministry, said in an interview that Afghans and people from other countries, including from Europe and the United States, were expected as part of the evacuation plan.

Ms. Chang also said the flight on Wednesday was carrying at-risk Afghan adults — along with some minors — who worked with U.S.-funded nongovernmental organizations, Special Immigrant Visa applicants, and many others who qualified for P2 visas which are reserved for artists and entertainers.

U.S. officials have been in touch with countries around the world — including Canada, Kuwait, Mexico and Qatar — that have agreed to serve as transit stops or announced an intention to grant refugee status or resettlement for people fleeing Afghanistan.

The United States provides more than $970 million in development and military aid to Uganda annually. It supports education and agriculture, and provides antiretroviral treatment for more than 990,000 Ugandans who are H.I.V.-positive.

President Yoweri Museveni — who has ruled Uganda with an iron fist since 1986 and was re-elected to a sixth term in January after a bloody election — is also a key U.S. military ally, deploying troops to fight the Qaeda-linked group Al Shabab in Somalia.

Uganda now hosts nearly 1.5 million refugees who have fled violence in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan — conflicts that, critics point out, Mr. Museveni’s government has meddled in.

The authorities did not specify how evacuees would be arriving from Afghanistan and when they will come. But Mr. Oryem said the government would not rush them to leave.

“These are people who are traumatized and have gone through difficulties,” he said.

Credit…Azam Ahmed/The New York Times

A group of Afghans who worked for The New York Times, along with their families, touched down safely early Wednesday — not in New York or Washington, but at Benito Juárez International Airport in Mexico City.

Mexican officials, unlike their counterparts in the United States, were able to cut through the red tape of their immigration system to quickly provide documents that, in turn, allowed the Afghans to fly from Kabul’s embattled airport to Qatar.

The documents promised that the Afghans would receive temporary humanitarian protection in Mexico while they explored further options in the United States or elsewhere.

“We are right now committed to a foreign policy promoting free expression, liberties and feminist values,” Mexico’s foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, said in a telephone interview.

He cited a national tradition of welcoming people including the 19th-century Cuban independence leader José Martí, German Jews and South Americans fleeing coups, and he said that Mexico had opened its doors to the Afghan journalists “in order to protect them and to be consistent with this policy.”

But the path of the Afghan journalists and their families to Mexico was as arbitrary, personal and tenuous as anything else in the frantic and scattershot evacuation of Kabul.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

Just days after the Taliban swept into Kabul and toppled Afghanistan’s government, a group of former mujahedeen fighters and Afghan commandos said they had begun a war of resistance in the last area of the country that is not under Taliban control: a narrow valley with a history of repelling invaders.

The man leading them is Ahmad Massoud, the 32-year-old son of the storied mujahedeen commander Ahmad Shah Massoud. And their struggle faces long odds: The resistance fighters are surrounded by the Taliban, have supplies that will soon start dwindling and have no visible outside support.

For now the resistance has merely two assets: the Panjshir Valley, 70 miles north of Kabul, which has a history of repelling invaders, and the legendary Massoud name.

Spokesmen for Ahmad Massoud insist that he has attracted thousands of soldiers to the valley, including remnants of the Afghan Army’s special forces and some of his father’s experienced guerrilla commanders, as well as activists and others who reject the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate.

The spokesmen, some of whom were with him in the Panjshir Valley and some who were outside the country drumming up support, said that Mr. Massoud has stocks of weapons and matériel, including American helicopters, but needs more.

‘‘We’re waiting for some opportunity, some support,” said Hamid Saifi, a former colonel in the Afghan National Army, and now a commander in Mr. Massoud’s resistance, who was reached in the Panjshir Valley by telephone on Sunday. “Maybe some countries will be ready for this great work. So far, all countries we talked to are quiet. America, Europe, China, Russia, all of them are quiet.’’

Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

Two members of Congress secretly flew to Kabul without authorization on Tuesday to witness the frenzied evacuation of Americans and Afghans, infuriating Biden administration officials and prompting Speaker Nancy Pelosi to urge other lawmakers not to follow their example.

The two members — Representatives Seth Moulton, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Peter Meijer, Republican of Michigan, both veterans — said in a statement that the purpose of their trip was “to provide oversight on the executive branch.” Both lawmakers have blistered the Biden administration in recent weeks, accusing top officials of dragging their feet on evacuating American citizens and Afghan allies.

“There is no place in the world right now where oversight matters more,” they said.

Credit…Erin Schaff for The New York TimesCredit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

Today with @RepMeijer I visited Kabul airport to conduct oversight on the evacuation.

Witnessing our young Marines and soldiers at the gates, navigating a confluence of humanity as raw and visceral as the world has ever seen, was indescribable. pic.twitter.com/bWGQh1iw2c

— Seth Moulton (@sethmoulton) August 25, 2021

But administration officials were furious that Mr. Moulton and Mr. Meijer had entered Afghanistan on an unauthorized, undisclosed trip, arguing that efforts to tend to the lawmakers had drained resources badly needed to help evacuate those already in the country.

The trip was reported earlier by The Associated Press.

Mr. Moulton and Mr. Meijer said that they had left Afghanistan “on a plane with empty seats, seated in crew-only seats to ensure that nobody who needed a seat would lose one because of our presence,” and that they had taken other steps to “minimize the risk and disruption to the people on the ground.” They were in Kabul for less than 24 hours.

Still, Ms. Pelosi pressed other lawmakers not to do the same.

“Member travel to Afghanistan and the surrounding countries would unnecessarily divert needed resources from the priority mission of safely and expeditiously evacuating Americans and Afghans at risk from Afghanistan,” Ms. Pelosi wrote in a letter. She did not refer to Mr. Moulton and Mr. Meijer by name.

In their statement on Tuesday night, the congressmen sharpened their criticism of the administration’s handling of the evacuation, saying that “Washington should be ashamed of the position we put our service members in” and that the situation they had witnessed on the ground was more dire than they had expected.

“After talking with commanders on the ground and seeing the situation here, it is obvious that because we started the evacuation so late,” they wrote, “that no matter what we do, we won’t get everyone out on time.”

Tags Afghanistan, Biden, Live, Taliban, Updates

Politics

Biden sticks to Aug. 31 Afghanistan withdrawal deadline, regardless of stress to increase

Post author By
Post date August 24, 2021

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden told G-7 leaders during an emergency meeting on Tuesday that he would adhere to the pre-established timetable for the full withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, although the US is also putting in place contingency plans if an extension proves necessary should prove.

“We are currently well on the way to being finished by August 31,” said Biden from the west wing of the White House in his third televised address on Afghanistan since the country fell to the Taliban.

“I also asked the Pentagon and the State Department for contingency plans in order to adjust the schedule should this be necessary,” said Biden.

The president faced political pressure to extend the withdrawal period from US allies in Europe, such as Britain, as well as from his own party in Washington. However, Biden made it clear on Tuesday that he believes the sooner the U.S. can complete the evacuation operation, the better.

The president warned that staying for long periods posed serious risks to Allied troops and civilians. ISIS-K, an offshoot of the terrorist group based in Afghanistan, poses a growing threat to Hamid Karzai International Airport, the president said.

“Every day we are there is another day we know that ISIS-K is trying to attack the airport and target both US and Allied forces and innocent civilians,” he said.

Biden also described US relations with the Taliban on the ground in Kabul as “poor”. The militants have worked with the US in the evacuations, the president said, but the longer the US stays, the greater the risk that fighting will break out.

According to the White House Tuesday evening, the US has evacuated or helped evacuate approximately 70,700 people from Afghanistan since August 14. The US has relocated nearly 75,900 people since the end of July.

As of Tuesday, approximately 4,000 American passport holders and their families had been flown out of Afghanistan, although several thousand Americans are believed to be awaiting evacuation.

Biden said the leaders of the world’s seven major industrial democracies, the European Union, NATO and the United Nations, have agreed to “stand together in our dealings with the Taliban.”

“We will judge them [Taliban] through their actions and we will stay in close coordination on any steps we take in response to the Taliban’s behavior, “Biden said.

In a joint statement following their virtual meeting, the G7 leaders expressed “serious concern” about human rights, especially for women, in Afghanistan and called on countries around the world to support efforts to relocate vulnerable Afghans.

A Marine from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit walks with the children during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 24, 2021.

Sgt. Samuel Ruiz | US Marine Corps | via Reuters

“We are not in favor of allowing Afghans to leave the country,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told reporters during a press conference on Tuesday.

World leaders put together for emergency G7 assembly on Afghanistan

Post author By
Post date August 24, 2021

Members of the British Armed Forces continue to participate in the evacuation of eligible personnel from Kabul Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Nov. 19-22. August 2021, in this handout picture Reuters received on August 23, 2021.

UKMOD | via Reuters

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will host an emergency meeting of G-7 leaders on Tuesday to discuss the chaotic situation in Afghanistan and their next steps.

The G-7 countries – UK, US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan – will try to formulate a plan for the immediate and future as thousands of Afghan refugees gather around Kabul airport and try getting out of the country and how countries are conducting one of the greatest airlifts in history to get their citizens out.

The virtual meeting takes place against the backdrop of a turbulent US withdrawal from Afghanistan, with Taliban forces taking control of the country in about 10 days when the Afghan military and government surrendered.

It also comes just a week before the August 31 deadline for US forces to fully withdraw from Afghanistan. Johnson is expected to request Washington to extend this deadline, which President Joe Biden has openly considered. But the Taliban have announced that they will not accept an extension.

“It’s a red line. President Biden has announced that they will withdraw all of their forces on August 31,” Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen told Sky News on Monday. “So if they extend it, it means they are extending employment when it is not required.”

The UK plans to keep its approximately 1,000 armed soldiers in Afghanistan until all of its citizens and Afghan nationals who have worked for its armed forces are evacuated, and has no set withdrawal date like the US. But there are fears that without US forces on the ground, they will not be able to conduct safe evacuations.

“If the US or UK is looking for extra time to evacuate, the answer is no. Otherwise there would be consequences, ”added Shaheen of the Taliban.

Several Afghan forces and civilians were killed both in fighting with militants and in a desperate attempt to flee the now Taliban-ruled country; some tried to hold on to a US evacuation plane taking off from Kabul International Airport.

The U.S. government says it has evacuated or facilitated evacuation about 48,000 people from Afghanistan since Aug. 14, but admitted Monday it did not know how many Americans were left in the country.

Tags Afghanistan, emergency, leaders, Meeting, Prepare, world

Politics

Afghanistan: remark le plan de retrait américain s’est écroulé

Post author By
Post date August 24, 2021

WASHINGTON — Tôt dans la matinée du 24 avril, une réunion des plus hauts responsables de la sécurité nationale des États-Unis se tient au Pentagone pour finaliser en secret le retrait des troupes américaines d’Afghanistan. Deux semaines plus tôt, le Président Joe Biden annonçait ce départ, contre l’avis de ses généraux, qui doivent maintenant exécuter ses ordres.

Dans une pièce sécurisée à “l’extrême sous-sol” du bâtiment, deux étages sous le rez-de-chaussée, le secrétaire à la Défense Lloyd J. Austin III et le Général Mark A. Milley, chef d’état-major des armées américaines, retrouvent les responsables du renseignement et de la Maison-Blanche. Antony J. Blinken, le secrétaire d’État, participe par vidéo interposée. Quatre heures de discussion permettent de clarifier deux points.

Premièrement, les responsables du Pentagone disent pouvoir retirer avant le 4 juillet les 3500 soldats américains restants, en majorité déployés sur la base aérienne de Bagram — soit deux mois plus tôt que la date limite du 11 septembre fixée par M. Biden. Ce plan suppose de fermer les pistes aériennes qui ont servi de plaque tournante aux forces américaines en Afghanistan, mais les responsables de la défense ne veulent pas laisser sur place un contingent diminué et vulnérable faisant courir le risque de pertes supplémentaires dans une guerre déclarée perdue.

Deuxièmement, les responsables du département d’État envisagent de maintenir ouverte l’ambassade américaine, avec plus de 1400 ressortissants américains sous la protection de 650 Marines et soldats. Une analyse de renseignement présentée pendant la réunion estime que les forces afghanes pourraient contenir les talibans pendant encore un an ou deux. Un plan d’évacuation d’urgence est brièvement évoqué — les Américains seraient héliportés jusqu’à l’aéroport civil de Kaboul, la capitale — mais personne ne se demande, et encore moins ne peut imaginer, ce que feront les États-Unis si les talibans prennent le contrôle de l’accès à l’aéroport, seule porte d’entrée et de sortie sûre du pays une fois Bagram fermé.

Voilà un bon plan, concluent-ils.

Quatre mois plus tard, ce plan est en lambeaux et M. Biden a toutes les peines du monde à expliquer comment le retrait, que tant d’Américains approuvent, en arrive à se dérouler de façon aussi catastrophique sur le terrain. Vendredi dernier, alors que les chaînes du monde entier diffusaient des scènes de souffrance et de chaos depuis l’aéroport, M. Biden est allé jusqu’à dire : “Je ne peux rien promettre sur l’issue finale, ce qui arrivera et si cela arrivera sans risque de pertes”.

Des entretiens avec les acteurs clés des derniers jours de la guerre pointent du doigt une série d’erreurs d’appréciation, et l’échec du calcul de M. Biden selon lequel le retrait des troupes américaines — donnant la priorité à leur sécurité plutôt qu’à l’évacuation des civils américains et de leurs alliés afghans — se déroulerait sans heurts.

Les membres du gouvernement de M. Biden étaient restés persuadés qu’ils avaient tout leur temps. Le commandement militaire avait surestimé la volonté des forces afghanes de combattre pour leur propre pays et sous-estimé combien le retrait américain minerait leur assurance. Le gouvernement avait trop misé sur le président afghan Ashraf Ghani, qui a pris la fuite à la chute de Kaboul.

Et alors que la Maison-Blanche explique qu’elle a organisé plus d’une cinquantaine de réunions sur la sécurité de l’ambassade et les évacuations, et constate qu’aucun Américain n’est mort jusque-là au cours des opérations, toute cette planification n’a pas su prévenir le chaos qui a suivi la prise-éclair de Kaboul par les talibans.

Ce n’est que ces dernières semaines que l’administration américaine a finament dévié de son plan initial. Il était déjà trop tard.

Aucun plan pour les Afghans

Cinq jours après la réunion d’avril au Pentagone, sur un vol quittant Hawaï pour Washington, le général Milley déclarait aux journalistes présents que les troupes du gouvernement afghan étaient “raisonnablement bien équipées, raisonnablement bien entraînées, et raisonnablement bien menées”. Il se refusait à dire si elles pourraient s’en sortir seules, sans l’appui des États-Unis.

“Franchement, on ne sait pas encore,” admettait-il. “Il faut attendre et voir comment les choses se dérouleront au cours de l’été.”

La crème des officiers du renseignement du président se faisait alors l’écho d’une telle incertitude, émettant en privé des doutes sur les capacités afghanes à prendre le relais. Ils estimaient néanmoins qu’une reprise totale du pouvoir par les talibans n’aurait pas lieu avant 18 mois. Sur la base d’informations classées secret qui avaient été présentées à M. Biden, un haut responsable affirme que rien ne semblait alors indiquer que les talibans étaient en marche.

Et pourtant, ils l’étaient. À travers tout le pays, les militants gagnaient en puissance de façon méthodique, sommant les chefs tribaux des zones qu’ils traversaient de se rendre ou de mourir. Ils collectaient armes, munitions, volontaires et argent dans leur ruée de ville en ville, de province en province.

En mai, ils lançaient une offensive d’envergure sur la province de Helmand dans le sud et sur six autres régions d’Afghanistan, dont Ghazni et Kandahar. À Washington, l’angoisse était palpable au sein d’associations de réfugiés qui craignaient les représailles des talibans à l’encontre des milliers de traducteurs, interprètes et autres qui avaient aidé l’effort de guerre américain.

Ces groupes estimaient alors que 100 000 Afghans et membres de leurs familles étaient désormais des cibles pour la vengeance des talibans. Le 6 mai, les représentants des plus importantes associations de réfugiés, dont Human Rights First, the International Refugee Assistance Project, No One Left Behind et le Lutheran Refugee and Immigration Service, se connectaient par Zoom pour échanger avec des membres du Conseil national de sécurité.

Ces groupes suppliaient la Maison Blanche d’opter pour une évacuation en masse des Afghans et de ne pas compter sur un programme de visas dédiés qui croulait déjà sous un arriéré de demandes et condamnait les Afghans à des mois, voire des années d’attente.

Il est trop tard pour des visas, disaient ces groupes, et les Afghans doivent être secourus rapidement pour rester en vie. La réponse fut cordiale mais sans engagement, selon un intervenant, qui prit alors conscience, le coeur serré, que la Maison-Blanche n’avait tout simplement aucun plan pour les Afghans.

Seth Moulton, député démocrate du Massachusetts, ancien combattant et allié M. Biden, se faisait l’écho de ces préoccupations lors de ses échanges avec le gouvernement, répétant à qui voulait l’entendre à la Maison Blanche, au département d’État et au Pentagone “qu’il faut arrêter le processus des visas en Afghanistan et juste mettre les gens à l’abri.”

Mais accéder à la requête de M. Moulton et des associations de réfugiés aurait signifié le lancement d’une nouvelle opération militaire risquée, avec un possible renfort de troupes, alors que M. Biden venait d’annoncer le contraire. C’était aussi aller contre le souhait du gouvernement afghan, car une évacuation aussi visible équivalait à un désavœu du gouvernement et de ses forces armées.

Au lieu de cela, le département d’État accéléra le rythme d’émission de visas pour résorber les listes d’attente, remodelant le système d’étude et de sélection des demandes pour écourter les délais — mais seulement à moins d’un an. Au final, plus de 5600 visas spéciaux furent délivrés entre avril et juillet, un record dans l’histoire du programme, mais qui ne représentaient qu’une fraction de la demande.

Pendant ce temps, les talibans continuaient leur avancée et l’ambassade à Kaboul pressait les Américains de quitter le pays. Le 27 avril, ordre était donné à près de 3000 employés de partir et le 15 mai, la diplomatie envoyait un dernier avertissement aux ressortissants américains : “L’Ambassade des États-Unis suggère fortement aux citoyens américains de s’organiser pour quitter l’Afghanistan dès que possible.”

Réunion tendue avec Ghani

Le 25 juin, Ashraf Ghani est à la Maison Blanche pour y rencontrer Joe Biden. Ce sera la dernière réunion entre un président américain et un de ces dirigeants afghans que les États-Unis ont encouragés, cajôlés et disputés au cours des 20 dernières années.

Updated

Aug. 23, 2021, 1:03 p.m. ET

Face aux caméras en début de rencontre, MM. Ghani et Biden se répandent en admiration mutuelle, alors même que M. Ghani est furieux de la décision de retirer les troupes américaines. Une fois les journalistes renvoyés de la salle, la tension était palpable.

M. Ghani, ancien responsable de la Banque mondiale que M. Biden juge arrogant et têtu, émettait alors trois demandes, selon un officiel au fait de la discussion. Il voulait que les États-Unis soient “conservateurs” dans l’attribution de visas aux interprètes et autres, et qu’ils fassent “profil bas” sur leur départ du pays, afin de ne pas donner l’impression d’un manque de confiance dans son gouvernement.

Il souhaitait aussi accélérer l’assistance en matière de sécurité et s’assurer d’un accord pour que l’armée américaine poursuive ses frappes aériennes et fournisse une surveillance depuis ses avions et ses hélicoptères, en soutien des troupes afghanes en lutte contre les talibans. Les responsables américains craignaient alors que plus ils affronteraient directement le groupe militant, plus les talibans prendraient des diplomates américains pour cible.

M. Biden accepta de fournir l’aide aérienne et de faire en sorte que l’évacuation des Afghans se déroule discrètement.

C’était au tour de M. Biden de formuler sa requête : les forces afghanes sont trop dispersées, disait-il à son homologue, et ne doivent pas essayer de livrer combat sur tous les fronts. Il réitèra le conseil américain de consolider les forces afghanes autour de points stratégiques. M. Ghani n’en tiendra pas compte.

La semaine suivante, le 2 juillet, M. Biden était d’humeur exubérante devant un petit parterre de journalistes pour fêter les derniers chiffres de l’emploi, qui attestaient selon lui de la réussite de son plan de relance économique. Mais les questions portaient toutes sur la nouvelle de l’abandon de la base aérienne de Bagram par les États-Unis, sans même prévenir, ou à peine, les Afghans.

“Il s’agit d’une réduction concertée avec nos alliés,” se défendait-il, “il n’y a rien là d’extraordinaire”.

Que le feu des questions porte sur l’Afghanistan et non sur l’économie le contrariait à l’évidence de plus en plus. Évoquant la visite de M. Ghani, il précisa : “Je pense qu’ils ont la capacité de maintenir leur gouvernement en place”, ajoutant toutefois qu’il faudrait négocier avec les talibans.

Puis, pour la première fois, on le pressait d’expliquer ce que le gouvernement comptait faire pour sauver Kaboul en cas d’attaque directe. “J’aimerais parler de choses positives, les gars”, répondait-il, martelant qu’il existait un plan.

“Nous avons formulé des hypothèses tous azimuts”, affirmait-t-il — autrement dit, le gouvernement avait des plans en cas d’imprévu. “Mais les Afghans vont devoir se débrouiller seuls avec les forces aériennes dont ils disposent, que nous aidons à soutenir.” Or à cette date, la plupart des entreprises américaines sous contrat qui maintenaient l’aviation afghane en état de voler s’étaient retirées avec les troupes. Les gradés de l’armée et du renseignement avouent qu’ils craignaient que les Afghans ne pourraient plus voler.

Au 8 juillet, presque toutes les forces américaines avaient quitté l’Afghanistan et les talibans continuaient sur leur inexorable lancée de reconquête du pays. Dans le discours qu’il a prononcé ce jour-là à la Maison Blanche pour défendre sa décision de partir, M. Biden était dans une position délicate, exprimant son scepticisme quant aux capacités des forces afghanes tout en veillant à ne pas saper le gouvernement. Un peu plus tard, il s’emporta contre un journaliste qui dressait un parallèle avec le Vietnam : “En aucune circonstance on ne verra des gens évacués du toit d’une ambassade en Afghanistan. La situation n’est pas du tout comparable.”

Understand the Taliban Takeover in Afghanistan

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Who are the Taliban? The Taliban arose in 1994 amid the turmoil that came after the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989. They used brutal public punishments, including floggings, amputations and mass executions, to enforce their rules. Here’s more on their origin story and their record as rulers.

Who are the Taliban leaders? These are the top leaders of the Taliban, men who have spent years on the run, in hiding, in jail and dodging American drones. Little is known about them or how they plan to govern, including whether they will be as tolerant as they claim to be.

What happens to the women of Afghanistan? The last time the Taliban were in power, they barred women and girls from taking most jobs or going to school. Afghan women have made many gains since the Taliban were toppled, but now they fear that ground may be lost. Taliban officials are trying to reassure women that things will be different, but there are signs that, at least in some areas, they have begun to reimpose the old order.

Cinq jours après, pourtant, environ deux douzaines de diplomates américains, tous de l’ambassade à Kaboul, adressaient un mémo directement à M. Blinken via le canal “désaccord” du département d’État. Le message, évoqué pour la première fois par le Wall Street Journal, exhortait l’administration à débuter les vols pour évacuer les Afghans dans les deux semaines et à se dépêcher de les enregistrer pour des visas.

Le lendemain, la Maison-Blanche donnait un nom à l’intensification en cours de ses efforts: “Operation Allies Refuge”, opération refuge alliés.

Fin juillet, le général Kenneth F. Mackenzie Jr., à la tête du commandement central américain qui supervise toutes les opérations militaires dans la région, recevait l’autorisation de M. Austin, le secrétaire à la Défense, de prolonger la présence du navire d’assaut amphibie Iwo Jima dans le golfe d’Oman, afin que les Marines à bord soient suffisamment proches pour se rendre en Afghanistan en cas d’évacuation des Américains. La semaine suivante, l’inquiétude de M. Austin était telle qu’il d’ordonnait au corps expéditionnaire à bord du navire — quelque 2000 Marines— de débarquer et de stationner au Koweït pour pouvoir gagner l’Afghanistan au plus vite.

Au 3 août, des hauts responsables de la sécurité se retrouvaient à Washington pour évoquer un nouveau rapport des renseignements : les capitales de province à travers le pays tombaient les unes après les autres aux mains des talibans et le gouvernement menaçait de s’effondrer “d’un jour ou d’une semaine à l’autre”. Ce n’était pas le plus vraisemblable, mais c’était de plus en plus plausible.

Au Forum d’Aspen sur la Sécurité le 3 août, Zalmay Khalilzad, principal délégué américain aux pourparlers de paix afghans, déclarait : “Nous aidons le gouvernement pour que les talibans ne s’imaginent pas que ce sera du gâteau, qu’ils peuvent conquérir et prendre contrôle du pays”. C’est pourtant exactement le scénario qui s’est réalisé à peine quelques jours plus tard.

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Au 6 août, les cartes du Pentagone affichaient une traînée grandissante de régions sous contrôle taliban. Si les Afghans avaient combattu dans certaines zones, ils s’étaient rendus dans la plupart des autres.

À Washington ce jour-là, le Pentagone étudiait les scénarios du pire. Si la sécurité continuait de se détériorer, le plan — élaboré en avril par Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, conseillère à la sécurité intérieure, quelques jours après l’annonce du retrait par Joe Biden — prévoyait d’évacuer par les airs le personnel hors de l’ambassade, et pour la plupart hors du pays, tandis qu’un petit noyau de diplomates demeurerait opérationnel depuis un site à l’aéroport.

En apparence, l’aéroport de Kaboul se prêtait bien à une évacuation. Proche du centre-ville, il est à seulement 12 minutes en voiture et 3 minutes en hélicoptère depuis l’ambassade — une logistique rassurante pour les planificateurs après la fermeture de Bagram, distant de 80 km et à plus d’une heure de route de Kaboul.

Le mercredi 11 août, la percée des talibans était si alarmante que M. Biden demanda à ses principaux conseillers réunis dans la salle de crise de la Maison Blanche s’il n’était pas temps d’envoyer les Marines à Kaboul et d’évacuer l’ambassade. Il demanda une évaluation actualisée de la situation et autorisa l’usage d’avions militaires pour évacuer les alliés afghans.

Kandahar et Ghazni sont tombées alors qu’il faisait nuit à Washington. Le 12 août, les responsables de la sécurité nationale sont réveillés à 4h du matin et convoqués à une réunion urgente quelques heures plus tard pour présenter des options au président. Une fois tout le monde présent, Avril D. Haines, directeur du renseignement national, annonça que les agences de renseignement ne pourraient plus garantir un délai suffisant pour sonner l’alarme en cas de siege imminent de la capitale.

Chacun s’est regardé, selon un participant, et tous sont arrivés à la même conclusion : il est temps de lever le camp. Une heure plus tard, Jake Sullivan, conseiller de M. Biden à la sécurité nationale, pénètre le Bureau Ovale pour faire part du consensus unanime qu’il fallait commencer l’évacuation et déployer 3000 Marines et soldats de l’armée de terre sur l’aéroport.

Le samedi 14 août, M. Biden se trouve à Camp David pour, il l’espère, 10 jours de vacances. Au lieu de cela, il a passé le plus clair de la journée en éprouvantes visioconférences avec ses principaux conseillers.

Lors d’un des appels, M. Austin a insisté que tout le personnel resté à l’ambassade de Kaboul soit immédiatement transféré à l’aéroport. Un revirement de taille par rapport à ce que le porte-parole du département d’État, Ned Price, avait déclaré à peine deux jours plus tôt, à savoir que “l’ambassade reste ouverte, nous avons l’intention de continuer notre travail diplomatique en Afghanistan.” Ross Wilson, l’ambassadeur américain en exercice, prévenait qu’il fallait encore 72h au personnel pour se préparer à quitter les lieux.

“Il faut partir maintenant ,” réplique M. Austin.

Le même jour, M. Blinken et M. Ghani se parlent au téléphone. Le président afghan se montre combatif, selon un responsable au courant de la discussion, assénant qu’il défendrait son pays jusqu’au bout. Ce qu’il omet de dire à M. Blinken, c’est qu’il prépare déjà sa fuite — que les responsables américains apprendront par voie de presse.

Plus tard ce jour-là, l’ambassade US en Afghanistan s’engage par message à défrayer les ressortissants américains pour qu’ils quittent le pays, mais alerte sur la possibilité que “des sièges ne soient pas disponibles” sur les vols commerciaux internationaux encore opérationnels depuis Kaboul.

Le dimanche, M. Ghani n’est plus là. Son départ — il réapparaîtrait quelques jours plus tard aux Émirats arabes unis — et les scènes des talibans victorieux au palais présidentiel confirme la chute du gouvernement. Dès la fin de la journée, ces derniers déclarent aux medias leur intention de restaurer l’Émirat islamique d’Afghanistan.

Pendant ce temps, l’évacuation du personnel de l’ambassade est en cours, les diplomates se hâtant de quitter les lieux par hélicoptère pour rejoindre un bunker à l’aéroport.

D’autres sont restés sur place, le temps de brûler des documents sensibles. L’un d’eux raconte qu’on fait sauter ou détruire des hélicoptères, produisant un panache de fumée qui s’élève de l’enceinte.

Nombre d’Américains et d’Afghans ne parviennent cependant pas à atteindre l’aéroport car les talibans avaient dressé des checkpoints sur les routes et en ville, rouant parfois de coup les gens qui tentaient de passer. Le F.B.I. s’inquiétait du risque que des Américains puissent être kidnappés par les miliciens ou par d’autres gangs criminels — une perspective cauchemardesque en l’absence de l’armée.

Dans la soirée, tandis que Joe Biden se préparait à s’adresser à ses compatriotes pour faire un point sur la situation, le drapeau américain était retiré de l’ambassade abandonnée. La Green zone, autrefois cœur de l’effort américain pour reconstruire le pays, était redevenue le domaine des talibans.

Avec la collaboration de Mark Mazzetti, Adam Goldman et Michel Crowley.

Tags Afghanistan, américain, comment, écroulé, Plan, retrait, sest

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Aucun plan pour les Afghans

Réunion tendue avec Ghani

Understand the Taliban Takeover in Afghanistan

Fin de partie