Bottlenecks – COOPER GENERAL NEWS

WASHINGTON – As the August 31 deadline for a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan draws nearer, the Pentagon has stepped up the evacuation rate from Kabul Airport and flown 21,600 people out in 24 hours, Defense Department officials said Tuesday. But bottlenecks in the system and President Biden’s insistence that all troops leave the country by the end of the month could prevent the military from maintaining this pace.

The race against time means that the 5,800 Marines and soldiers at Hamid Karzai International Airport must try to evacuate thousands more Americans and Afghan allies, only to come out themselves over the next seven days to find the rubble of the 20 Years War in Afghanistan to eliminate somehow.

That process began on Tuesday when Pentagon spokesman John F. Kirby said several hundred headquarters, maintenance and other support forces not strictly necessary for the escalating evacuation operation had left the country.

Defense officials do not say publicly, however, which is becoming increasingly clear: some people are being left behind.

Since August 14, when Kabul fell to the Taliban, more than 70,700 people had been evacuated from Afghanistan by Tuesday evening, Biden said.

That is significantly less than the number of American citizens, foreigners and Afghan allies trying to get out. “We’re trying to get as many out as possible,” said John F. Kirby, the Pentagon’s main spokesman. He said American troops at Kabul airport “wanted to continue this pace as aggressively as possible”.

But despite all of Mr. Biden’s persistence in meeting his withdrawal deadline, neither the Department of Homeland Security nor the Department of State have been able to increase review and processing times to the extent necessary to meet demand.

A US official said it took up to 12 hours for immigration officers to screen arriving Afghans at Al Udeid Air Base outside Doha, Qatar against the National Counter Terrorism Center watch list. The official said that the verification and screening processes need to move faster to prevent the evacuation pipeline at Al Udeid, the largest base receiving Afghans, from re-clogging, as it did for several hours last week.

The Taliban have warned of “consequences” if the US military stays past the deadline. And on Tuesday, a Taliban spokesman said the group’s militants were physically preventing Afghans from going to the airport.

The Pentagon has opened military bases in Virginia, Texas, Wisconsin and New Jersey to temporarily house Afghan refugees and is likely to add more in the coming days, officials said.

Updated

Aug. 24, 2021, 9:51 p.m. ET

Kirby said US Afghan allies who fear Taliban reprisals are still being handled at Kabul airport, despite the airport gates being closed several times over the past week due to the onslaught of people.

The United States will continue to evacuate Afghans until the final days following the withdrawal of troops and equipment. Dozens of Afghan commandos – trained by the US – are also at the airport and have to be evacuated.

Understanding the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan

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Who are the Taliban? The Taliban emerged in 1994 amid the unrest following the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989. They used brutal public punishments, including flogging, amputation and mass executions, to enforce their rules. Here is more about their genesis and track record as rulers.

Who are the Taliban leaders? These are the top leaders of the Taliban, men who for years have been on the run, in hiding, in prison and dodged American drones. Little is known about them or how they plan to rule, including whether they will be as tolerant as they say they are.

What is happening to the women of Afghanistan? When the Taliban was last in power, they banned women and girls from most jobs or from going to school. Afghan women have gained a lot since the Taliban was overthrown, but now they fear that they are losing ground. Taliban officials are trying to reassure women that things will be different, but there are indications that they have begun to reintroduce the old order in at least some areas.

For the military, part of the problem is that so many people are being promoted so quickly and with so little notice. For example, the C-17 military aircraft, which carry 400 people per load, have one or two toilets, and the flight from Kabul to Qatar takes four hours.

Once the flights arrive at Al Udeid in Qatar and other intermediate bases in the Middle East and Europe, the evacuees will be screened by Homeland Security and State Department officials who will determine if they qualify to enter the United States.

The military takes the Taliban’s red line seriously on August 31, also because some of the group’s commanders are cooperating with the US military and giving many people access to the airport, despite harsh speeches from Taliban spokesmen. In addition, the American military and the Taliban are cooperating against the threat of attacks by the Islamic State.

But after August 31, all bets will be gone, a senior US official said.

With so many people at Kabul Airport, Doha and other bases, concerns about sanitation, food and water are growing. The C-17 planes bringing refugees from Afghanistan turn around bringing in additional dumpsters, portable hand washing stations, refrigerated trucks to keep the water cool, and food and water.

Three babies were born to evacuees in the past four days, Defense Department officials said. A woman went into labor on Saturday during a flight landing at the Ramstein air base in Germany, officials from the air force said. The aircraft commander descended to a lower altitude to increase the air pressure in the jet, a decision officials said saved the mother’s life as she had low blood pressure. When the plane landed, paramedics rushed on board and gave birth to the baby – a girl – in the hold. All three babies are in good shape, Mr. Kirby said Tuesday.

After receiving a secret briefing Monday night, Adam B. Schiff, a California Democrat who heads the House Intelligence Committee, said the August 31 deadline for US troops to withdraw from Kabul was unrealistic.

“I think it is possible, but I think it is very unlikely,” Schiff told reporters. Using the abbreviation for special immigrant visas, he added, “Given the number of Americans who have yet to be evacuated, the number of SIVs, the number of other members of the Afghan press, civil society leaders, female leaders – it’s hard me I can imagine that all of this can be achieved by the end of the month. “

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Tuesday planned to issue a swath of actions and recommendations meant to address supply chain disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic and decrease reliance on other countries for crucial goods by increasing domestic production capacity.

In a call on Monday evening detailing the plan to reporters, White House officials said the administration had created a task force that would “tackle near-term bottlenecks” in construction, transportation, semiconductor production and agriculture.

The officials also outlined steps that had been taken to address an executive order from President Biden that required a review of critical supply chains in four product areas where the United States relies on imports: semiconductors, high-capacity batteries, pharmaceuticals and their active ingredients, and critical minerals and strategic materials, like rare earths.

“This is about making sure the United States can meet every challenge we face in the new era,” Mr. Biden said in February, when he signed the order.

The review has been governmentwide, the officials said: Cabinet members were ordered to provide reports to the White House within 100 days. The move was intended to address concerns about supply chain resiliency and long-term competition with China.

The Department of Health and Human Services, for instance, will use $60 million from the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill to develop technologies to increase domestic production of active ingredients in key pharmaceuticals. The Interior Department will work to identify sites where critical minerals could be produced in the United States. And several agencies will work on creating supply chains for new technologies that will reduce reliance on imports of key materials.

The Biden administration also signaled that it was prepared to use trade policy to bolster domestic supplies of key minerals and components. As part of that effort, the Office of the United States Trade Representative said it would establish a so-called strike force that could propose actions against overseas companies deemed to be engaged in unfair trade practices.

The Commerce Department will evaluate whether to investigate the global trade of neodymium magnets under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. The Trump administration wielded that law to impose tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum, after concluding that domestic production of those materials was essential for national security.

As part of his plans to address climate change, Mr. Biden wants Americans to drive millions of new electric vehicles and get more of their energy from renewable sources like wind and solar power. But experts have long pointed out that the shift to cleaner energy will require vast supplies of critical minerals, many of which are currently produced and processed overseas.

Most of the world’s lithium, a key ingredient in the batteries that power electric vehicles, is mined in Australia, China, Chile and Argentina. China dominates global production of rare earth minerals such as neodymium, used to make magnets in wind turbines. It has also largely cornered the market in lithium-ion batteries, accounting for 77 percent of the world’s capacity for producing battery cells and 80 percent of its raw-material refining, according to BloombergNEF, an energy research group.

The United States lags far behind other countries in manufacturing many clean energy technologies, leaving it heavily reliant on imports.

The Biden administration has vowed to bring back more of that manufacturing and mining, but progress has been slow. In the United States, companies are racing to unlock lithium supplies in states like Nevada and North Dakota, though those efforts face opposition because of their environmental effects. The country also has only one mine that produces rare earth minerals, in Mountain Pass, Calif.

As part of its announcement on Tuesday, the Biden administration said it would work to identify new domestic sites where such critical minerals could be mined with environmental safeguards, asking Congress to increase funding for a mapping program at the U.S. Geological Survey.

The Energy Department announced that it would offer loans for companies that could sustainably refine, process and recycle rare earths and other materials used in electric vehicles. The agency on Tuesday will also release a plan to develop a domestic supply chain for lithium-ion batteries.

The Energy Department has $17.7 billion in authority to issue loans under the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program, which Congress created in 2007 and used in 2010 to support the electric-vehicle manufacturer Tesla in its early days. In its announcement, the agency said it would seek to offer loans to manufacturers of advanced battery technology that established factories in the United States. It also announced a new policy in which future funding of new clean-energy technologies would require recipients to “substantially manufacture those products in the United States.”

Semiconductors — a key component in cars and electronic devices — were also another key research area for officials, though they did not describe immediate plans to increase production. A global semiconductor shortage has forced several American auto plants to close or scale back production and sent the administration scrambling to appeal to allies like Taiwan for emergency supplies. Instead, the 100-day review report said Congress should support a $50 billion investment in domestic semiconductor manufacturing and research.

The findings are partly a push for the president’s $1 trillion infrastructure plan, which could fund some of the research and job training to bring American workers up to speed on producing advanced technologies like semiconductors.

The effort comes as the Senate is poised to pass a huge industrial policy bill to counter China’s rising influence, a rare bipartisan development as lawmakers suddenly embrace an enormous investment in semiconductor manufacturing, artificial intelligence research, robotics, quantum computing and a range of other technologies.