Tag: Updates

King Charles’s Ascension After Loss of life of Queen Elizabeth: Updates

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Post date September 10, 2022

King Charles's Ascension After Death of Queen Elizabeth: Updates

LONDON — No sooner had the long-awaited news broke – Queen Elizabeth II was dead – than Britain activated Operation London Bridge, the carefully choreographed funeral schedule taking the country through the rituals of honor and mourning to begin with her funeral ten days later culminate.

But the plan, with its metronomic precision, masks something far worse: a rupture in the national psyche. The Queen’s death last week at the age of 96 is a truly traumatic event, leaving many in this stoic country fearful and unattached. As they come to terms with the loss of a figure who embodied Britain, they are unsure of their nation’s identity, their economic and social well-being, or even their role in the world.

For some, it almost seems like the London Bridge is down.

Such trauma was not entirely unexpected: Elizabeth reigned for 70 years, making her the only monarch most Britons have ever known. But the fear runs deeper, say scholars and commentators, a reflection not only of the queen’s long shadow but also of the unsettled land she leaves in her wake.

From Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic to the serial scandals that recently ousted Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the end of the second Elizabeth era was a time of endless turmoil for Britain.

Recognition…James Hill for the New York Times

In just two months since Mr Johnson announced his resignation, inflation has skyrocketed, a recession looms and household energy bills have nearly doubled. Nearly lost in the global flood that followed the Queen’s death, after three days in office, new Prime Minister Liz Truss rolled out an emergency plan to limit energy prices to an estimated $100 billion.

“It all feeds a sense of uncertainty and insecurity that has been there because of Brexit and then Covid and now with a new prime minister who is very inexperienced,” said Timothy Garton Ash, Professor of European Studies at Oxford University. The queen, he said, is the stone, “and then the stone is removed.”

Not just the rock, but the rhythm of everyday British life: her image is printed on pound notes and postage stamps, her royal monogram – ER for Elizabeth Regina – is emblazoned on flags and red post boxes across the country.

At the formal proclamation of her son Charles as King on Saturday, the void left by the Queen was palpable. Her empty throne, initialed ER, loomed before an assembly of the new monarch; his heir, Prince William; the Archbishop of Canterbury; and the Prime Minister and her six living predecessors.

For older Britons in particular, the loss is “deep and personal and almost familial,” Mr Johnson said, paying tribute to the Queen in Parliament on Friday, four days after she accepted his resignation in one of her final acts.

“Perhaps part of it is that it has always been there, an unchanging human reference point in British life,” he said. “The person who appears most often in our dreams according to all the polls. So unchanging in her North Star charisma that we may have lulled ourselves into thinking that in a way she might be eternal.”

Recognition…Andrew Testa for the New York Times

Beyond the Queen’s permanence, said Mr Johnson and others, was her immense global prestige. It was a living connection to World War II, after which Winston Churchill helped draw the map of the post-war world while sitting around a conference table in Yalta with Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin.

Mr. Johnson and Ms. Truss have reverted to that role with their staunch support for Ukraine. But Britain these days is less of a major power at the center of global decision-making and more of a mid-size cheering from the sidelines. It is fitting that Churchill, in 1965, was the last Briton to receive a state funeral – before that of the Queen, which was scheduled for September 19 at Westminster Abbey.

“My personal reflection is that there will probably never be an occasion where another British personality is so mourned around the world,” said Professor Garton Ash of Oxford. “It’s a final moment of British greatness in a way.”

For all her displays of power, the queen did not project her influence through political or military power, but through an abiding duty to the country. Her military service and dignified administration contrasted with Britain’s often unruly policies, not to mention the foreign strongmen she sometimes had to entertain.

Some said she was a pioneer in practicing what later became known as “soft power.”

“I cannot lead you into battle,” said the Queen in 1957. “I do not give you laws or administer justice, but I can do something else. I can give you my heart and devotion to these ancient islands and to all the peoples of our Brotherhood of Nations.”

Recognition…Andrew Testa for the New York Times

In the parks and squares around Buckingham Palace, where crowds gathered on Saturday, their loss was spoken of on a political and personal level. “She meant reliability and stability,” said Kate Nattrass, 59, a healthcare recruiter from Christchurch, New Zealand, a member of the British Commonwealth.

But the Queen did so at the cost of great personal sacrifice. “In many ways, she was a woman stripped of her ability to be herself,” Ms Nattrass said. “That’s probably why she missed a lot of her own family.”

Callum Taylor, 27, an actor from the north west English city of Preston, traveled to London to leave yellow roses on the palace gates. He said he heard yellow was one of Elizabeth’s favorite colors. Mr Taylor admitted he wasn’t sure of his information but added: “I think we all felt like we knew her.”

While the Queen has long been revered – the swelling crowds at her platinum anniversary celebrations in June were a testament to her enduring popularity – her post-Brexit role has arguably become even more important.

With Britain no longer part of the European Union, the country’s pro-Brexit government resorted to symbols of its imperial past, ordering that the Union Jack be regularly hoisted from public buildings and pushing projects like a new royal yacht (neither King Charles III Ms. Truss seems particularly interested).

Recognition…Pool photo by WPA

Respect for the Queen has masked the cracks that have widened in the UK since Brexit. Scotland and Northern Ireland each now have significant sections of the population favoring separation from the kingdom, and it’s not clear if King Charles will give them a more compelling reason to stay.

In Scotland, where the Queen died at her beloved Balmoral Castle, a 2014 independence referendum was defeated by 55 to 44 percent of the vote. The Scottish National Party, which controls the country’s parliament, is determined to hold another vote.

Many in Ireland still remember the Queen’s landmark visit in 2011, when she charmed the public and spoke candidly about Britain’s strained relationship with its neighbour. “From a historical perspective,” she said, “we can all see things that we wish had been done differently or not at all.”

In Northern Ireland, on the other hand, the Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein became the largest party after the May elections. Sinn Fein is also within striking distance of becoming the largest party in the Irish Republic, a milestone that could accelerate their quest for Irish unity.

Dealing with the recalcitrant stay-at-home northern union parties is a headache for the British government. Ms Truss is following Mr Johnson’s lead in threatening to overturn post-Brexit trade deals in Northern Ireland, which are part of his exit deal with the European Union.

Recognition…James Hill for the New York Times

Centrifugal forces are even greater in outlying British dominions such as Jamaica, the Bahamas and St. Lucia, where the predominantly black population is demanding a reckoning with the racist legacy of British colonialism. Barbados will sack the Queen as head of state in 2021, and Jamaica could soon follow.

On a trouble-prone trip through the Caribbean last March, Prince William and his wife Catherine faced demands for slavery reparations and demanded that they confess that Britain’s economy “was built on the backs of our ancestors”.

Vernon Bogdanor, an authority on constitutional monarchy at King’s College London, said Charles was a departure from other royals as he sought to appeal to those on the fringes of society. He cited Charles’ visits to Tottenham, north London, following riots following a police shooting in 2011.

Partly for this reason, Professor Bogdanor said that the new king could surprise those who are skeptical of his ability to replace his mother. Still, he acknowledged a surprisingly deep sense of loss at the Queen’s death.

“I feel more affected than I thought,” he said. “It’s not unexpected when someone dies at 96. The only explanation I can think of is that people instinctively felt how much she cared about the country.”

Recognition…Andrew Testa for the New York Times

Saskia Solomon contributed to the coverage.

Tags Ascension, Charless, Death, Elizabeth, King, Queen, Updates

World News

Newest Russia-Ukraine Battle Information: Reside Updates

Post author By
Post date September 1, 2022

Latest Russia-Ukraine War News: Live Updates

Recognition…Eleonore Dermy/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

He wrote a book describing a Russian military that was so ill-prepared when invading Ukraine that he didn’t know until he did that his unit had entered the country Awoke to artillery fire.

Now 34-year-old Pavel Filatiev, who says he is a paratrooper in the Russian military, is seeking political asylum in France after arriving there last weekend. He was hailed as a hero by some in the West, his book embraced by Kremlin opponents as evidence of what he called a “terrible war”.

But Mr. Filatiev remains a scourge and a traitor in his native Russia, at least among pro-war advocates who know of its existence, as opponents of the invasion are aggressively censored. Some critics also say his book ignores the strong support for President Vladimir V. Putin and the war among many Russians and Russian soldiers. And some Ukrainians and Russian opponents of the war say he is an unreliable narrator and an accomplice to the violence.

The book has attracted a great deal of attention, partly because of the rarity of a Russian soldier speaking about his experiences. Mr. Filatiev’s account of his time in Ukraine has not been independently verified by the New York Times. Kamalia Mehtiyeva, his lawyer, said he awaits a decision in the coming days on whether he can remain in France as a refugee.

“He fears persecution by the Russian Federation,” she said by phone from Paris.

According to his book, Mr. Filatiev spent about two months as a paratrooper stationed in the southern Ukrainian cities of Kherson and Mykolaiv and contracted an eye infection in a ditch. He then tried to leave the army after being taken to a military hospital in Sevastopol for health reasons. But he writes that he was threatened with prosecution if he didn’t return.

He fled Russia in August after publishing his book ZOV, which refers to the symbols painted on Russian military vehicles, and fled to France via Tunisia.

“We had no moral right to attack another country, especially the people closest to us,” he writes in the book, which he himself published on VKontakte, a Russian social media network, in August. “We have begun a terrible war,” he writes, “a war in which cities are being destroyed and which is resulting in the deaths of children, women and the elderly.”

“ZOV” describes a chaotic Russian army in which demoralized recruits were outfitted with rusty weapons and ill-fitting uniforms. On February 24, the day the invasion began, Mr. Filatiev writes that he and other soldiers were shocked to learn they were invading Ukraine.

“I woke up around 2am,” he writes. “The column was somewhere in the wilderness, and everyone had turned off their engines and headlights,” he continues. “I couldn’t understand: are we shooting at advancing Ukrainians? Or maybe at NATO? Or do we attack? Who is this infernal shelling aimed at?”

He later characterizes the Russian army as lacking in basic services. During a military operation in occupied Kherson in March, he writes, desperate Russian soldiers searched buildings for food, water, showers and a place to sleep and looted everything they could find of value, including computers and clothing.

Mr Filatiev’s report was widely reported by independent Russian media, most of which were based outside the country. But state media have conspicuously ignored him. And even some Ukrainians on social media have resisted attempts to glorify or praise him for fighting in Ukraine.

Ivan Zhdanov, a Russian opposition figure and ally of jailed dissident Aleksei A. Navalny, said Mr Filatiev had blood on his hands.

“Honestly, I’m skeptical about his decision because he went there and fought there,” he said on his show on YouTube.

In an interview with the Agence France-Presse news agency, Mr Filatiev said he believes he has a moral imperative to say what is happening in Ukraine.

“I want people in Russia and in the world to know how this war came about,” he told the news agency.

Constant Méheut contributed the coverage from Paris.

— And Bilefsky and Ivan Nekhepurenko

Tags latest, Live, News, RussiaUkraine, Updates, War

World News

Afghanistan Information: Reside Updates – The New York Occasions

Post author By
Post date August 30, 2021

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

The last vestiges of the American presence in Afghanistan have departed Kabul airport, ending an occupation that resulted in a complete takeover of the country by the adversary the U.S. military spent two decades fighting, U.S. military officials said.

In recent days, American military leaders said the United States would continue evacuation efforts and fully withdraw by Aug. 31. But those efforts were wrapped up a full day early.

Evacuation flights ended on Monday, and the military finished packing everything it intended to fly out of the airport onto transport planes before loading the remaining U.S. service members onto planes for departure.

Control of the airport was left in the hands of the Taliban, who said they were still working on the shape of their new government.

A senior Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, took to Twitter and declared: “Our country has achieved a full independence, thanks to God.”

A few hundred people were waiting outside the airport perimeter on Monday evening, but were kept at a distance by Taliban fighters guarding the area. Around 1,200 people had been airlifted from Kabul in the previous 24 hours, a White House spokeswoman said early Monday morning.

But that leaves behind at least 100,000 people, by one estimate, and possibly many more who might be eligible for an expedited U.S. visa but now find themselves in an Afghanistan under the complete control of the Taliban. Many are former interpreters for the U.S. military who are in some stage of the process to receive a Special Immigrant Visa, and who fear they are at immediate risk of being killed by the Taliban.

The United States and 97 other countries have said that they will continue to take in people fleeing Afghanistan and that they have secured an agreement with the Taliban to allow safe passage for those who plan to leave.

The Taliban’s chief negotiator, Sher Mohammed Abas Stanekzai, said Friday that the group would not stop people from departing, no matter their nationality or whether they had worked for the United States during the 20-year war.

Whether the Taliban will uphold that commitment, however, and when the airport might reopen for commercial flights, was uncertain.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

Hours after a U.S. military drone strike in Kabul on Sunday, Defense Department officials said that it had blown up a vehicle laden with explosives, eliminating a threat to Kabul’s airport from the Islamic State Khorasan group.

But at a family home in Kabul on Monday, survivors and neighbors said the strike had killed 10 people, including seven children, an aid worker for an American charity organization and a contractor with the U.S. military.

Zemari Ahmadi, who worked for the charity organization Nutrition and Education International, was on his way home from work after dropping off colleagues on Sunday evening, according to relatives and colleagues interviewed in Kabul.

As he pulled into the narrow street where he lived with his three brothers and their families, the children, seeing his white Toyota Corolla, ran outside to greet him. Some clambered aboard in the street, others gathered around as he pulled the car into the courtyard of their home.

It was then that they say the drone struck.

At the time of the attack, the Corolla was in a narrow courtyard inside a walled family compound. Its doors were blown out, and its windows shattered.

Mr. Ahmadi and some of the children were killed inside his car; others were fatally wounded in adjacent rooms, family members said. An Afghan official confirmed that three of the dead children were transferred by ambulance from the home on Sunday.

Journalists on the scene for The New York Times were unable to independently verify the family’s account.

Mr. Ahmadi’s daughter Samia, 21, was inside when she was struck by the blast wave. “At first I thought it was the Taliban,” she said. “But the Americans themselves did it.”

Samia said she staggered outside, choking, and saw the bodies of her siblings and relatives. “I saw the whole scene,” she said. “There were burnt pieces of flesh everywhere.”

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U.S. Investigating Civilian Casualties in Kabul Strike

Pentagon officials acknowledged the possibility of civilian casualties in Kabul, Afghanistan, following a U.S. military drone strike on a vehicle they said was carrying explosives related to an ISIS-K threat on the airport.

On Sunday, U.S. military forces conducted an unmanned over-the-horizon airstrike on a vehicle known to be an imminent ISIS-K threat. This self-defense strike successfully hit the target near Kabul airport. Significant secondary explosions from the targeted vehicle indicated the presence of a substantial amount of explosive material. We are aware of reports of civilian casualties and we take these reports very seriously and we are continuing to assess the situation. Make no mistake, no military on the face of the Earth works harder to avoid civilian casualties than the United States military. And nobody wants to see innocent life taken. We take it very, very seriously. And when we know that we have caused innocent life to be lost in the conduct of our operations, we’re transparent about it. We’re investigating this. I’m not going to get ahead of it. But if we have, you know, verifiable information that we did, in fact, take innocent life here, then we will be transparent about that, too. Nobody wants to see that happen. But you know what else we didn’t want to see happen? We didn’t want to see happen what we believe to be a very real, a very specific and a very imminent threat to the Hamid Karzai International Airport and to our troops operating at that airport, as well as civilians around it and in it.

Pentagon officials acknowledged the possibility of civilian casualties in Kabul, Afghanistan, following a U.S. military drone strike on a vehicle they said was carrying explosives related to an ISIS-K threat on the airport.CreditCredit…U.S. Network Pool

The Pentagon acknowledged the possibility that Afghan civilians had been killed in the drone strike, but suggested that any civilian deaths resulted from the detonation of explosives in the vehicle that was targeted.

“We’re not in a position to dispute it,” John F. Kirby, the chief Pentagon spokesman said Monday about reports on the ground of civilian casualties. He repeated earlier Pentagon statements that the military was investigating the strike on a vehicle two miles from Hamid Karzai International Airport.

“No military on the face of the earth works harder to avoid civilian casualties than the United States military,” Mr. Kirby said. “We take it very, very seriously. And when we know that we have caused innocent life to be lost in the conduct of our operations, we’re transparent about it.”

Among the dead was Samia’s fiancé, Ahmad Naser, 30, a former army officer and contractor with the U.S. military who had come from Herat, in western Afghanistan, in the hopes of being evacuated from Kabul.

VideoFootage showed the site of a U.S. military drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan. The strike targeted a vehicle carrying explosives, a Defense Department official said.CreditCredit…EPA, via Shutterstock

A spokesman for the U.S. Central Command said on Sunday that the U.S. military had carried out a drone strike against an Islamic State Khorasan vehicle planning to attack the airport. The group had claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing at the airport on Thursday.

On Monday, Capt. Bill Urban, the spokesman, reaffirmed an earlier statement that the military hit a valid target, an explosives-laden vehicle.

Mr. Ahmadi was a technical engineer for the local office of Nutrition and Education International, an American nonprofit based in Pasadena, Calif. His neighbors and relatives insisted that the engineer and his family members, many of whom had worked for the Afghan security forces, had no connection to any terrorist group.

They provided documents related to his long employment with the American charity, as well as Mr. Naser’s application for a Special Immigrant Visa, based on his service as a guard at Camp Lawton, in Herat.

“He was well respected by his colleagues and compassionate towards the poor and needy,” Steven Kwon, the president of NEI, said of Mr. Ahmadi in an email. He wrote that Mr. Ahmadi had just recently “prepared and delivered soy-based meals to hungry women and children at local refugee camps in Kabul.”

Najim Rahim, Helene Cooper and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.

Credit…Wakil Kohsar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

In the final hours of the American military presence in Afghanistan, hope dwindled among the Afghans seeking to escape the country via the international airport in Kabul, the focal point of the U.S. evacuation effort since the Taliban takeover of the city just over two weeks ago.

As the U.S. military races toward a Tuesday deadline to withdraw from America’s longest war, sporadic violence has been reported in the Afghan capital, underscoring the perils ahead for a country already buffeted by insecurity, a humanitarian crisis and a terrorist threat.

After days of chaos at the airport as thousands scrambled to leave the country, by Monday evening a sense of calm and resignation had descended.

A few hundred people were waiting outside the airport perimeter, but were kept at a significant distance by Taliban fighters guarding the area. A few planes — mostly C-17s, large military transport aircraft — took off and turned west into the setting sun. Around 1,200 people had been airlifted from Kabul in the previous 24 hours, a White House spokeswoman said early Monday morning.

American fighter jets and drones could be seen circling overhead. Taliban fighters said they were preparing for the possibility that the American troops would be gone by day’s end, hours before the deadline.

The U.S. military shot down rockets aimed at the Kabul airport earlier on Monday, a day after it said that one of its drones had struck a vehicle full of explosives. The U.S. has warned that more attacks like the one last week outside the airport, which killed nearly 200 people, are possible before it withdraws.

The Islamic State Khorasan, an ISIS affiliate known as ISIS-K, claimed responsibility for that bombing, which also killed U.S. troops. The group claimed responsibility for Monday’s rocket fire, too, according to The Associated Press.

Thousands of Afghans who had hoped for a way out of the country are facing the reality that they are unlikely to find one before the withdrawal ends.

One former interpreter for U.S. Special Forces, who asked to be identified only by his nickname, Mike, had approval for a Special Immigrant Visa but was unable to get into the airport. The visa program was created to offer a quick way to bring Afghan interpreters and contractors to safety in the United States, but many will be unable to fly out as part of the current evacuation.

“I’m still in Kabul, and I don’t know what to do,” Mike said in a phone interview. “Of course we are disappointed that we’re left behind. We have sacrificed a lot.”

He described the frustration of knowing that many others had left without the same documentation, and his fear of returning home to a village where everyone knows he worked for the Americans.

“We wake up in the middle of the night and think about what’s going to happen to our life and to our children,” he said.

Credit…Ahmad Masood/Reuters

Over the past two decades, the Afghan broadcaster Tolo has been known for provocative programs like “Burka Avenger,” in which an animated superheroine uses martial arts to vanquish villains trying to shut down a girls’ school.

Millions of Afghans have also tuned in to its racy Turkish soap operas, its popular “6 P.M. News” and the reality show “Afghan Star,” featuring female singers dancing energetically on Afghanistan’s version of “American Idol.”

Since the Taliban captured Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, on Aug. 15, however, Tolo’s usual lineup has been supplemented by something else: educational programming about Islamic morality. Whether its menu of pop music and female television hosts survive in the Taliban’s new Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan will be a barometer of the insurgents’ tolerance for dissenting views and values.

“To be honest, I’m still surprised we are up and running,” said Saad Mohseni, Tolo’s co-owner, an Australian-Afghan former investment banker who started Moby Group, which owns Tolo, in 2002. “We know what the Taliban stand for.”

Keen to gain international legitimacy, the Taliban have been seeking to rebrand themselves as more moderate since they stormed Kabul, offering former rivals amnesty and urging women to join the government. They have vowed to support media freedom, on the condition that outlets subscribe to “Islamic values.” A Taliban spokesman even appeared on a Tolo news program hosted by a female anchor just days after the group captured Kabul.

But journalists and human rights advocates say there are ominous signs that a violent media clampdown is underway.

Taliban fighters hunted a journalist from the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle who had already left the country, fatally shooting a member of his family and seriously injuring another, according to the broadcaster.

Ziar Khan Yaad, a Tolo journalist, and a cameraman were beaten by five Taliban fighters at gunpoint while out reporting last week.

The Taliban have also barred at least two female journalists from their jobs at the public broadcaster Radio Television Afghanistan. And the woman who hosted the Taliban spokesman on a Tolo news program is no longer at the network.

She fled the country.

Credit…Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times

In the fear-filled days after the Taliban stormed into Kabul, she was hailed as the brave young woman who questioned one of the militants on live television, providing hope that Afghan women might not lose all their freedoms.

But days later, like others who feared the militants’ wrath, Behishta Arghand, a former news presenter with Tolo news, fled the country, landing with her parents and four siblings in a sparsely furnished villa in a walled compound on the outskirts of Doha, Qatar.

Ms. Arghand, 24, spoke proudly of her interview and said she hoped the Taliban would follow through on their vows to allow more openness than when they ruled the country before the United States invasion 20 years ago.

“We don’t have any government now,” she said in an interview. “We just hope they do what they promise. But now everyone is scared of the Taliban.”

Ms. Arghand recalled the shock she felt when she learned that the Taliban had entered Kabul, and the fear that gripped the Afghan capital the next day. Still, she said, she went to work to make a point about the role of women in public life.

“I wanted to show the Taliban that we want to work,” she said. “We want to be in the media. It’s our right in society.”

Ms. Arghand said she was presenting the news on Aug. 17 when she got a feeling that there was a guest in the studio. She soon realized it was Mawlawi Abdulhaq Hemad, a member of the Taliban’s media team.

She had only a few moments to prepare.

VideoA female news anchor interviewed a Taliban official on an Afghan television station. The group’s takeover has raised fears of a return to repressive policies and human rights violations for women and girls.CreditCredit…Tolo News

Her producers, she said, told her to try to draw out information without challenging her guest. But once on the air, she challenged him anyway, asking about reports that the Taliban had conducted house-to-house searches in the city.

After the interview, her phone was flooded with messages from friends and relatives who were both proud and terrified that she had questioned her guest so directly.

Not long after, she and her family fled, fearing that remaining in Kabul was too dangerous.

Ms. Arghand is now staying in a house with no television or internet. She doesn’t know how long she’ll be there. She doesn’t know where she’ll go next.

But she dreams of returning home someday to help women.

“If I am alive, I will do a lot for my home,” she said. “My country needs my generation.”

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

The suicide bomb blast that killed more than 170 people crowded outside Abbey Gate at Kabul’s airport on Thursday also sundered a family gathered there, hoping to flee.

Ahmad Wali Stanekzai’s wife, Zakya, died from injuries sustained in the explosion. He couldn’t find his three children — Mina, Ahmad Faisal and Masiullah — who disappeared in the bedlam after the explosion.

Masiullah, a teenager, was dazed from the blast and called his aunt, Ferishta Stanekzai, who lives in Virginia.

“He said, ‘I don’t know about my mom, dad, brother and sister, what happened to them, but I am here alone, and there is firing, and I don’t know where I should go,’” Ms. Stanekzai said in an interview on Sunday.

Ms. Stanekzai began working the phones with the help of Lt. Gen. John A. Bradley, a retired Air Force officer who has been trying to extricate several hundred Afghans in the two weeks since the Taliban captured Kabul. This account is based on interviews with Ms. Stanekzai and General Bradley, who have been in contact with Mr. Stanekzai and other relatives and neighbors.

Mr. Stanekzai’s family had traveled to the airport in Kabul in a desperate attempt to get on a flight. They had documentation from General Bradley, but no official clearance to board a plane. As they tried to navigate a path out of the country, the Islamic State Khorasan, the terrorist group’s Afghan affiliate, attacked the gate.

“Finally we contact my brother, and he says that ‘I don’t know about my two kids, but I lost my wife,’” Ms. Stanekzai said.

Mr. Stanekzai began searching the hospitals in Kabul for his missing children, and in time reunited with his oldest son. But he couldn’t find his other two children, and he and Ms. Stanekzai contacted dozens of friends and neighbors to scour the city.

In time, they learned that the children had boarded an airplane with a neighbor, Imran Ibrahim. But Mr. Stanekzai did not know the flight’s destination.

Ms. Stanekzai eventually reached Mr. Ibrahim. He and the children had landed in Germany, where the children received treatment for injuries from the Kabul blast at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, near Ramstein Air Base.

But Mr. Stanekzai and Masiullah are still in Kabul, with no way out, as President Biden’s Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline fast approaches. They are just two of the tens of thousands of Afghans with connections to the United States who are desperate to escape.

General Bradley said he and family members had appealed to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner of Virginia, and retired military leaders to reach out to Mr. Biden or other officials who could help the Stanekzais secure a flight out of Kabul.

A White House staffer and an aide to Senator Warner said they were working on it, but so far a flight has not been approved, General Bradley said.

“The security situation is making things very difficult,” Rachel Cohen, Mr. Warner’s communications director, said in an email on Sunday, adding, “This is a priority for us.”

Mr. Stanekzai and his son have stayed in a home in Kabul, leaving briefly to hold an Islamic funeral for his wife.

Reaching the airport means enduring Taliban checkpoints, chaotic streets and the possibility of another terrorist attack.

“I understand how difficult it is, since we’ve already lost so many precious young American lives in this operation, but I feel that it is an obligation of our country to reunite this family,” General Bradley said in an interview on Sunday.

Ms. Stanekzai said her brother and nephew were concerned that their time was running out.

“‘What will happen if we don’t get out?’” Ms. Stanekzai said her nephew asked in a recent conversation. “‘I just want to be with my brother and sister.’”

Credit…Hosay

Hundreds of students, their relatives and staff of the American University of Afghanistan gathered at a safe house on Sunday and boarded buses in what was supposed to be a final attempt at evacuation on U.S. military flights, the students said.

But after seven hours of waiting for clearance to enter the airport gates and driving around the city, the group met a dead end: Evacuations were permanently called off. The airport gates remained a security threat, and civilian evacuations were ending Monday.

“I regret to inform you that the high command at HKIA in the airport has announced there will be no more rescue flights,” said an email sent to students from the university administration on Sunday afternoon, which was shared with The New York Times.

“The scholar pilgrims who were turned away today while seeking safe passage to a better future need the help of the U.S. government, who gave them the hope they must not lose,” the American University president, Ian Bickford, said.

The email asked the 600 or so students and relatives to return home. The U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan must be completed by a Tuesday deadline, so the military is turning from evacuating civilians to bringing its own personnel home.

The group was then alarmed after learning that their names had been shared with the Taliban fighters guarding the airport checkpoints. Mr. Bickford said that the university had given the names only to the U.S. military.

“They told us: We have given your names to the Taliban,” said Hosay, a 24-year-old sophomore studying business administration who was on the bus on Sunday. “We are all terrified. There is no evacuation, there is no getting out.”

Hosay earned a scholarship that covered half of her tuition. She wanted to get an M.B.A. and start an all-female engineering firm.

When the Taliban took over Kabul on Aug. 15, one of the first sites they captured was the sprawling, modern American University campus. Men in traditional Afghan outfits swinging AK-47 rifles brought down the university flag and raised the flag of the Taliban, according to student and social media photos.

The Taliban posted a picture of themselves on social media standing at the entrance of a university building with an ominous message, saying this was where America had trained infidel “wolves” to corrupt the minds of Muslims.

The photograph was widely shared among Afghans and sent students and alumni into hiding. They had reason to be scared. In 2016, the Taliban attacked the campus with explosives and guns in a terrorist assault that lasted 10 hours and killed 15 people, including seven students.

The university shut down its campus on Aug. 14 as word reached administrators that the Taliban were on the outskirts of Kabul. Mr. Bickford and foreign staff left Kabul for Doha that night.

Mr. Bickford said in an interview last week that he was working with the State Department to evacuate about 1,200 students and alumni. But on Friday, after the deadly attack on the airport, Mr. Bickford said the effort had become much more complicated.

Mr. Bickford said the university was committed to ensuring all enrolled students would finish their degrees remotely.

The American University of Afghanistan opened in 2006, receiving most of its funding from the United States Agency for International Development, which gave $160 million. It was one of the U.S.A.I.D.’s largest civilian projects in Afghanistan.

Students said they had struggled emotionally over the past two weeks after they went from being college students to fugitives overnight.

Several students interviewed repeated a poetic saying in Dari: “Our hopes and dreams have turned into dust.”

Mohammad, a 31-year-old father of three and part-time government ministry worker, had three more courses left to finish his degree in business administration.

His job and salary are now gone. His degree is in jeopardy.

“It’s as if you throw a glass on a cement floor and your life shatters in a split second,” he said Sunday from a safe house.

Yasser, a 27-year-old political science student, said he had been told in an email from the university on Saturday to report to a safe location for evacuation. But after President Biden said there were security threats to the airport, the plan was scrapped and everyone was sent home.

Early Sunday morning, Yasser received another email from the university asking him to go to a safe house at 7:45 a.m. The students were told to bring only a backpack with two outfits. Videos shared with The New York Times show hundreds of students carrying backpacks and waiting on the roadside. Dozens of buses are lined up.

The chitchat among students abruptly ends, and someone gasps. Someone cries. The students have just been told that evacuations have been called off.

“It was a frightening day,” Yasser said. “We went there anticipating to be rescued and returned home defeated.”

Credit…Pool photo by Francis Malasig

China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, urged the United States to engage with the Taliban and provide urgently needed aid to Afghanistan.

In a phone call on Sunday, Mr. Yang warned Antony J. Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, that the Chinese government’s cooperation on Afghanistan would depend on the United States and its attitude toward Beijing. The Chinese foreign ministry posted an account of the call on its website.

Mr. Wang told Mr. Blinken that the Biden administration should also maintain contacts with the Taliban to prevent Afghanistan from falling deeper into chaos. Before the Taliban seized control of Kabul earlier this month, Beijing had held talks with senior Taliban officials about the future of Afghanistan, which shares a narrow border with China.

“There has been a fundamental change in domestic developments in Afghanistan, and all sides need to engage in contacts with the Taliban,” Mr. Wang said, according to the foreign ministry’s account. “The United States, in particular, must work with the international community to provide Afghanistan with economic, public welfare and humanitarian aid, assisting the new political structure in Afghanistan in maintaining normal government operations and safeguarding social stability and public security.”

So far, the Chinese government has not specified what aid and other support it may provide Afghanistan, nor any conditions it has for recognizing a new Taliban-dominated government in Kabul. But Mr. Wang suggested that Beijing’s willingness to work alongside the Biden administration on such issues was conditional on tamping down broader tensions between the two big powers.

The United States has criticized the Chinese government over its security crackdown in Hong Kong, repression of largely Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region, and warnings to Taiwan, the democratically governed island that Beijing regards as a part of China.

“Recently, China and the U.S. have opened up communication over Afghanistan, climate change and other issues,” Mr. Wang said. “China will consider how to engage with the U.S. based on U.S. attitudes toward China. If the U.S. also hopes for Chinese-U.S. relations to return to a normal track, then stop persistently maligning and attacking China and harming Chinese sovereignty, security and development interests.”

Credit…Safa

As gunfire rang out in Kabul, an Afghan college graduate named Batool tried not to show her fear.

For days, she and about 150 other Afghan women — mostly students and alumni of Asian University for Women in Bangladesh — had essentially lived on a convoy of buses that they hoped would get them into the Kabul airport, the center of the U.S. military’s last-ditch evacuation efforts.

University officials and volunteers had secured them visas and chartered a plane for them, but several times, the buses failed to make it past Taliban and military checkpoints.

Fear about being in the open intensified after a deadly terrorist attack on Thursday and a night on the buses listening to gunfire outside.

“We accepted that we will either die or we will leave,” said Batool, 25. “Every single one of us wanted to follow our dreams and continue our education.”

Finally on Saturday, with university leaders and other volunteers pleading their case to American officials, 148 women passed the final checkpoint. Told to leave their luggage behind, they were allowed to bring only their phones and phone chargers.

Their passage past that checkpoint and onto a plane capped a frantic, round-the-clock campaign by a university officials and others to get the women out after the sudden collapse of Kabul to the Taliban two weeks ago.

As the Taliban advanced, school officials quickly created a masters program so alumni could obtain student visas, said a university founder, Kamal Ahmad.

To keep track of the buses at all times in the chaotic scene around the airport, the school used a geocommunications app that was also used to help evacuate an Afghan girls robotics team.

Lawyers with the firm Mayer Brown helped the effort, according to Marcia Goodman, a partner for the firm who said they had “reached out to to contacts and friends of contacts, including military on the ground and government officials at various levels.”

But they ran into issues booking a charter plane out of Kabul, and feared paying up to $450,000 for a single flight that might fail to pick the students up.

In the desperate effort to enter the airport, overwhelming fatigue was itself a threat to the evacuation plans.

When Safa, 20, and two friends separated from the group at the airport to tell their families they had made it past the checkpoints, they fell asleep from exhaustion as their phones charged in a hall.

When they woke up an hour later, they discovered to their horror that they had missed the flight. “We were not able to say anything,” Safa said. “We were not able to cry. We were just in shock what to do.”

Eventually, military officers put them on a flight to Doha, Qatar.

Safa has decided to “never sleep again,” she joked during a telephone interview.

Leaving Afghanistan brings mixed feelings, she said,

At the evacuation’s lowest moments, she felt resigned to giving up her dream of finishing her degree and working in public health.

“It was killing me inside,” she said. “Why I should give up? Why should I bury it? I deserve to be happy. I deserve my old dreams.”

Now, she said, she intends to finish her public health degree and return one day to Afghanistan, after the Taliban have left.

“I want to serve my country,” she said. “I can see my future, and I will be able to turn my dreams in reality.”

Most of the students are now in Spain, Batool said, with the next leg of their journey to the United States. They are not sure when they will make it to Bangladesh.

Safa said she felt “grateful” to the university but was worried for the family left behind.

“I saved my life,” she said, “but still I can’t say I have a good feeling.”

Credit…Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The United States and 97 other countries said on Sunday that they would continue to take in people fleeing Afghanistan after the American military departs this week, and that they had secured an agreement with the Taliban to allow safe passage for those who are leaving.

The Taliban’s chief negotiator, Sher Mohammed Abas Stanekzai, had announced on Friday that the group would not stop people from departing, no matter their nationality or whether they had worked for the United States during the 20-year war.

A joint statement released on Sunday on behalf of more than half of the world’s governments and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization said that they had “received assurances from the Taliban” that people with travel documents showing they were clear to enter any of those countries could safely depart.

The countries also pledged to “continue issuing travel documentation to designated Afghans” and cited a “clear expectation of and commitment from the Taliban” to their safe passage.

“We note the public statements of the Taliban confirming this understanding,” the statement said.

Notably missing from the statement were Russia and China, two permanent members of the United Nations Security Council who have pledged to help the Taliban rebuild Afghanistan.

The statement did not warn of any consequences should the Taliban renege on the agreement, although a senior State Department official said it was meant to convey an implicit message about incentives — namely, foreign aid to the government — that the international community would use to enforce it.

The chief American envoy to Taliban peace talks, Zalmay Khalilzad, tweeted on Saturday that the Taliban’s assurances were “positive” and that “we, our allies and the international community will hold them to these commitments.”

Relief agencies say that tens of thousands of Afghans fear being left behind and living under Taliban rule. That includes people who have worked for the American military or the U.S. Embassy since 2001 and are eligible to immigrate to the United States.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken told ABC News on Sunday that 300 Americans were still waiting to be evacuated from Kabul.

“We are very actively working to help them get to the airport, get on a plane and get out of Afghanistan,” Mr. Blinken said.

When he was asked about the assurances from the Taliban, Mr. Blinken said that the U.S. government was not under any illusions.

“I’m not saying we should trust the Taliban on anything,” he said. “I’m simply reporting what one of their senior leaders said to the Afghan people.”

Neil Vigdor contributed reporting.

VideoPresident Biden joined the families of 13 U.S. service members killed in a bombing at the Kabul airport in Afghanistan last week, as their remains were brought to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. The fallen included 11 Marines, a Navy medic and an Army member.CreditCredit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

A gray C-17 transport plane landed in Delaware shortly after 8 a.m. on Sunday. It carried the remains of 11 Marines, a Navy medic and an Army staff sergeant, who collectively could be the last Americans to die in the war in Afghanistan.

Just before 8:40, a second plane, a white-and-blue Boeing jetliner, parked next to the transport. It carried the president who had given the orders to end that war after nearly 20 years, prompting the mass evacuation effort that those 13 service members were carrying out when a bomber from the Islamic State Khorasan group detonated his charges at the Kabul airport last week.

President Biden’s first trip in office to witness the transfer of remains at Dover was a reminder of the length and cost of the Afghanistan war, and of his unique attachment to it as a legislator, a vice president and now a commander in chief.

Mr. Biden made an unannounced flight to Delaware for a rare presidential appearance at a transfer of remains of service members killed overseas. They were on their way from Afghanistan, via Kuwait and Germany, to final rest in communities across the nation that have supplied sons and daughters to fight two decades of what was once called the war on terror.

The transfers began in the late morning and stretched nearly 40 minutes, finishing after noon. Time and again, service members in varying shades of green fatigues carried flag-draped transfer cases down the ramp of the transport, which faced Air Force One on the runway.

First came the Army, then the Marines, then the Navy. The carry teams, as they are called, worked in three-minute cycles, marching before a host of dignitaries including the president, the secretaries of state and defense, and several top military brass. They carried the remains from the transport and lifted them through the back cargo doors of four gray vans.

Credit…Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters

One of the last photos that Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee shared with her family from Afghanistan shows her in dusty body armor with a rifle, her long blond hair pulled back, her hands in tactical gloves. Amid the chaos of Kabul, those hands are carefully cradling a baby.

It was a moment captured on the front lines of the airport, where Marines worked feverishly to shepherd tens of thousands of evacuees through chaotic and dangerous razor wire gates. It showed how, even in the tumult, many took time to comfort the families who made it through.

In a short message posted with the photo, the sergeant said, “I love my job🤘🏼.”

Sergeant Gee never made it out.

“She believed in what she was doing. She loved being a Marine,” her brother-in-law, Gabriel Fuoco, said. “She wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else.”

Sergeant Gee, 23, of Roseville, Calif., was one of two women in uniform killed at the gate. The other was Marine Sgt. Johanny Rosario Pichardo, 25, of Lawrence, Mass. Sergeant Rosario was commended by her unit in May for excellence in a supply chief job usually given to someone of higher rank.

“Her service was not only crucial to evacuating thousands of women and children, but epitomizes what it means to be a Marine: putting herself in danger for the protection of American values so that others might enjoy them,” Marine First Lt. John Coppola said about Sergeant Rosario in a statement.

For most of military history, women were not allowed in combat. The few admitted to the Marines largely did clerical work. In 2001, at the start of the war in Afghanistan, women in the Marines were not assigned to gate duty, said Kate Germano, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel.

But decades of insurgency wars fought in conservative Muslim countries forced the military to evolve.

The Marine Corps slowly, often grudgingly, opened all combat jobs to women. They now make up about 9 percent of the force. It’s still a small percentage compared with other military branches, Ms. Germano said, “but every year, more women are out front, bearing the burden more equally with men.”

Credit…John Moore/Getty Images

The Biden administration has nearly completed a policy to govern counterterrorism drone strikes and commando raids outside conventional war zones, but the abrupt collapse of the Afghan government and a recent flurry of strikes in Somalia have raised new problems, according to current and former officials.

The administration has hoped to finish its playbook by the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. It was envisioned as part of a broader recalibration, as President Biden seeks to wind down the “forever war” on terrorism and reorient national security policy to how the world has changed since 2001.

But his team’s ability to meet that deadline is now in doubt amid rapidly changing events and uncertainties about the future. Many of the same officials who would develop and approve an updated drone plan for Afghanistan are focused on the emergency evacuation operations in Kabul, officials said.

In January, Mr. Biden had set out to establish his own overarching policy for drone strikes targeting terrorist threats emanating from countries where the United States does not have troops on the ground. His administration viewed with suspicion President Donald J. Trump’s decision in 2017 to loosen a version of such rules that President Barack Obama had imposed in 2013.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

A plane carrying 12.5 metric tons of medical supplies landed in Afghanistan on Monday afternoon, the first such shipment to arrive since the Taliban seized control of the country, the World Health Organization said in a news release.

The supplies include trauma kits and interagency emergency health kits, collections of critical medicine and equipment that the W.H.O. said could meet the basic health needs of 200,000 people, treat 6,500 trauma patients and complete 3,500 surgeries. They will be delivered to 40 health facilities in 29 provinces across Afghanistan.

The W.H.O. used a plane provided by the government of Pakistan, which landed at the Mazar-i-Sharif airport in northern Afghanistan, the first of three flights planned with Pakistan International Airlines.

“After days of nonstop work to find a solution, I am very pleased to say that we have now been able to partially replenish stocks of health facilities in Afghanistan and ensure that — for now — W.H.O.-supported health services can continue,” Dr. Ahmed Al-Mandhari, the W.H.O.’s regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean, said in the release.

Afghan people face a slew of health concerns, including the extremely contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus, which has become all but an afterthought during the turmoil after the Taliban takeover.

“In the midst of a pandemic, we’re extremely concerned by the large displacement of people and increasing cases of diarrhea, malnutrition, high blood pressure, probable cases of Covid-19 and reproductive health complications,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the W.H.O., said earlier this month. “There is an immediate need to ensure sustained humanitarian access and continuity of health services across the country, with a focus on ensuring women and girls have access to female health workers.”

Before Afghanistan’s government unraveled, its ministry of public health reported a third wave of coronavirus infections, with a record number of positive cases and deaths.

W.H.O. officials said in an email earlier this month that they were concerned that Covid-19 spikes exacerbated by the movement and mixing of newly displaced people, the low rate of vaccination among Afghans and the lack of medical supplies could further strain a health system struggling to keep up with trauma and emergency care.

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Afghanistan Updates: Rockets Launched at Kabul Airport After U.S. Strikes

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Post date August 30, 2021

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Credit…Wakil Kohsar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The U.S. military shot down rockets aimed at the Kabul airport on Monday morning as violence near the field threatened efforts by the United States to meet Tuesday’s deadline to withdraw from Afghanistan and end America’s longest war.

A U.S. official said the rockets were brought down by a counter-rocket system after five were fired at the airport, and that there were no initial reports of casualties. The airport remained open, according to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational details.

The move by the U.S. military underlined the precariousness of the security situation in the Afghan capital and the dangers of an imminent security vacuum, with just two days remaining before President Biden’s Tuesday deadline to complete the withdrawal from America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan.

It followed another U.S. strike on Sunday, when a U.S. military drone strike blew up a vehicle laden with explosives in Kabul on Sunday, officials said.

Afghans said the drone strike killed as many as nine civilians, including children, and the U.S. military said it was investigating.

The Sunday strike thwarted an imminent threat to Hamid Karzai International Airport from the Islamic State Khorasan, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command said.

Defense officials in a statement Sunday evening acknowledged the possibilities that civilians may have been killed after the strike.

Bill Urban, the CentCom spokesman, said he was aware that there had been powerful subsequent explosions resulting from the destruction of a vehicle, that may have caused additional casualties. “We are aware of reports of civilian casualties following our strike on a vehicle in Kabul today,” he said. “We are still assessing the results of this strike.”

He added: “We would be deeply saddened by any potential loss of innocent life.”

Credit…Aamaj News Agency, via Reuters

The chief Taliban spokesman and people in Kabul who posted on social media said that both a house and a vehicle had been hit in a neighborhood just west of the airport and that several civilians had been killed, as well.

Samim Shahyad, a 25-year-old journalism student, said the strike killed his father, his two brothers, four of his young cousins, his niece and his sister’s fiancé. Three of the dead were girls 2 years old or younger, he said, and his aunt and uncle lost all three of their children.

“The American aircraft targeted us,” he said. “I do not know what to say, they just cut my arms and broke my back, I cannot say anything more.”

A doctor at a nearby hospital said four bodies were taken there, two of them those of children.

A senior U.S. military official responded that the military was confident that no civilians had been in the targeted vehicle but acknowledged that the detonation of the explosives in it could have caused “collateral damage.”

Video of the scene showed a tangle of metal barely recognizable as the remains of a vehicle, and just a few feet away, the charred, pockmarked wreck of another vehicle, an S.U.V. Mr. Shahyad said his father had been pulling into their garage when the explosion hit.

Earlier Sunday, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul had said that there was a “specific, credible threat” to the airport area, where a suicide bombing on Thursday killed as many as 170 civilians and 13 members of the American military. The Islamic State Khorasan claimed responsibility for the attack. Mr. Biden had warned on Saturday that another attack was “highly likely” in the coming hours.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

The United States is unlikely to keep diplomats in Afghanistan after the U.S. military departs on Tuesday, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Sunday, ending a 20-year mission of one of the largest American embassies in the world.

Officials said it was expected that the U.S. mission to Afghanistan would open a diplomatic mission in a country elsewhere in the region, in part to continue helping the surge of expected refugees obtain necessary departure documents. That effort could be based in Pakistan or the United Arab Emirates, an official said, given the large Afghan diaspora in both countries. American diplomats have also for years held peace talks with the Taliban in Qatar, where there is a large U.S. military base that is being used now as a way station for tens of thousands of Afghans who have been evacuated.

After saying last week that the Biden administration was reviewing options for the future of the embassy in Kabul, Mr. Blinken told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that “in terms of having an on-the-ground diplomatic presence on Sept. 1, that’s not likely to happen.”

“But what is going to happen is that our commitment to continue to help people leave Afghanistan who want to leave and who are not out by Sept. 1, that endures,” Mr. Blinken said. “There’s no deadline on that effort. And we have ways, we have mechanisms to help facilitate the ongoing departure of people from Afghanistan if they choose to leave.”

The Taliban had wanted the United States and other foreign diplomats to remain in Kabul as acknowledgment of the Taliban’s legitimacy as Afghanistan’s rulers.

Ending the American diplomatic presence in the country will be a blow to the U.S. diplomatic corps. Hundreds of American diplomats served in Afghanistan after the embassy was reclaimed by Marines in December 2001 during the U.S.-led invasion. It had been closed since 1989, when the Soviet military withdrew from Afghanistan after a 10-year war.

The diplomatic mission’s staffing levels ballooned during a so-called civilian surge that coincided with an increase in military troops that began in 2010. The embassy compound in Kabul later expanded, with hundreds of millions of dollars in additional office space, employee apartments, fortified gates and blast walls over 15 acres, about the size of Liberty Island in New York Harbor.

Just weeks before the embassy closed on Aug. 15, as the Taliban took over the capital, its staff stood at about 4,000 employees, around 1,400 of whom were American diplomats, contractors and officials from other U.S. agencies.

Nonessential employees had been flown out months before, and by the time the American flag was lowered two weeks ago, only a small core of diplomats remained to be evacuated to a secure compound at the international airport where they could be protected by the military. Now, with the military departing — as part of an agreement with the Taliban — the State Department saw little choice but to also withdraw its diplomats.

DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. — President Biden landed in Delaware on Sunday morning to join the families of the 13 members of the U.S. military who were killed in a bombing last week in Afghanistan.

The service members include 11 Marines, a Navy medic and a member of the Army. They were killed at the airport in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, by a bomber from the Islamic State Khorasan group as they attempted to help people escape the country before American troops complete their withdrawal.

The president and first lady, Jill Biden, met with the families on Sunday morning. They then participated in 13 transfers — 11 for families who chose to allow media to observe the remains of their loved ones returning home, and two for families who chose to keep their transfers private.

The fallen service members returning Sunday to Dover were: Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Darin T. Hoover, 31, of Salt Lake City; Marine Corps Sgt. Johanny Rosario Pichardo, 25, of Lawrence, Mass.; Marine Corps Sgt. Nicole L. Gee, 23, of Sacramento, Calif.; Marine Corps Cpl. Hunter Lopez, 22, of Indio, Calif.; Marine Corps Cpl. Daegan W. Page, 23, of Omaha; Marine Corps Cpl. Humberto A. Sanchez, 22, of Logansport, Ind.; Marine Corps Lance Cpl. David L. Espinoza, 20, of Rio Bravo, Texas; Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Jared M. Schmitz, 20, of St. Charles, Mo.; Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Rylee J. McCollum, 20, of Jackson, Wyo.; Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Dylan R. Merola, 20, of Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.; Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Kareem M. Nikoui, 20, of Norco, Calif.; Navy Hospitalman Maxton W. Soviak, 22, of Berlin Heights, Ohio; and Army Staff Sgt. Ryan C. Knauss, 23, of Corryton, Tenn.

Mr. Biden stood at attention with his right hand over his heart as service members in varying shades of green fatigues — first for the Army, then the Marines, then the Navy — carried flag-draped transfer cases containing remains of the fallen from the belly of a gray C-17 transport plane to a fleet of four gray vans with their back doors open.

The carry teams, as they are called, worked in three-minute cycles, with the public set of 11 transfers lasting just under 40 minutes total, including a prayer at the beginning.

In between transfers, the president spread his legs wider, clasped his hands at his belt or behind his back, and frequently closed his eyes and bowed his head.

A large group of federal dignitaries were on hand for the transfers, including Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III; Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken; Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and several members of Congress. One observer, who the White House later identified as Martha Carper, the wife of Senator Tom Carper, Democrat of Delaware, appeared to faint midway through one of the transfers.

The White House did not announce the trip in advance. It is the first time Mr. Biden has witnessed the return of service members killed in the line of duty since assuming the presidency. The men and women killed in the Kabul attack were the first American service members killed by hostile forces since March 2020. Mr. Biden witnessed a transfer as vice president in 2016.

“The 13 service members that we lost were heroes who made the ultimate sacrifice in service of our highest American ideals and while saving the lives of others,” Mr. Biden said in a written statement released on Saturday. “Their bravery and selflessness has enabled more than 117,000 people at risk to reach safety thus far.”

Credit…Hosay

Hundreds of students, their relatives and staff of American University of Afghanistan gathered at a safe house on Sunday and boarded buses in what was supposed to be a final attempt at evacuation on U.S. military flights, the students said.

“The scholar pilgrims who were turned away today while seeking safe passage to a better future need the help of the U.S. government who gave them the hope they must not lose,” the American University president, Ian Bickford, said.

The email asked the 600 or so students and relatives to return home. The U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan must be completed by a Tuesday deadline, so the U.S. military is turning from evacuating civilians to bringing its own personnel home.

The group was then alarmed after the U.S. military, following protocol, shared a list of names and passport information of hundreds of students and their families with the Taliban guarding the airport checkpoints, the university president said.

“They told us: we have given your names to the Taliban,” said Hosay, a 24-year-old sophomore studying business administration who was on the bus on Sunday. “We are all terrified, there is no evacuation, there is no getting out.”

Hosay earned a scholarship that covered half of her tuition. She wanted to get an M.B.A. and start an all-female engineering firm.

When the Taliban took over Kabul on Aug. 15, one of the first sites the group captured was the sprawling, modern American University campus. Men in traditional Afghan outfits and swinging AK-47 rifles raised the flag of the Taliban and brought down the university flag, according to student and social media photos.

The Taliban posted a picture of themselves on social media standing at the entrance of a university building with an ominous message, saying they were where America trained infidel “wolves” to corrupt the minds of Muslims.

The university shut down its campus on Aug. 14 as word reached that the Taliban were on the outskirts of Kabul. The American University president, Ian Bickford, and foreign staff left Kabul for Doha that night.

Mr. Bickford said in an interview last week that he was working with the State Department to evacuate about 1,200 students and alumni. But on Friday after the deadly attack on the airport, Mr. Bickford said that effort had become much more complicated.

Mr. Bickford said the university was committed to ensuring all enrolled students would finish their degrees remotely.

The American University of Afghanistan opened in 2006 with most of its funding from the United States Agency for International Development, which gave $160 million. It was one of the U.S.A.I.D.’s largest civilian projects in Afghanistan.

For over two weeks, students and alumni said they struggled emotionally as their status changed from college students to fugitives overnight.

Several students interviewed repeated a poetic saying in Dari: “Our hopes and dreams have turned into dust.”

Mohammad, a 31-year-old father of three and part-time government ministry worker, had three more courses left to finish his degree in business administration.

His job and salary are now gone. His degree is in jeopardy.

“It’s as if you throw a glass on a cement floor and your life shatters in a split second,” he said Sunday from a safe house.

Yasser, a 27-year-old political science student, said he was told in an email from the university on Saturday to report to a safe location for evacuation. But after President Biden said there were security threats to the airport, the plan was scrapped and everyone was sent home.

Early Sunday morning, Yasser received another email from the university asking him to go to a safe house at 7:45 a.m. The students were told to bring only a backpack with two outfits. Videos shared with The New York Times of the evacuation show hundreds of students, carrying backpacks waiting on the roadside. Dozens of buses are lined up.

The chitchat among students abruptly ends and someone gasps. Someone cries. The students have just been told that evacuations have been called off.

“It was a frightening day,” Yasser said. “We went there anticipating to be rescued and returned home defeated.”

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

The suicide bomb blast that killed more than 170 people crowded outside Abbey Gate at Kabul’s airport on Thursday also sundered a family gathered there, hoping to flee.

Ahmad Wali Stanekzai’s wife, Zakya, died from injuries sustained in the explosion. He couldn’t find his three children — Mina, Ahmad Faisal, and Masiullah — who had disappeared in the bedlam after the explosion.

Masiullah, a teenager, was dazed from the blast and called his aunt, Ferishta Stanekzai, who lives in Virginia.

Ms. Stanekzai began working the phones, with the help of Lt. Gen. John A. Bradley, a retired Air Force officer who has been trying to extricate several hundred Afghans in the two weeks since the Taliban captured Kabul. This account is based on interviews with Ms. Stanekzai and General Bradley, who have been in contact with Mr. Stanekzai and other relatives and neighbors.

Mr. Stanekzai’s family were among the Afghans General Bradley tried to help. They had traveled to the airport in Kabul in a desperate attempt to get on a flight with documentation from General Bradley, but with no official clearance to board a plane. As they tried to navigate a path out of the country, the Islamic State Korasan, the terrorist group’s Afghan affiliate, attacked the gate.

“Finally we contact my brother, and he says that ‘I don’t know about my two kids, but I lost my wife,’” Ms. Stanekzai said.

In time they learned that the two children had boarded an airplane with a neighbor, Imran Ibrahim. But Mr. Stanekzai did not know the flight’s destination.

Ms. Stanekzai eventually reached Mr. Ibrahim. He and the children had landed in Germany, where the children received medical treatment for injuries from the Kabul blast at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, near Ramstein Air Base.

But Mr. Stanekzai and Masiullah are still in Kabul, with no way out, as President Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline fast approaches. Their plight is just one example of the tens of thousands of Afghans with connections to the United States desperate to escape.

General Bradley said he and family members have appealed to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner of Virginia, and retired military leaders to reach out to President Biden or other officials who can help the Stanekzais secure a flight out of Kabul.

A White House staffer and an aide to Senator Warner said they were working on it, but so far a flight out for the Stanekzais has not been approved, General Bradley said.

“The security situation is making things very difficult,” Rachel Cohen, Mr. Warner’s communications director, said in an email on Sunday, adding that “this is a priority for us.”

Mr. Stanekzai and his son have stayed in a home in Kabul, leaving briefly to hold an Islamic funeral for his wife.

Reaching the airport means enduring Taliban checkpoints, chaotic streets and the possibility of another terrorist attack.

Ms. Stanekzai said that her brother and nephew were concerned that their time was running out.

“‘What will happen if we don’t get out?’” Ms. Stanekzai said her nephew asked in a recent conversation. “‘I just want to be with my brother and sister.’”

Credit…Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters

In a short message posted with the photo, the sergeant said, “I love my job🤘🏼”

Sergeant Gee never made it out.

“She believed in what she was doing, she loved being a Marine,” her brother-in-law, Gabriel Fuoco, said. “She wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else.”

For most of military history, women were not allowed in combat. The few admitted to the Marines largely did clerical work. In 2001, at the start of the war in Afghanistan, women Marines were not assigned to gate duty, said Kate Germano, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel.

But decades of insurgency wars fought in conservative Muslim countries forced the military to evolve.

The Marine Corps slowly, often grudgingly, opened all combat jobs to women. They now make up about 9 percent of the force. It’s still a small part of the force compared to other military branches, Ms. Germano said, “But every year, more women are out front, bearing the burden more equally with men.”

Credit…Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The United States and 97 other countries said on Sunday that they would continue to take in people fleeing Afghanistan after the American military departs this week and had secured an agreement with the Taliban to allow safe passage for those who are leaving.

The joint statement released on Sunday on behalf of more than half of the world’s governments and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization said that they had “received assurances from the Taliban” that people with travel documents showing they were clear to enter any of those countries could safely depart.

The countries also pledged to “continue issuing travel documentation to designated Afghans” and cited a “clear expectation of and commitment from the Taliban” of their safe passage.

“We note the public statements of the Taliban confirming this understanding,” the statement said.

Notably missing from the statement were Russia and China, two permanent members of the United Nations Security Council who have pledged to help the Taliban rebuild Afghanistan.

The chief American envoy to Taliban peace talks, Zalmay Khalilzad, tweeted on Saturday that the Taliban’s assurances were “positive” and that “we, our allies, and the international community will hold them to these commitments.”

That stood in stark contrast to the tens of thousands of Afghans who relief agencies said feared being left behind and living under Taliban rule. That includes those who worked for the American military or the U.S. Embassy since 2001 and were eligible to immigrate to the United States.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken told ABC News on Sunday that there were 300 Americans who were still waiting to be evacuated from Kabul.

“We are very actively working to help them get to the airport, get on a plane and get out of Afghanistan,” Mr. Blinken said.

When he was asked about the assurances from the Taliban, Mr. Blinken said that the U.S. government was not under any illusions.

“I’m not saying we should trust the Taliban on anything,” he said. “I’m simply reporting what one of their senior leaders said to the Afghan people.”

Neil Vigdor contributed reporting.

Credit…Wakil Kohsar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Two nonprofit organizations that have been trying, with disappointing results, to help scores of prominent Afghan women and their families escape their country have been finding increasingly formidable obstacles in their paths.

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, the founder and chief executive of the Washington, D.C.,-based International Civil Society Action Network, said the group has been trying to find room on charter flights for the Afghans, who include journalists, human rights activists and others. But the suicide bombing at the Kabul airport on Thursday has made those efforts much more difficult.

“In the last day or two, I am getting a lot of women telling me goodbye. Women starting to give up,” said Deeyah Khan, an International Civil Society Action Network board member and a documentary filmmaker. “The least we can do is make sure they don’t stand completely alone.”

Too Young to Wed, a nonprofit based in Peekskill, N.Y., that was founded by the photojournalist Stephanie Sinclair, has also been trying to organize charter flights to evacuate prominent Afghan women since the Taliban took over Afghanistan.

As of Saturday, Ms. Sinclair said the group had only been able to help about 60 women and their families leave the country on flights and is now considering trying to organize evacuations by land that would involve a long, dangerous journey to border areas.

“It is heartbreaking and terrifying that this generation of women leaders have to fear their lives, for simply having dreams and wanting to have a purpose in life as a woman,” Ms. Sinclair said.

The two organizations have received calls and messages from Afghan women who are unsure what to do and how to keep their family members safe.

The Taliban’s chief spokesman has said that “there will be no violence against women” under the new regime. Zabihullah Mujahid promised this week that “no prejudice against women will be allowed” and said that they could participate in society — “within the bounds of Islamic law.”

But in social media posts and interviews, many Afghan women say the Taliban have already imposed some restrictions. Some women who were employees of the former government have stopped going to work, fearing retribution.

“I am waiting for some kind of miracle to take me out of this country,” said Hosay, 24, a college student in Kabul who wanted to create an engineering company led by women engineers. “My future under the Taliban is a dead end.”

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

Two congressmen who made an unauthorized trip to the airport in Kabul last week defended themselves on Sunday amid accusations that their visit was an unwelcome distraction from the evacuation effort.

“Those accusations are just not true,” one of the congressmen, Representative Seth Moulton, Democrat of Massachusetts, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“At the end of the day, I don’t care what pundits in Washington are saying,” he added. “They’ve been wrong about this war for 20 years.”

Mr. Moulton and the other congressman, Representative Peter Meijer, Republican of Michigan, visited the airport days before a suicide bombing there killed as many as 170 civilians and 13 members of the American military.

Speaking on CNN on Sunday, Mr. Meijer said that he and Mr. Moulton were “uniquely positioned” among members of Congress to make the trip, given their backgrounds.

“Not only have we both served with the military in Iraq, we’d also spent time in Afghanistan as civilians,” Mr. Meijer said. He added, “We were uniquely situated to be able to get in, get out, be as quiet as possible, but also take away as much information as possible.”

More than 70 House members are veterans, according to the Republican minority on the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.

The two lawmakers also continued to criticize the Biden administration’s handling of the evacuation, while acknowledging that their trip to Kabul had changed their minds about President Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline for a full withdrawal, which they had previously urged the administration to extend.

“We realized that we did not have that leverage,” Mr. Meijer said. “We were wholly dependent on the cooperation of the Taliban.”

He added, “This is the least worst of the options that are before us.”

Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

The Department of Defense on Saturday identified the 13 members of the U.S. military who were killed in the attack on the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Thursday as they worked to evacuate people to safety. They hailed from across the country — from California to Wyoming to Tennessee — and had an average age of just over 22. Eleven were Marines, one was a Navy medic and another was a member of the Army.

Here is what we know about them.

Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Darin T. Hoover, 31, of Salt Lake City.

Credit…U.S. Marines, via Reuters

Staff Sergeant Hoover was a born leader, his father Darin Hoover said, who loved the United States and was on his third tour in Afghanistan. “He led his men into that, and they followed him, but I know — I know in my heart of hearts, he was out front,” Mr. Hoover said. “And they would’ve followed him through the gates of hell if that’s what it took, and, ultimately, that’s pretty much what he did.”

Marine Corps Sgt. Johanny Rosario Pichardo, 25, of Lawrence, Mass.

Credit…U.S. Marines, via Reuters

Sergeant Rosario should be “recognized as the hero that she was,” her family told the mayor of Lawrence. Her former junior R.O.T.C. instructor recalled her as an “absolute warrior” in high school, and Marine First Lt. John Coppola said in a statement that she had been “crucial to evacuating thousands of women and children.” The Dominican Republic’s embassy in the U.S. said that she was Dominican-American.

Marine Corps Sgt. Nicole L. Gee, 23, of Sacramento, Calif.

Credit…via Gabriel Fuoco

In Sergeant Gee’s most recent post on Instagram, less than a week ago, she stands next to a long line of people waiting to file into a military plane at the Kabul airport. “Escorting evacuees onto the bird,” she wrote. In another post, in which she is holding a child in Kabul, she wrote, “I love my job.” A fellow sergeant wrote on Facebook that Sergeant Gee’s car was still in the lot at a Marine Corps base in North Carolina: “I drove it around the parking lot every once in a while to make sure it would be good for when she came home.”

Marine Corps Cpl. Hunter Lopez, 22, of Indio, Calif.

Credit…Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, via Reuters

Corporal Lopez’s mother told a reporter in Southern California that her son had recently carried an Afghan toddler several miles to safety, and asked people to light a candle in his honor. Corporal Lopez’s parents both work for the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department in California, his father as a captain and his mother as a deputy. “Like his parents who serve our community, being a Marine to Hunter wasn’t a job; it was a calling,” the Riverside Sheriffs’ Association wrote in a statement.

Marine Corps Cpl. Daegan W. Page, 23, of Omaha.

Credit…U.S. Marines, via Reuters

Corporal Page grew up in Red Oak, Iowa, and in the area around Omaha, and joined the Marines after high school, his family said in a statement. He had four siblings and was a member of the Boy Scouts, played club hockey, hunted with his father and had a “soft spot in his heart for dogs,” they said. “To his younger siblings, he was their favorite jungle gym and to his friends, he was a genuinely happy guy that you could always count on,” the family said, adding that he was being mourned by his parents, stepparents, siblings, grandparents and his girlfriend.

Marine Corps Cpl. Humberto A. Sanchez, 22, of Logansport, Ind.

Credit…U.S. Marines, via Reuters

Corporal Sanchez lived in a small city about an hour and a half north of Indianapolis and had graduated from Logansport High School. The mayor of Logansport said that Corporal Sanchez “still had his entire life ahead of him” and that the young man had sacrificed himself by “putting himself into harm’s way” as part of the mission in Kabul. Gov. Eric Holcomb of Indiana vowed “to honor him in every way” possible. “Few among us answer a call of duty so dangerous as Corporal Sanchez volunteered to do,” he said.

Marine Corps Lance Cpl. David L. Espinoza, 20, of Rio Bravo, Texas.

Credit…U.S. Marines, via Reuters

Lance Corporal Espinoza’s mother told a local television station that she had received a call at 2:30 a.m. informing her of her young son’s death. “I am proud of him because of what he did but as a mother, you know, it’s hard,” his mother, Elizabeth Holguin, told the station, KGNS-TV, as she teared up. The station reported that Lance Corporal Espinoza’s sister had just turned 13. The corporal was born in Laredo, Texas, his family said, and he had been stationed in Jordan for two years before being transferred to Kabul about a week ago. “He always knew” how much his parents loved him, Ms. Holguin said.

Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Jared M. Schmitz, 20, of St. Charles, Mo.

Credit…U.S. Marines, via Reuters

Lance Corporal Schmitz, who lived in a suburb of St. Louis, had been stationed in Jordan on his first deployment before being transferred to Afghanistan for the evacuation mission about two weeks ago, his father, Mark Schmitz, told KMOX radio in St. Louis. “It’s something he always wanted to do and I’ve never seen a young man train as hard as he did to be the best soldier he could be,” Mr. Schmitz said, adding that the family was both devastated and furious. “Somebody just came along and took the easy way out and ended everything for him and for us — and for those others that were killed,” he said.

Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Rylee J. McCollum, 20, of Jackson, Wyo.

Credit…via the McCollum Family

Lance Corporal McCollum had dreamed of becoming a Marine ever since he was 3 years old, his father, Jim, said in an interview. He, too, was recently transferred from Jordan to Afghanistan, and Mr. McCollum began checking his phone for a little green dot on a messaging app that showed that his son was online — and OK. When news came that 13 Americans had died in the attack, he again checked for the dot and sent him a message with no response. “In my heart yesterday afternoon, I knew,” Mr. McCollum said, adding that his son was “a beautiful soul.”

Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Dylan R. Merola, 20, of Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.

Credit…U.S. Marines, via Reuters

Lance Corporal Merola was “one of the best kids ever,” said Cheryl Merola, his mother. He was “kind, loving” and “would give anything for anybody,” she told KCBS-TV. His grandmother told the station that Lance Corporal Merola would frequently say he wanted to come home to his family. He had been transferred to Afghanistan about a week and a half ago, and left a voice mail message with his mother saying he would not be able to talk to her for a while and that he loved her. Los Osos High School in Southern California, from which he recently graduated, held a moment of silence for him at a football game on Friday.

Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Kareem M. Nikoui, 20, of Norco, Calif.

Credit…U.S. Marines, via Reuters

Lance Corporal Nikoui was a young martial arts champion whose father told Reuters that he had watched television nonstop for updates on the attack until he learned the devastating news from three Marines at his door. “He was born the same year it started, and ended his life with the end of this war,” Steve Nikoui said. He told The Daily Beast that his son loved his Marine family and wanted to “make a career out of this,” and added that he was frustrated that President Biden had sent his and others’ children into harm’s way. “They sent my son over there as a paper pusher and then had the Taliban outside providing security,” he said.

Navy Hospitalman Maxton W. Soviak, 22, of Berlin Heights, Ohio.

Credit…U.S. Marines, via Reuters

Mr. Soviak grew up playing football in a small northern Ohio community where his death has left a “Maxton-sized hole” in his loved ones’ lives, his sister Marilyn wrote in an Instagram post. He was a Navy medic who had graduated from high school in 2017. “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.”

Army Staff Sgt. Ryan C. Knauss, 23, of Corryton, Tenn.

Credit…U.S. Army, via Associated Press

Staff Sergeant Knauss was “a motivated young man who loved his country,” his grandfather Wayne Knauss told WATE-TV in Knoxville, Tenn. “He was a believer so we will see him again in heaven.” He had been in the military for five years, his grandfather said, and his stepmother told the station that he had planned to move to Washington when he returned to the United States. One of his former teachers said he had been “quiet but confident” in school and that he had written an essay that said his role models were people who stand up against power to help people. “He wrote that nine years ago as a 14-year-old boy, not knowing the man he was going to become,” Angela Hoffman, the teacher, told the station.

Jack Healy and Dave Philipps contributed reporting.

Credit…Tom Brenner for The New York Times

With a final race to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan underway, Republican senators forcefully rebuked President Biden and his predecessor on Sunday for a decision that they warned could dangerously undermine two decades of American counterterroism investment.

The senators, among the loudest defenders of the war, praised American troops who lost their lives last week while helping evacuate Americans and their Afghan allies from the country by an Aug. 31 deadline. But they said the situation could have been avoided had President Donald J. Trump not struck a rapid withdrawal agreement with the Taliban or had Mr. Biden more rigorously planned for the war’s drawdown.

“This is one of the worst foreign policy decisions in American history, much worse than Saigon,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the top Republican in the Senate. “Just because we decided to quit fighting doesn’t mean the terrorists go away, so they are still out there, they are invigorated, they are emboldened.”

Speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” Mr. McConnell argued that the United States’ approach to Afghanistan — including stationing thousands of troops in the country to prop up the Afghan military — had been working, preventing deadly attacks against the homeland at a relatively modest cost in recent years.

Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, called the deadly scramble playing out around the Kabul airport a “humanitarian and foreign policy tragedy.” He dinged Mr. Trump for agreeing to release thousands of Taliban prisoners and Mr. Biden for abandoning Bagram Air Base.

“Recognize that we are in the position we are in right now because of terrible decisions made by two administrations,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“The war is not over, we are just in a weaker position,” Mr. Romney continued. “The idea that somehow we could pull out of a dangerous place where radical violent jihadists are organizing, that we could pull out of that and that is going to stop them — that’s fantasy.”

Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska and a member of the Intelligence Committee, said of the Biden administration, “Their plan has basically been happy talk.”

“Joe Biden put our forces at risk by having no plan for how to evacuate,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.” “We are absolutely at risk.”

Credit…Pool photo by Jonathan Brady

Britain announced on Sunday that the last of its soldiers and staff, including the country’s ambassador to Afghanistan, had boarded evacuation flights out of Kabul, essentially ending its two-decade military involvement in the war.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson, praising their efforts in a national address posted to Twitter, said that the troops and officials had worked around the clock “to a remorseless deadline in harrowing conditions” to airlift more than 15,000 people, including Britons and Afghans, to safety in less than two weeks.

The ambassador, Laurie Bristow, who had stayed in Kabul, the Afghan capital, to help with the evacuation process, confirmed in a video on Sunday morning that he had landed at a military air base in Oxfordshire, northwest of London.

“We’ve had to leave Afghanistan for now, and the embassy will operate from Qatar for the time being,” he said, adding that London would put pressure on the Taliban to allow the transport to Britain of other Afghans and Britons left behind.

“We’ll do everything we can to protect the gains of the last 20 years,” Mr. Bristow added.

It was not immediately clear how many British citizens and Afghans with permission to travel to Britain were still in Afghanistan.

Ultimately, 150,000 British service members did a tour of duty in Afghanistan, 457 troops died, and thousands more were wounded, Mr. Johnson said. Two Britons and the child of a Briton were among those killed in a suicide bombing outside the gates of the international airport in Kabul on Thursday.

Critics have denounced the sudden withdrawal from the country, but Mr. Johnson said that Britain had followed the lead of the United States and that the efforts over the past two decades had saved lives.

“In the last 20 years, not a single terrorist attack has been launched from Afghan soil against the U.K. or any other Western country,” he said in a letter addressed to members of the armed forces, adding that troops had “kept Al Qaeda from our door for two decades.”

Britain would remain a presence in the region, Mr. Johnson said, adding that humanitarian assistance would double to 286 million pounds, or about $393 million. “We will use every lever we have — political, economic, diplomatic — to help the people of Afghanistan and to protect our country from harm,” he said.

Dan Bilefsky contributed reporting.

Tags Afghanistan, airport, Kabul, launched, Rockets, Strikes, Updates

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

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Afghanistan, Biden and the Taliban: Reside Updates

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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

World News

Afghanistan Information Stay Updates: The Taliban, Pentagon and Kabul

Post author By
Post date August 23, 2021

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — With just eight days left before an Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline, the Pentagon is ramping up evacuations from Kabul’s airport by deploying American helicopters and troops into select spots in Kabul to extract stranded American citizens and Afghan allies.

Defense officials said that as of Monday, the military has helped to evacuate 37,000 people since Aug. 14, when Kabul fell to the Taliban. The pace of flights has picked up in the last few days, allowing for 11,000 people to be evacuated in one day. But that number is still just a fraction of the American citizens, foreign nationals, and Afghan allies who are seeking to leave the country.

President Biden has left the door open to maintaining the American troop presence — now at 5,800 Marines and soldiers — at the airport beyond the Aug. 31 deadline. But on Monday a Taliban spokesman warned of “consequences” if the United States sticks around beyond Aug. 31.

John F. Kirby, Pentagon press secretary, declined to offer details about how American troops will deploy into Kabul itself, or other parts of the country, to extract Americans, citing delicate ongoing negotiations between American and Taliban commanders. But he acknowledged two specific incidents in which American helicopters and troops have gone into Kabul to extract some 350 Americans, and said other cases may occur if Americans and allies are “in extremis.”

That is a change in the Pentagon’s position from last week, when officials said U.S. forces did not have the capacity to operate beyond the airport, and that people seeking evacuation had to make their way to the airport on their own.

In a 24-hour period from Sunday to Monday, “the U.S. military transported just under 11,000 personnel,” from the airport to other countries, Gen. Hank Taylor said at the Pentagon briefing — by far the highest one-day figure so far. “Since the beginning of evacuation operations on Aug. 14, we have evacuated approximately 37,000.”

He said Afghan allies are still being processed at the Kabul airport, although several times over the past week the gates of the airport have been shuttered because of the surge of people.

The Pentagon added a fourth American military base — Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, in New Jersey — to the list of temporary places where Afghan refugees will be taken upon arrival in the United States. Mr. Kirby said that the addition of the base will bring the housing capacity to 25,000 in the next weeks.

Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

Even as the evacuation from Afghanistan accelerates, President Biden is considering extending the deadline for U.S. troops to withdraw, amid a groundswell of pressure from global leaders and veterans concerned that a security vacuum could risk lethal consequences.

Violent clashes at Kabul’s airport on Monday reinforced fears that the American withdrawal would aggravate the already precarious security situation.

The German military wrote on Twitter that a member of the Afghan security forces had died in a firefight with unidentified attackers in the early hours. It did not specify which group the Afghans were affiliated with.

Three other members of the Afghan forces were wounded in the skirmish outside the airport’s North Gate, it said. U.S. and German soldiers were also drawn into the fight but were not harmed.

In recent days, the United States has scrambled to control the mayhem at the airport as thousands of Afghans try desperately to flee the Taliban, with surging crowds turning deadly. Britain’s Defense Ministry, which has troops at the airport, said on Sunday that seven Afghan civilians had died in the crowds, where people — including a toddler — have been trampled to death.

Mr. Biden said on Sunday that his administration might extend his Aug. 31 deadline, and he pledged that all evacuated Afghan allies would be settled in the United States after they were screened and vetted at bases in other countries.

“We will welcome these Afghans who have helped us in the war effort over the last 20 years to their new home in the United States of America,” he said in remarks from White House. “Because that’s who we are. That’s what America is.”

But the Taliban have made it clear that an extension of the U.S. deadline for troop withdrawal would be unwelcome. “They should finish the evacuation by Aug. 31 as they have promised,” Mohammad Naem, a Taliban spokesman in Qatar, said on Monday.

Leaders of the Group of 7 nations will hold a virtual meeting on Tuesday to discuss the increasingly dangerous situation. Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain, which holds the group presidency this year, is expected to broach the issue of the retrenchment as some inside Britain call for sanctions against the Taliban.

Beyond fears that the Taliban are regressing to their past behavior of violent repression, there are also worries among national security officials that the American withdrawal could create a new and ongoing threat, including ISIS terrorists regaining a foothold in the country.

“It is vital that the international community works together to ensure safe evacuations, prevent a humanitarian crisis and support the Afghan people to secure the gains of the last 20 years,” Mr. Johnson wrote on Twitter on Sunday.

U.S. military veterans have also pressed the White House not to abandon its resolve to provide a safe exit for American citizens and Afghan allies. Dozens of organizations representing the military and veterans sent a letter to the White House on Monday requesting a meeting with Mr. Biden to discuss the issue.

With Afghanistan becoming a potent emblem of American retrenchment in the world, Vice President Kamala Harris met on Monday with leaders in Singapore, the first stop in a trip to Southeast Asia that is aimed at bolstering ties in the region.

The Biden administration has made Asia a centerpiece of its foreign policy, hoping to build stronger ties there to counter an increasingly assertive China. But Ms. Harris’s senior aides have faced questions about whether the haphazard withdrawal from Afghanistan could undermine the administration’s diplomatic efforts.

The timing and optics of Ms. Harris’s trip to Vietnam, where she will arrive on Tuesday, are particularly awkward, with scenes of desperate Afghans at Kabul’s airport stirring memories of another war.

Many fear for the safety of those left behind, among them the roughly 3,400 Afghan United Nations staff members in Afghanistan, especially the women. Some have expressed worry that the Taliban and their extremist allies will target them because of their foreign affiliation.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — On the ground in Kabul, Rear Adm. Peter G. Vasely, a former member of the Navy SEALs who is now the top U.S. military officer in Afghanistan, talks daily or near daily with his Taliban counterparts regarding security measures at the airport, Pentagon officials said on Monday.

As the Pentagon rushes to evacuate tens of thousands of people before President Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, the discussions between Admiral Vasely and Taliban commanders have helped set the rules of engagement to allow Americans and some Afghan allies to reach Kabul’s airport. At the same time, the U.S. has been sending helicopters and troops beyond the airport to extract people who can’t get there on their own.

Other American officers down the military chain of command in Kabul have also engaged with Taliban commanders on specific security and threat reduction issues, the officials said — a partnership of necessity between parties that spent 20 years on opposite sides of a war.

The regular discussions between American and Taliban commanders yielded an agreement in which Taliban fighters expanded the security perimeter outside the airport, pushing back the massive crowds of Afghans and others seeking access to flights out.

Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the head of the military’s Central Command, first spoke to senior Taliban commanders on Aug. 15 when he was in Doha, Qatar, to help get the evacuation effort off the ground.

Al Udeid Air Base, a sprawling airfield outside Doha, has become the main receiving station for thousands of Afghans arriving on American military flights from Kabul.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

Desperate people fleeing Afghanistan face dangerous crowds, vanishingly rare plane seats and Taliban fighters issuing beatings. But those lucky enough to leave can be consumed by feelings of despair for the country they left behind.

As thousands of Afghans scramble to leave, Samiullah Mahdi, a lecturer at Kabul University, said the attempted exodus was spurring a sense of shock, fear and alienation for people who had fled the Taliban takeover.

“Afghanistan is not the same anymore,” said Mr. Mahdi, who worked as a journalist for Tolo News, a popular Afghan news outlet. “We are not the same anymore.”

He managed to flee a few days before the collapse of Kabul and asked that his location not be revealed because he feared for his safety. Now, he said, he was overcome by the sense of becoming a permanent refugee.

“We have no home to return to,” he said.

In recent days, the situation at Kabul’s airport has grown increasingly dangerous for people trying to flee the Taliban. The large crowds have become unruly and in some cases deadly. Fears of attacks have grown.

Mr. Mahdi said he had heard harrowing accounts of people trying to escape. He said a colleague who suffered a broken arm after being beaten by Taliban fighters had not been given medical attention until he was evacuated.

The days since Kabul’s collapse have felt more like centuries, he said. A friend left in Kabul, where many people have remained cloistered inside for fear of Taliban retribution, described it to him as “a city of ghosts.”

“Even during the light of the day, you feel like it’s dark. That kind of depression is governing the city,” Mr. Mahdi said. “People fear that the international community has given up on Afghanistan and they will one day recognize this regime change in the country.”

There was also an overwhelming sense, he said, that the advances of the past two decades, the liberalization of the press and the flourishing of women’s rights, now threatened to unravel. “You have tears in your eyes, and you cannot hold it together,” he said. “It’s grieving, it’s anger, it’s hopelessness.”

When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan in the past, they imposed a harsh version of Shariah law, barring women from working outside the home or leaving the house without a male guardian, eliminating schooling for girls and publicly flogging people who violated the group’s morality code.

Mr. Mahdi said that the Taliban were already displaying their past tendencies and had asked private and public universities to segregate people by gender, using only female lecturers and professors for female students. But he said universities were struggling to find enough instructors, and he feared that they would be asked to abolish classes for women.

“It’s a lot of pain when you feel like everything that you tried and tried to build and love to work on is taken away from you,” he said.

Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

The Taliban held their first meeting of religious leaders since retaking Afghanistan’s capital last week, laying out guidelines about religious instructions to hundreds of the nation’s imams and religious school instructors.

Taliban leaders, including their spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, took turns speaking at the Loya Jirga Hall on Monday, from a stage that was still decorated with the tricolor flag of the fallen Afghan government. The conference’s title, which included the “promotion of virtue and prevention of vice,” was reminiscent of language used by Taliban’s religious police when they ruled the country in the late 1990s.

More than a week after the Taliban pushed the U.S.-backed government out of power, the militants are urging Afghans to return to their jobs and daily lives as they try to form a new government. Many of their leaders, including Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, have returned to Kabul and meetings are being held with politicians including former President Ahmed Karzai. The Taliban have pledged to allow women to work and girls to attend schools, and have said they offered a general amnesty to everyone loyal to the former government.

“We invited you here today to talk about your role in this system,” Mawlawi Mohammad Shafiq Khatib, one of the organizers of the conference, said to the participants at the meeting. Whatever religious leaders “say that is compatible with Shariah and the principles of Islam, the people must heed. We are thankful to God that we have an Islamic system now.”

Still, no women appeared to be present at the meeting on Monday.

The Taliban leaders at the conference in Kabul indicated that school curriculum would be changing to fall in line with their teaching and that there would be more information soon about the overall structure of the educational system.

The speakers praised deceased leaders of the Taliban — including Mullah Muhammad Omar and Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour — and urged the attendees to take an active role in promoting the formation of a new government. They also urged a discussion of the ongoing drug problem among Afghanistan’s young people.

Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, said Monday that after discussions, the Taliban had moved their checkpoints farther out from the perimeter of the Kabul airport to allow more room for American citizens and Afghan allies to be processed for evacuation by the United States.

“Through these military channels of communication with the Taliban, they have extended the perimeter from the point of view of their checkpoints to allow Americans through, to allow third-country nationals through,” Mr. Sullivan said.

He declined to provide details, other than to say that the Taliban checkpoints were now a “substantial distance away from the gate” at the airport.

Speaking to reporters at the White House, Mr. Sullivan said this was the perimeter extension that Mr. Biden had been referencing when he said on Sunday: “We have constantly — how can I say it? — increased rational access to the airport, where more folk can get there more safely. It’s still a dangerous operation.”

That had prompted speculation that American troops were engaged in operations outside the perimeter of the airport, in areas of the city now controlled by the Taliban. But Mr. Sullivan said that was not the case.

“American troops are not operating outside the perimeter of the airport,” he said on Monday.

It was not clear if he meant only that U.S. forces were not operating in the area around the airport. The Pentagon confirmed on Monday that Special Forces troops and helicopters had gone into Kabul on two occasions to extract people who were unable to reach the airport on their own, and that they might do so again.

But the agreement with the Taliban on moving the checkpoints is one concrete result of what American officials have described as ongoing conversations between military officers and diplomats and their Taliban counterparts during the last week.

“We are in talks with the Taliban on a daily basis through their political and security channels,” Mr. Sullivan said, but added that he was “not going to get into the details of those discussions here to protect those discussions, which are covering a wide range of issues.”

American officials have been cagey on specifics, though Mr. Sullivan said the Biden administration was “consulting with the Taliban on every aspect of what’s happening in Kabul, on what’s happening at the airport, on how we need to ensure that there is facilitated passage to the airport for American citizens” and others.

He stressed, however, that Mr. Biden had made it “very clear” that he did not trust the Taliban to live up to promises that they made.

“Of course he does not — of course none of us do,” Mr. Sullivan said. “Because we’ve seen the horrific images from the last time they were in power, because we’ve seen the way that they’ve conducted this war, because we’ve seen the fact that they have been responsible for the deaths of American men and women through two decades.”

“We have no illusions about the Taliban,” he said.

Credit…Pool photo by Evelyn Hockstein

Facing rising pressure over the United States’ haphazard withdrawal from Afghanistan, Vice President Kamala Harris said on Monday that the Biden administration was “singularly focused” on evacuating American citizens and Afghan allies.

Ms. Harris’s comments, at a news conference in Singapore, came at the start of a weeklong trip to Southeast Asia that is aimed at strengthening economic ties and countering China’s growing sway in the region.

Instead, her joint news conference with Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore’s prime minister, was dominated by questions about the chaotic execution of the withdrawal, which has prompted criticism from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and leaders from around the world.

“Right now we are singularly focused on evacuating American citizens, Afghans who worked with us and Afghans who are vulnerable, including women and children,” Ms. Harris said. “That is a singular focus at this time.”

The remarks came after the White House detailed a series of new agreements with Singapore to address climate change, cyberthreats and the pandemic. Ms. Harris has also said the administration is focused on working with Southeast Asian nations to address supply-chain issues, including a global shortage of semiconductors that are used to build cars and computers. More broadly, the trip is part of the Biden administration’s goal to refocus its national security strategy on competing with the rising influence of China.

Still, the beginning of Ms. Harris’s trip has been overshadowed by the widely criticized exit of American troops from Afghanistan. The military has evacuated tens of thousands of people from the Afghan capital, Kabul, since Aug. 14, although thousands of Americans and Afghan allies remain in limbo. Thousands of Afghans seeking to escape the Taliban have rushed to the airport there amid violence and several deaths.

Standing alongside Mr. Lee, Ms. Harris said her presence in Singapore, as well as the agreements reached during the visit, should assure allies that the United States remained a credible partner.

“I am standing here because of our commitment to a longstanding relationship, which is an enduring relationship, with the Indo-Pacific region, with Southeast Asian countries and, in particular, with Singapore,” she said.

Afterward, Mr. Lee said he had offered to send one of Singapore’s military planes to assist in the effort to evacuate Afghan interpreters, guides and others who had helped or worked for the United States. Ms. Harris said the United States would follow up on the offer.

“We hope Afghanistan does not become an epicenter for terrorism again,” Mr. Lee said, “and post-Afghanistan in the longer term, what matters is how the U.S. repositions itself in the Asia Pacific, engages the broader region and continues the fight against terrorism.”

Credit…Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Commercial airlines have started evacuating Americans and Afghan allies from bases in the Middle East, fulfilling a commitment to aid the military in emergencies.

A United Airlines spokeswoman said the company started providing the assistance on Sunday but declined to give additional details. According to FlightRadar24, a tracking service, a United flight left Frankfurt and landed at a military base in Qatar on Sunday. That same plane was scheduled to return to Ramstein Air Base, a U.S. base in Germany, and then fly on to Washington’s Dulles International Airport.

American Airlines said it planned to have three wide-body planes available starting Monday to assist in the evacuations. United is contributing four Boeing 777 planes. Delta Air Lines and two charter-flight operators, Atlas Air and Omni Air, are providing three planes each, and Hawaiian Airlines is providing two.

“The images from Afghanistan are heartbreaking,” American Airlines said in a statement. “The airline is proud and grateful of our pilots and flight attendants, who will be operating these trips to be a part of this lifesaving effort.”

A voluntary program known as the Civil Reserve Air Fleet was established in 1951, after the Berlin airlift, during which the United States and Britain combated a Soviet blockade of West Berlin by delivering supplies over the course of 277,569 flights. The program is run by the Defense Department with help from the Transportation Department. Participation in the program gives airlines preference in carrying passengers and cargo for the Defense Department in peacetime — a lucrative business.

In discussions last week, government officials notified airlines that they might activate the fleet to help with evacuations in Afghanistan. Over the weekend, the union that represents flight attendants at United Airlines, the Association of Flight Attendants, allowed its members to sign up to staff the flights through a bidding system.

“As a global airline and flag carrier for our country, we embrace the responsibility to quickly respond to international challenges like this one,” Scott Kirby, the chief executive of United Airlines, said on social media. “It’s a duty we take with the utmost care and coordination.”

The flights are not expected to hurt participating airlines, which are carrying fewer passengers because of the coronavirus pandemic. Demand for tickets is especially weak for the international flights that use the kinds of larger planes that will be involved in the evacuations.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

At Hamid Karzai International Airport, where thousands of U.S. troops and NATO allies are trying to evacuate citizens and Afghans desperate to flee their country after the Taliban took control of Kabul last week, the coronavirus is an afterthought.

The speed, size and scope of the evacuation operation — which came together rapidly as U.S. officials were caught off guard by the Taliban’s swift offensive — have meant that few measures, if any, are in place to help prevent the spread of the disease and its newer, more aggressive variants.

There is no testing of the thousands of passengers passing through the base, in what has turned into the final operation of the United States’ nearly 20-year-old war in Afghanistan. Social distancing is nonexistent as hundreds of Afghans are ferried in from the airport’s gates, held in crowded parking lots or tents and processed in packed terminals.

The U.S. military cargo aircraft responsible for carrying a large number of Afghan refugees to bases in the Middle East and Europe are packed with 300 to 400 passengers at a time who sit practically knee-to-back on the floor.

Coronavirus testing usually takes place at American bases outside Afghanistan, where passengers are tested and isolated if found to be positive. Before the government of Afghanistan collapsed, its ministry of public health had reported a third wave of coronavirus infections in the country, with a record number of positive cases and deaths.

But coronavirus testing in the country has been unreliable and inconsistent since the start of the pandemic, as testing ability was limited or unavailable in rural areas. The current situation is part of a broader humanitarian and medical issue facing Afghans on top of the security crisis.

Humanitarian and medical aid has been scarce in the past week, with the World Health Organization and other aid agencies unable to fly supplies into the airport while it is overwhelmed by the evacuation effort.

“Conflict, displacement, drought and the Covid-19 pandemic are all contributing to a complex and desperate situation in Afghanistan,” the W.H.O. said in a statement.

According to Dapeng Luo, a W.H.O. representative in Afghanistan, the movement and mixing of the newly displaced in Afghanistan, coupled with many now living in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, has severely limited infection prevention protocols and increased the risk of transmission of the coronavirus.

Dr. Luo said there were concerns that this, and the nation’s relatively low vaccination rate, could lead to an uptick in the virus.

“This will place an enormous burden on the health system, which is already struggling to cope with escalating trauma and emergency cases and experiencing shortage of supplies due to the current instability, disruptions to governance and shipment of supplies into the country,” Dr. Luo said. “A new wave of Covid-19 could leave some of the most vulnerable without critical health care.”

Credit…Rahmat Gul/Associated Press

Last week, former President Hamid Karzai stood outside his home in Kabul to record a video message, surrounded by his daughters, and said that he would stay in the Afghan capital with his family to try to coordinate with the Taliban for a peaceful transition.

But even as he has tried to position himself as a mediator at this crucial moment, his ability to play that role is tenuous. By the time Mr. Karzai appeared in a second video — recorded in the garden of the former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah — he appeared less confident and his speech was stilted. Mr. Abdullah stood beside him in silence.

Mr. Karzai found refuge with Mr. Abdullah, two Afghan officials said on Monday, after the Taliban disarmed his guards and took over security of his compound several days ago.

Mr. Karzai, who since retiring in 2014 has lived in a well-guarded government house beside the presidential palace, remained in Kabul after many officials left. He had said that he was forming a council of Afghan leaders to negotiate an inclusive interim government with the Taliban.

But he and Mr. Abdullah are in an increasingly strained situation, said Muslem Hyatt, a former military attaché for the government of Afghanistan to London. The pressure on Mr. Karzai and Mr. Abdullah raises questions about their ability to work freely to help form a new government despite Taliban suggestions that former officials would be pardoned as the group seized control of the country.

Saad Mohseni, the director general of MOBY Media Group, which owns the independent news channel Tolo TV, said that he had been in touch with Mr. Karzai and Mr. Abdullah and that his impression was that the meetings between the Taliban and the former leaders were little more than show.

“They are consulting them on general things,” he said — “national unity, reassuring the Afghan public, building national consensus, but nothing substantive on the future government.”

An Afghan official who is outside the country said he had been told that Mr. Karzai’s wife and children were also with him at Mr. Abdullah’s house.

Both Mr. Karzai and Mr. Abdullah were on a Taliban list of wanted people, and former government officials said they were concerned for their safety as the Taliban intensify their search for members of the Afghan government security services.

“We are very worried,” Mr. Hyatt said, noting that he had learned the circumstances of the takeover of Mr. Karzai’s home from people still in Kabul. An aide to Mr. Abdullah reached by telephone said that he was not available to speak to the news media.

Hazrat Omar Zakhilwal, a former finance minister who met with Taliban leaders on Sunday in Kabul alongside Mr. Karzai and Mr. Abdullah, said that no official negotiations had begun. The meeting was more about “building trust” and “mutual introduction,” he said, rather than negotiations over the future of the country.

He said he had urged the Taliban to begin the talks sooner rather than later and that a new government should be formed within a month to lessen the uncertainty.

“Security wise, Kabul is safe, but mentally people are worried about the future,” he said, adding that the economy was getting worse by the day. “I walked around the city today, and the image that I have is — disappointment,” he said.

“The Taliban have won militarily — they can announce their government now — but politically they need to include others to form an inclusive government acceptable to the people of Afghanistan and the world,” he added. “They haven’t announced their government yet, which shows they understand the need for a political settlement.”

Credit…Karim Jaafar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

When American bombs began to fall in Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, many Taliban members fled Kabul within weeks and soon the group was reaching out to Hamid Karzai, who would become the country’s interim president: They wanted to make a deal.

But Washington, confident that the Taliban would be wiped out forever, was in no mood for a deal.

Almost 20 years later, the United States did negotiate a deal to end the Afghan war, but the balance of power was entirely different by then — it favored the Taliban.

For diplomats who had spent years trying to shore up the U.S. and NATO mission in Afghanistan, the deal that President Donald J. Trump struck with the Taliban in February 2020 to withdraw American troops — an agreement that President Biden decided to uphold shortly after taking office this year — felt like a betrayal.

Now, with the Taliban back in power, some of those diplomats are looking back at a missed chance by the United States, all those years ago, to pursue a Taliban surrender that could have halted America’s longest war in its infancy, or shortened it considerably.

Credit…Trevor Collens/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

As Australia scrambles to evacuate citizens and visa holders from Kabul, it has also started an advertising campaign to deter Afghan refugees from trying to reach Australia by boat, promising that they will have “zero chance of success.”

“Australia’s strong border protection policies have not and will not change,” Karen Andrews, Australia’s minister for home affairs, said in a 30-second video uploaded to a government YouTube channel on Monday. “No one who arrives in Australia illegally will ever settle here. Do not attempt an illegal boat journey to Australia. You have zero chance of success.”

The notice is a reminder of the nation’s strict stance on asylum seekers and an offshore detention policy that has been widely criticized by rights groups in recent years. The video message is the latest in a series created by the government since 2013 to discourage attempts to reach Australia by sea.

In an emailed statement, Ms. Andrews reiterated that people who arrive by boat will not be resettled in Australia.

“The Australian government has granted more than 8,500 visas to Afghans under Australia’s humanitarian program since 2013,” she said. “These people arrived legally, on a valid visa issued by the Australian government.”

Australia has pledged to take in 3,000 Afghan refugees within its existing annual allocation of humanitarian visas, not including Afghans employed by the Australian government who are eligible for other visas. Prime Minister Scott Morrison suggested last week that this number could be increased, calling it “a floor, not a ceiling.”

The government has said it will not ask Afghans already in Australia on visas to return to their native country while the situation there remains fraught.

The video follows controversy last weekend when Australian news outlets reported that over 100 Afghans who worked as guards at Australia’s embassy in Kabul had been rejected for a specialty visa and told to “contact a migration agent” because they were contractors and not directly employed by the embassy.

Hours after that was reported, the government said the workers had been approved for humanitarian visas.

On Monday, Mr. Morrison said that 470 Australians, Afghan visa holders and citizens of allied countries had been evacuated from Kabul to Australia’s military base in the United Arab Emirates on Australian flights overnight. He said this took the total number of people evacuated from Kabul by Australian forces, with the help of the forces from the United States and Britain, to over 1,000.

A repatriation flight from the U.A.E. also landed in Melbourne, carrying 175 people who had been evacuated from Afghanistan. That followed another flight that landed in Perth on Friday, carrying 94 people.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

The chaotic and abrupt end to the United States’ longest war is looming large in the world. But at some American army bases, civilian neighborhoods and rural crossroads across the United States, the subject of Afghanistan is eerily absent.

At the main gate of a busy Army post in Fort Carson, Colo., stands a sandstone slab etched with the names of soldiers from there killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. It ran out of room for names in 2005, so the Army added another. And another. And another. Nine slabs now stand by the gate with the names of 407 dead.

But despite so many slabs put up over so many years, there was no ceremony at Fort Carson to recognize that the war in Afghanistan had ended. There were no civilians waving homemade signs as there were at the war’s start, no pause for a moment of silence.

The same absence of acknowledgment could be found across the United States, where people who once flew American flags and stuck yellow ribbons on their cars, this month watched the fall of Kabul on television and often struggled to weave coherent responses from conflicting threads of 20 years of emotion, memory and, at times, apathy.

The fall of Afghanistan has left people in the United States both fearful of attacks and wary that the kind of military response seen in Iraq and Afghanistan may not offer any remedy.

Some watching the Taliban ride through Kabul in celebration worry that the end of the war isn’t an end at all.

“Is it ever going to end?” said Pat Terlingo, 76, a retired school superintendent in Shanksville, Pa. “I don’t think it will.”

Credit…Taliban, via Associated Press

The Taliban have reached out to former President Hamid Karzai and to Russia in an attempt to fulfill their pledge to form an “inclusive” government and defeat holdouts against their rule, amid deadly mayhem outside Kabul’s airport, with thousands of terrified Afghans trying to flee.

Little in the Taliban’s history suggests any readiness to compromise on their harsh Islamist principles or to share power, but the United States has warned the militant group that going it alone will result in continuous conflict and isolation. In this context, Mr. Karzai, who led the country from 2001 to 2014, has tried to put himself forward as a mediator, albeit one under increasingly strained circumstances.

Mr. Karzai, 63, who as president fell out with the United States over American drone attacks, corruption accusations and other issues, has met with Taliban leaders, including Khalil Haqqani, whom the United States has designated as a terrorist. Mr. Karzai is also working closely with Abdullah Abdullah, the head of the former Afghan’s government’s peace delegation.

A Taliban leader described as the acting governor of Kabul talked over the weekend with Mr. Karzai and Mr. Abdullah. A growing number of senior Taliban have been seen in Kabul in recent days to discuss the shape of the next government, among them Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s chief diplomat, who was a senior official in the group’s government in the 1990s.

A delegation of Taliban leaders also visited the Russian Embassy in Kabul, asking officials there to pass along an offer of negotiations to a group of Afghan leaders holding out in northern Afghanistan, the Russian ambassador, Dmitri Zhirnov, told Russian television on Saturday.

Mr. Karzai’s position is tenuous. Both he and Mr. Abdullah were on a Taliban list of wanted people, and former government officials said they were concerned for their safety.

How the United States will view Mr. Karzai’s re-emergence is unclear. So, too, is whether Afghans will be convinced by the sudden professed moderation of the Taliban, whose oppression of women and brutality have been hallmarks of their rule.

A week after the Taliban overran the country and the two-decade long American attempt to shape a democratic Afghanistan collapsed, there was no sign of any cabinet taking form.

Credit…Narendra Shrestha/EPA, via Shutterstock

Security personnel from Nepal, a landlocked country in the Himalayas that is one of the poorest in Asia, have played a little-known but crucial role in protecting officials, diplomats and companies in Afghanistan.

Hired by private contractors, the security workers — many of whom are ethnic Gurkhas who have served in the Nepali, Indian or British military — often work under conditions that have drawn protests from labor activists.

Now, Nepal is trying to get thousands of its people out of Afghanistan, and the task is daunting.

The exact number of Nepali nationals in the country is unclear, and the country does not have an embassy in Afghanistan. So the government of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba is urging Western nations to help rescue Nepali security guards as they evacuate their own citizens from Kabul.

“Our fellow guards should be evacuated out of Afghanistan as soon as possible,” said Amrit Rokaya Chhetri, who survived a 2016 Taliban suicide bombing in Kabul that killed 13 Nepalis. “What happens if someone is killed there in a blast or shooting because of a delayed evacuation?”

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

At the center of the scramble to airlift American citizens out of Afghanistan after its fall to the Taliban is a basic question: How many Americans are waiting to be evacuated?

It is a question the Biden administration has been unable to answer.

“We cannot give you a precise number,” Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.

Mr. Sullivan said the United States had been in touch with “a few thousand Americans” and was working on making arrangements to get them out of the country. In another interview, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he estimated that “roughly a few thousand” Americans were trying to leave Afghanistan.

American officials had estimated on Tuesday that 10,000 to 15,000 U.S. citizens were in Afghanistan. Maj. Gen. William Taylor of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff said on Saturday that about 2,500 Americans had been evacuated since Aug. 14, the day before the Taliban took Kabul, the Afghan capital.

The evacuation of U.S. citizens is one piece of the broader airlift effort that is underway in Kabul, with thousands of Afghans also being flown out of the country. Mr. Biden said on Sunday that nearly 28,000 people, in total, had been evacuated on military and other flights since Aug. 14.

Complicating matters for the Biden administration is a lack of clarity about how many Americans were in Afghanistan when the Taliban seized control of the country.

When American citizens come to Afghanistan, they are asked to register with the U.S. Embassy, Mr. Sullivan said. Some register but then leave the country without notifying the embassy. Others never register to begin with.

“We have been working for the past few days to get fidelity on as precise a count as possible,” Mr. Sullivan said in the NBC interview. “We have reached out to thousands of Americans by phone, email, text. And we are working on plans to, as we get in touch with people, give them direction for the best and most safe and most effective way for them to get into the airport.”

Tags Afghanistan, Kabul, Live, News, Pentagon, Taliban, Updates

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Afghanistan Updates: Biden Considers Evacuations Past Aug. 31

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Post date August 23, 2021

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Biden Details U.S. Evacuation Efforts in Afghanistan

President Biden said that the United States had evacuated an “extraordinary number of people” from Kabul, but that his Aug. 31 deadline for removing all American troops from Afghanistan might be extended.

“We have moved thousands of people each day via U.S. military aircraft and civilian charter flights. In a little over 30 hours this weekend, we’ve evacuated an extraordinary number of people. As of this morning, we have evacuated nearly 28,000 people, since August the 14th, on both U.S. and coalition aircraft, including civilian charters, bringing the total number of people we’ve evacuated since July to approximately 33,000 persons. We’re bringing our citizens, NATO allies, Afghanis who have helped us in the war effort. But we have a long way to go, and a lot could still go wrong. But to move out 30,000 people in just over a week, that’s a great testament to the men and women on the ground in Kabul and our armed services. As this effort unfolds, I want to be clear about three things. One: Planes taking off from Kabul are not flying directly to United States. They’re landing at U.S. military bases in transit centers around the world. No. 2: At these sites where they’re landing, we are conducting thorough scrutiny, security screening, for everyone who is not a U.S. citizen or a lawful permanent resident. Anyone arriving in the United States will have undergone a background check. No. 3: Once screened and cleared, we will welcome these Afghans who helped us in the war effort over the last 20 years to their new home in the United States of America.” Reporter: “We’re nine days away from the Aug. 31 deadline. Will you extend the deadline?” “Our hope is we will not have to extend, but there are going to be discussions, I suspect, depending on how far along we are in the process.

President Biden said that the United States had evacuated an “extraordinary number of people” from Kabul, but that his Aug. 31 deadline for removing all American troops from Afghanistan might be extended.CreditCredit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Biden said on Sunday that his administration might extend his Aug. 31 deadline for removing all American troops from Afghanistan, and he pledged that all evacuated Afghan allies will be given a home in the United States after they are screened and vetted at bases in other countries.

“We will welcome these Afghans who have helped us in the war effort over the last 20 years to their new home in the United States of America,” Mr. Biden said on Sunday afternoon in remarks from the Roosevelt Room at the White House. “Because that’s who we are. That’s what America is.”

The military has evacuated 28,000 people since Aug. 14 from the chaotic Afghan capital in the week since the Taliban seized control of the country, Mr. Biden said, and he suggested that the military had expanded the secure perimeter around the airport. He also said military officials would be looking at whether to stay in the country beyond Aug. 31 to complete evacuations.

“Our hope is we will not have to extend, but there are going to be discussions, I suspect, on how far along we are in the process,” the president said.

The president’s remarks came as he remained at the White House instead of spending a planned weekend at his home in Wilmington, Del., amid continuing chaos at the airport in Kabul and a globe-spanning effort by the U.S. military and diplomats to ferry Americans and Afghan allies to safety.

The president said that the Taliban appeared to be abiding by a promise to grant Americans and others safe passage to the airport, an agreement negotiated over the last days even as the group set up armed checkpoints throughout the city they now control.

“So far, they have, by and large, followed through on what they said in terms of allowing Americans to pass through and the like,” Mr. Biden said.

He appeared to refer to numerous reports of people who have said they were stopped by the Taliban, adding: “I’m sure they don’t control all of their forces. It’s a ragtag force. And so we’ll see. We’ll see whether or not what they say turns out to be true.”

Asked whether the U.S. military might expand the secure perimeter around the airport to help more people in the city get safe passage, Mr. Biden did not say yes or no, speaking instead of the military’s “tactical changes” to increase security around the airport.

“We have constantly — how can I say it? — increased rational access to the airport, where more folks can get there more safely,” he said. “It’s still a dangerous operation, but I don’t want to go into the detail of how we’re doing that.”

He also hinted that the military was working on ways to bring Americans to the airport who have not been able to get there, saying: “We are executing a plan to move groups of these Americans to safety and to safely and effectively move them to the airport compound. For security reasons, I’m not going to go into the details of what these plans entail.”

Earlier on Sunday, Mr. Biden met with his national security team on what the White House called an “operational update” on the situation in Afghanistan. The administration on Sunday ordered American airlines to provide the use of airplanes and crews to help in that effort, activating the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, which was created in 1952 during the Berlin Air Lift.

But the evacuation from Afghanistan continued to be chaotic in the country’s capital, which was seized by the Taliban last week. Thousands of Afghans seeking to escape the new regime continued to rush to the airport amid violence and several deaths.

Mr. Biden acknowledged the situation but focused his brief remarks on what he said was an accelerating success in flying people out of Kabul and to safety.

“All together, we lifted approximately 11,000 people out of a couple in less than 36 hours,” he said. “It’s an incredible operation.”

The president has come under intense criticism from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and from leaders around the world for the execution of the withdrawal, which left governments scrambling to get their citizens out of Kabul when the Taliban swept in.

Critics have also accused Mr. Biden of not expressing enough empathy for the situation at the airport, where several people have died amid huge crowds. In his remarks on Sunday, the president was more emotional than he has been in recent days.

“It’s heartbreaking,” he said. “We see it. We feel it. You can’t look at and not feel it. Nothing about this effort is easy.”

Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III has ordered six commercial airlines to provide passenger jets to help with the growing U.S. military operation evacuating Americans and Afghan allies from Kabul, the Afghan capital, the Pentagon said on Sunday.

Mr. Austin activated Stage 1 of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, created in 1952 after the Berlin airlift, to provide 18 airliners to help ferry passengers arriving at bases in the Middle East from Afghanistan, John F. Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement.

The current activation is for 18 planes: four from United Airlines; three each from American Airlines, Atlas Air, Delta Air Lines and Omni Air; and two from Hawaiian Airlines.

The Pentagon does not anticipate a major impact to commercial flights, Mr. Kirby said.

Capt. John Perkins, a spokesman for the military’s Transportation Command, said on Sunday that the commercial airliners would begin service on Monday or Tuesday and that they would fly evacuees both from the Middle East to Europe and from Europe to the United States.

Captain Perkins said in a telephone interview that the military had requested wide-bodied, long-haul aircraft capable of carrying several hundred passengers. He said that discussions started with the airlines last week and that some carriers had volunteered planes for the evacuation. But, he added, the demand was great enough for Mr. Austin to order more airlines to honor their obligations under the reserve fleet program.

Civilian planes would not fly into or out of Kabul, where a rapidly deteriorating security situation has hampered evacuation flights. Instead, commercial airline pilots and crews would help transport thousands of Afghans who are arriving at U.S. bases in Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

The commercial airlines would ease the burden on those bases, which are filling up rapidly as the Biden administration rushes to increase the number of flights for thousands of Afghans fearing reprisals from Taliban fighters.

From the bases in the Middle East, the airliners would augment military flights carrying Afghans to Germany, Italy, Spain and other stops in Europe, and then ultimately to the United States for many of the Afghans, officials said.

Scott Kirby, the chief executive of United Airlines, said on social media, “As a global airline and flag carrier for our country, we embrace the responsibility to quickly respond to international challenges like this one.”

“It’s a duty we take with the utmost care and coordination,” he added.

The airline noted that four of its Boeing 777 planes, which seat as many as 350 people, had been activated.

American Airlines said in a statement that it was ready to deploy three aircraft starting Monday and that it would work to minimize the impact on customers.

“The images from Afghanistan are heartbreaking” the statement said. “The airline is proud and grateful of our pilots and flight attendants, who will be operating these trips to be a part of this lifesaving effort.”

This is just the third time that the reserve air fleet has been used. The first was during the Persian Gulf war (from August 1990 to May 1991). The second was during the Iraq war (from February 2002 to June 2003).

For the evacuation mission, one of the largest the Pentagon has ever conducted, the military has expanded beyond its fleet of C-17s, the cargo plane of choice in hostile environments, to include giant C-5s and KC-10s, a refueling plane that can be configured to carry passengers.

VideoThe situation at Kabul’s international airport deteriorated further as thousands of people tried to flee the Taliban. The British Ministry of Defense, which has troops at the airport, said seven Afghan civilians had died in the crowds.CreditCredit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

As the United States scrambled Sunday to control the mayhem at the Kabul airport, the situation was growing increasingly dire for the thousands of desperate Afghans trying to flee the Taliban, with surging crowds turning deadly and the potential threat of attacks.

The British Defense Ministry, which has troops at the airport, said on Sunday that seven Afghan civilians had died in the crowds, where people have been trampled to death, including a toddler. “Conditions on the ground remain extremely challenging,” the ministry said, offering no details about the deaths.

The day before, the United States and Germany warned their citizens in Afghanistan to avoid the airport. American officials cited the possibility of another threat: an attack by the Taliban’s Islamic State rivals.

Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, “The threat is real.”

“It is acute. It is persistent. And it is something that we are focused on with every tool in our arsenal,” he added.

With the risks rising, military commanders at the airport had been “metering” the flow of Americans, Afghan allies and other foreigners through the gates, according to Maj. Gen. William Taylor of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff.

Mr. Biden said on Sunday he is considering extending evacuations beyond an Aug. 31 deadline and promised every evacuated Afghan ally a home in the United States.

The situation at the airport has grown increasingly dangerous in recent days, sometimes with lethal consequences.

In formal settings elsewhere in Kabul, the Taliban have been in talks about forming a government. One of their leaders, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, arrived in Kabul to begin discussions with former President Hamid Karzai and other politicians, whose participation in any government could help lend it legitimacy overseas.

But the Taliban face an uphill struggle to govern a war-weary nation with hollowed-out ministries and a lack of financial resources. Many Afghans are far from persuaded that the group’s repressive past, in which it deprived women of basic rights and encouraged floggings, amputations and mass executions, is truly behind it.

Credit…Pool photo by Jim Bourg

Two prominent Republicans on Sunday condemned their colleagues for objecting to bringing Afghan refugees to the United States. One called out efforts to stoke fear as “evil.”

As the chaotic situation on the ground in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate, some Republican lawmakers have questioned whether the nation should welcome thousands of Afghans who assisted American forces.

Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, who has emerged as a vocal critic of his own party and was one of 10 Republicans to vote to impeach former President Donald J. Trump in January, derided such comments on Sunday, calling them a cynical appeal to his party’s base.

“If anyone wants to go out and fear monger,” Mr. Kinzinger said, “you are either evil in your heart yourself or you’re a charlatan who is only interested in winning re-election.”

On Fox News Sunday, Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, said that Americans opposed to welcoming Afghans who aided the military into the country needed to understand that “we’re talking about heroes.”

“When you fought on behalf of Americans to protect our people, you’re welcome in my neighborhood,” Mr. Sasse said.

Some of their colleagues have pointedly disagreed. Representative Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin, who represents a district neighboring Fort McCoy, a military installation where Afghan refugees are expected to arrive, objected to the plan, saying that “Afghanistan is a dangerous country that is home to many dangerous people.”

“The Biden administration’s plan to bring planeloads into the U.S. now and ask questions later is reckless and irresponsible,” Mr. Tiffany wrote on Twitter last week.

Reports on the ground indicate that the Taliban are hunting Afghans allied with the United States, and threatening to arrest or punish family members if they cannot find the people they are seeking.

Credit…Jalil Rezayee/EPA, via Shutterstock

Fears are growing over the safety of roughly 3,400 Afghan U.N. staff members in Afghanistan, especially the women, with some expressing worry that the Taliban and its extremist allies will target them simply because of their foreign affiliation.

Despite the public assurances of Taliban leaders that the U.N. and other international humanitarian groups in Afghanistan can work unimpeded, accounts of threats, coercion and harassment have increased. Some Afghan staff members are in hiding and have expressed fear they could be killed.

A group of U.N. staff unions and associations launched an online petition in recent days requesting that António Guterres, the secretary-general, “take all necessary measures, including evacuation or relocation, in order to ensure the safety and security of all staff, national or international.”

The petition says that the workers’ “lives are now in danger” because of their work for the U.N. As of Sunday, more than 1,000 signatures were attached.

Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesman for Mr. Guterres, said in an emailed statement Sunday night that “we are acutely aware of the great stress and genuine fears of some staff, particularly those of national colleagues.” The statement said “extensive security measures are in place to safeguard colleagues” and that “emergency protocols and steps” had been taken to protect them and their dependents in Afghanistan, including relocation away from conflict zones.

The U.N. has rejected what critics call its preferential treatment of non-Afghan staff, a majority of them now safely outside of Afghanistan. U.N. officials have said that unlike countries, the U.N. has no power to issue travel visas — a distinction that Mr. Dujarric alluded to in his statement. “We need member states to offer immediate help,” he said. “The U.N. urges all countries to be willing to receive Afghans and to refrain from deportations.”

In a further sign of growing anxiety among Afghan U.N. staff members, female officials from at least four U.N. agencies have written a joint letter imploring the Canadian government to expand the scope of special visas it has announced for 20,000 vulnerable women in Afghanistan.

“There is no doubt that we, as U.N. females, are also extremely vulnerable and are under high risk of danger and violence,” read a copy of the letter, seen by The New York Times. “We are in danger from the Taliban side because these are the women who have worked with international partners and colleagues and are considered spies and apostates.”

The letter asked Canada for visas specifically for female U.N. staff.

These women, the letter stated, are equally vulnerable to threats from “various terrorist groups active in the country who will not spare a single opportunity to attack the U.N. staff, particularly females,” if foreign troops withdraw as scheduled on Aug. 31.

Officials at Global Affairs Canada, the country’s foreign ministry, referred a request for comment on the letter to a different ministry, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, which did not immediately respond.

The U.N. has an extensive network of operations inside Afghanistan, where a majority of the population urgently needed humanitarian aid well before the Taliban’s seizure of power.

Threats to the U.N. grew last month when its compound in the western city of Herat was attacked. Last week, the organization moved many of the 350 non-Afghan staff in the country to what it described as a temporary relocation in Almaty, Kazakhstan. About 100 of them are believed to be still in Afghanistan.

The fast-moving developments in the Afghanistan crisis have left the U.N. in a basic quandary. Mr. Guterres and his aides have repeatedly stressed that the organization remains committed to the humanitarian needs in the country and will maintain a presence there. But it is difficult to answer those needs if its staff members are threatened.

The quandary was underscored on Sunday when Unicef and the World Health Organization said the chaos in Afghanistan since the Taliban seized power a week ago had worsened the humanitarian crisis.

“The abilities to respond to those needs are rapidly declining,” the two U.N. agencies said in a statement. They called for “immediate and unimpeded access to deliver medicines and other lifesaving supplies to millions of people in need of aid, including 300,000 people displaced in the last two months alone.”

Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

As U.S. troops finalized a withdrawal from Afghanistan, national security officials acknowledged concerns that the resulting military vacuum could create a new and ongoing terrorism threat.

Addressing the situation on Sunday, Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, said the threat of ISIS terrorists regaining a foothold in Afghanistan was of growing concern to security experts.

“The threat is real,” he said. “It is acute. It is persistent. And it is something that we are focused on with every tool in our arsenal.”

Mr. Sullivan said the administration continued to discuss with Taliban commanders in charge of security, and that those talks focused on providing safe passage to the airport.

“And if that passage is disrupted or operations are interfered with, the United States will deliver a swift and forceful response,” he said.

Mr. Sullivan said troops would continue to oversee counterterrorism efforts in spite of their diminished ground presence, pushing back against the notion that the withdrawal posed a threat to national security.

“Our commanders on the ground have a wide variety of capabilities that they are using to defend the airfield against a potential terrorist attack,” he said. “We are working hard with our intelligence community to try to isolate and determine where an attack might come from.”

On Saturday, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul warned Americans to stay away from the airport because of “potential security threats outside the gates,” in a sign of growing volatility at the choke point for thousands of Afghans desperate to escape the country’s new Taliban rulers.

Credit…Pool photo by Leon Neal

Leaders of the Group of 7 nations will hold a virtual meeting on Tuesday to discuss the situation in Afghanistan.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain, which holds the group presidency this year, wrote on Twitter on Sunday, “It is vital that the international community works together to ensure safe evacuations, prevent a humanitarian crisis and support the Afghan people to secure the gains of the last 20 years.”

Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said in a statement that the Group of 7’s leaders would “discuss continuing our close coordination on Afghanistan policy and evacuating our citizens, the brave Afghans who stood with us over the last two decades and other vulnerable Afghans.”

In addition, she said the leaders would talk about “humanitarian assistance and support for Afghan refugees.”

President Biden and Mr. Johnson spoke on Tuesday about Afghanistan, and they agreed to hold a virtual meeting of the Group of 7 leaders this coming week, according to a summary of their call released by the White House. Mr. Biden also spoke in the past week to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, President Emmanuel Macron of France and Prime Minister Mario Draghi of Italy.

One topic that will most likely be discussed is the final destination for thousands of Afghans who have fled the Taliban and need new homes.

Mr. Macron said on Monday that the European Union should create a “robust response” to any new influx of migrants from Afghanistan, reflecting a hardened view on the continent about a volatile political issue.

“Europe cannot alone assume the consequences” of the Taliban takeover, he said.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

At the center of the scramble to airlift American citizens out of Afghanistan after its fall to the Taliban is a basic question: How many Americans are waiting to be evacuated?

It is a question the Biden administration has been unable to answer.

“We cannot give you a precise number,” Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.

Complicating matters for the Biden administration is a lack of clarity about how many Americans were in Afghanistan when the Taliban seized control of the country.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

DUSHANBE, Tajikistan — The Taliban have asked Russia to convey an offer to negotiate with a group of Afghan leaders holding out against militants in the rugged Panjshir Valley in northern Afghanistan, according to the Russian ambassador in Kabul.

The overture to Moscow raises the prospect of a Russian role in any settlement with the holdouts, who have gathered in a place that successfully resisted the Taliban throughout the group’s rule in Afghanistan from 1996 through 2001.

Their prospects today are much less certain. But the group is trying to rally a military force, and it claims to be a continuation of the U.S.-backed government that collapsed in the capital.

Taliban leaders visited the Russian embassy in Kabul, which remains open, with a request to pass an offer of negotiation to the group, the Russian ambassador, Dmitri Zhirnov, told a Russian television interviewer on Saturday.

“They asked that Russia convey to the leaders and the residents of Panjshir the following: Right now, the Taliban have not made any attempts to enter the Panjshir with force,” Mr. Zhirnov said. “The group is counting on a peaceful path out of the situation, for example by reaching a political agreement.”

Mr. Zhirnov alluded in his comments to the likely Russian interest in any settlement, which is preventing a Taliban expansion into Central Asia, where countries confronted Islamic insurgencies in the 1990s.

“I don’t believe they will go into” Central Asia, Mr. Zhirnov said of the Taliban after the meeting Saturday in Kabul with Taliban leaders. “They have too much business at home.”

The Panjshir Valley was a bastion of resistance against the Taliban when the militants controlled the capital and the country’s south in the 1990s. Yet parallels with this earlier fight are limited and even Afghans sympathetic to the effort expressed deep doubts about its prospects. Former Afghan officials put the number of fighters holed up in the Panjshir at 2,000 to 2,500 men.

Unlike 20 years ago, the resistance leaders do not control territory tying the valley with a supply line into Central Asian countries to the north, such as Tajikistan, which aided their cause during Afghanistan’s civil war more than twenty years ago. Today Russia, the pre-eminent security power in Central Asia, has instead been cultivating ties with the Taliban.

The group in Panjshir is not the only one trying to rally a resistance. Former Afghan officials said that remnants of the Afghan security forces had pushed back the Taliban in three small districts in the north. That result could not be independently confirmed. But it did raise the possibility that the Taliban had not yet fully sewn up the country — an objective that eluded the group throughout its five-year rule of Afghanistan.

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Tony Blair Criticizes U.S. Exit From Afghanistan

Tony Blair, the former British prime minister who led the U.K. into Afghanistan, said the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the country poses a threat to the security of Western nations, and resulted in a loss for the Afghan people, as the Taliban reclaimed power.

I support a lot of what President Biden has done since becoming president, I mean, I have a great respect and admiration for him as a person. And I understand he inherited this agreement of February 2020 20, which which was very difficult. And I also understand, if you’re a political leader, you’re under political pressure. People people want the engagement to end. But we’ve got to realize we were in a situation where our engagement was dramatically different from where it was 10 years ago, never mind 20 years ago, and where we could have managed the situation. And the problem with what’s happened now and this is my worry, is it’s not just about the Afghan people and our obligation to them. And obviously, you know, you feel, I mean, distressed when you see when you see people realizing what they’re going to lose as a result of the Taliban coming back into power. But it’s not just about the Afghan people. It’s about us and our security, because you’ve now got this group back in charge of Afghanistan. They will give. Protection and succour to al-Qaeda. You’ve got ISIS already in the country trying to operate at the same time. You know, you look around the world. And the only people really cheering this decision are the people hostile to Western interests.

Tony Blair, the former British prime minister who led the U.K. into Afghanistan, said the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the country poses a threat to the security of Western nations, and resulted in a loss for the Afghan people, as the Taliban reclaimed power.CreditCredit…Toby Melville/Reuters

Tony Blair, the former prime minister of Britain, on Saturday criticized the withdrawal from Afghanistan, calling it a hasty move made “in obedience to an imbecilic political slogan about ending ‘the forever wars.’”

As prime minister, Mr. Blair sent British troops into both Afghanistan and Iraq, backing President George W. Bush’s decision to invade both countries after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Those conflicts have helped to comprise Mr. Blair’s legacy, particularly the war in Iraq, which a British investigation later found was promoted with intelligence that falsely overstated the threats posed by Saddam Hussein’s government.

In his statement on Saturday, Mr. Blair acknowledged unspecified mistakes in the 20-year military involvement in Afghanistan, some of them serious. But he said that the chaotic retreat would undermine faith in the West and sacrifice fragile improvements in the lives of Afghans.

“And for anyone who disputes that, read the heartbreaking laments from every section of Afghan society as to what they fear will now be lost,” Mr. Blair wrote. “Gains in living standards, education particularly of girls, gains in freedom. Not nearly what we hoped or wanted. But not nothing. Something worth defending, worth protecting.”

Mr. Blair did not mention President Biden by name in his statement. But he argued that leaving Afghanistan raised questions about whether the West had lost its strategic will and that it had resulted in a humiliation that would be cheered on by jihadist groups and exploited by China, Iran and Russia.

The Taliban should be seen as part of a broader ideology of what he called “Radical Islam” that should continue to concern the West, Mr. Blair argued, even if some believe that Afghanistan itself is of little geopolitical importance.

“If we did define it as a strategic challenge, and saw it in whole and not as parts, we would never have taken the decision to pull out of Afghanistan,” he wrote.

He called on the West to exert pressure on the Taliban, including potential incentives as well as sanctions, to protect Afghan civilians.

“This is urgent,” he wrote. “The disarray of the past weeks needs to be replaced by something resembling coherence, and with a plan that is credible and realistic. But then we must answer that overarching question. What are our strategic interests and are we prepared any longer to commit to upholding them?”

Credit…Caroline Chia/Reuters

Vice President Kamala Harris on Sunday began a trip to Southeast Asia, where her attempts to bolster American relationships are likely to be shadowed by the messy and chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Ms. Harris arrived on Sunday in Singapore, where she planned to meet with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and other officials before heading to Vietnam on Tuesday. The White House said last month that the vice president’s visits to the two countries would focus on regional security, the global response to the pandemic, climate change and economic cooperation.

The Biden administration has made Asia a centerpiece of its foreign policy, hoping to build stronger ties there to counter an increasingly assertive China. But Ms. Harris’s senior aides have already faced questions about whether the haphazard withdrawal in Afghanistan could undermine the administration’s efforts to bolster partnerships in the South China Sea.

“We couldn’t have a higher priority right now, a particularly high priority to make sure we safely evacuate American citizens, Afghans who worked with us,” Ms. Harris said on Friday before boarding Air Force Two in the United States. “It’s a big area of focus for me in the past days and weeks and it will continue to be.”

For Ms. Harris, the trip’s optics will be especially fraught in Vietnam, where the past week’s images of desperate Afghans trying to flee Kabul’s airport have recalled America’s ignominious exit from South Vietnam in 1975.

Ms. Harris is expected to offer reassurances that the United States remains committed to the region even as Beijing has cultivated countries there with visits, loans and coronavirus vaccines. China is Southeast Asia’s most important trading partner, and senior Chinese officials, including Xi Jinping, the country’s top leader, have traveled to the region at least five times since January of last year.

The economic interdependence between Southeast Asian countries and Beijing has forced them to strike a balance between China and the United States, wary of China’s ambitions but mindful of its economic value, while looking toward the United States as a counterweight.

Concerns about China’s exploiting the situation in Afghanistan have been fanned in recent days as Beijing painted the mayhem as a failure of American political and military might. “The last dusk of empire,” China’s official news agency called it.

But the Taliban takeover also poses geopolitical and security challenges for Beijing. China shares a short, remote border with Afghanistan, which, under Taliban rule in the 1990s, served as a haven for Uyghur extremists from the western Chinese region of Xinjiang.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

Here is a look at the origin of the Taliban; how they managed to take over Afghanistan not once, but twice; what they did when they first took control — and what that might reveal about their plans for this time.

When did the Taliban first emerge?

The Taliban arose in the early 1990s amid the turmoil that followed the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989.

The Soviets were defeated by Islamic fighters known as the mujahedeen, a patchwork of insurgent factions. The country fell into warlordism, and a brutal civil war.

Against this backdrop, the Taliban, with their promise to put Islamic values first and to battle the corruption that drove the warlords’ fighting, quickly attracted a following. Over years of intense fighting, they took over most of the country.

Why did the U.S. invade Afghanistan?

When they were in power, the Taliban made Afghanistan a safe harbor for Osama bin Laden, a Saudi Arabia-born former mujahedeen fighter, while he built up a terrorist group with global designs: Al Qaeda.

On Sept 11, 2001, the group struck a blow that rattled the world, toppling the World Trade Center towers in New York and damaging the Pentagon in Washington. Thousands were killed.

President George W. Bush demanded that the Taliban hand over Al Qaeda and Bin Laden. When the Taliban balked, the United States invaded.

What will the Taliban do next?

The early days of Taliban control have seemed restrained in some places. But enough reports of brutality and intimidation have surfaced to send waves of refugees to the Kabul airport in a desperate attempt to flee.

In Kunduz, a major provincial capital, residents were unconvinced by promises of peace from their new rulers.

“I am afraid, because I do not know what will happen and what they will do,” one resident said.

Credit…Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

It was the end of a decades-long American military engagement overseas, and thousands of U.S. allies were clamoring to board the last planes leaving for, they hoped, eventual resettlement in the United States. Their capital had fallen. Deadly reprisals for those who stayed behind were almost certain.

It was 1975, the tumultuous backdrop was Southeast Asia, and Washington largely opened America’s doors, letting in some 300,000 refugees from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia over the next four years. Joseph R. Biden Jr., then a young senator from Delaware, co-sponsored landmark legislation that won unanimous passage in the Senate and was signed into law in 1980, divorcing refugee admissions from U.S. foreign policy and generally expanding the number allowed into the country each year.

Now, as similar scenes of chaos and desperation unfold in Kabul with the conclusion of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan, most analysts say there is little chance that the United States will repeat the extensive refugee resettlement effort that accompanied the end of the war in Vietnam.

Decades of lukewarm public sentiment over refugees, a toxic political stalemate over immigration and contemporary concerns over terrorism and the coronavirus pandemic have all but eliminated the possibility of a similar mass mobilization.

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Taliban Takes Cost in Kabul: Afghanistan Stay Updates

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Post date August 16, 2021

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VideoOne day after the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan, thousands of people who were desperate to flee the country rushed to the airport in Kabul.CreditCredit…Wakil Kohsar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The day after the Taliban installed themselves in the presidential palace in Kabul, seizing control over Afghanistan two decades after being toppled from power by the U.S. military, fears intensified on Monday about a return to the Taliban’s brutal rule and the threat of reprisal killings.

Kabul’s international airport was under the protection of foreign forces, including thousands of U.S. soldiers sent to the country to assist in a hasty evacuation. The Pentagon said on Monday evening in Kabul that all flights had been suspended, military or civilian, into Hamid Karzai International Airport. A U.S. military official who was not authorized to speak publicly said U.S. armed forces were not involved in the president’s departure.

It was a scene of desperation, sadness and panic.

Thousands of Afghans flooded the tarmac on Monday morning, at one point swarming around a departing U.S. military plane as it taxied down the runway. U.S. Marines worked to secure the civilian side of the airport, with the help of Turkish troops, after security was breached there on Monday, John F. Kirby, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said.

Images of people clinging to the hulking aircraft even as it left the ground quickly circulated around the world. It seemed to capture the moment more vividly than words: a symbol of America’s military might, flying out of the country even as Afghans hung on against all hope.

A U.S. military official confirmed that some Afghans were killed in the airplane incident. However, the official could not confirm how many died.

The U.S. forces on site used helicopters to help clear the runway in the military section of the airport. American troops fatally shot at least two armed men who approached the Americans at the airport security perimeter and brandished their weapons, according to a U.S. military official.

President Biden defended his decision on Monday to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, arguing that the U.S. mission there was complete and that nation building was never the initial goal.

“I’ve learned the hard way, there was never a good time to withdraw U.S. forces,’’ he said from the White House after cutting short a visit to Camp David. “This did unfold more quickly than we anticipated.”

In July, Mr. Biden said that “the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.”

Worries pervaded Kabul, the capital, about the potential for violence as the Taliban filled the city and the Afghan government crumbled. President Ashraf Ghani fled the country as the insurgents entered the city on Sunday.

In remarkable scenes broadcast on Al Jazeera, Taliban leaders ensconced themselves in the palace only hours after Mr. Ghani fled — taking control over what was once one of the most secure locations in the country and a symbol of the nation that the United States spent so much money and sacrificed so much blood to uphold.

Though not a formal surrender, it might as well have been.

In the video, the head of the Afghan presidential security guard shook hands with a Taliban commander in one of the palace buildings and said he had accompanied the Taliban commander at the request of the senior Afghan government negotiator.

“I say welcome to them, and I congratulate them,” the official said.

Afghan officials in other cities were filmed handing over power to insurgent leaders. Former President Hamid Karzai said he had formed a council with other political leaders to coordinate a peaceful transition to a new Taliban government. Mr. Karzai also asked the head of the Presidential Protection Service to remain at his post and ensure that the palace was not looted.

Early Taliban actions in other cities under their control offered a glimpse of what the future might hold. In Kunduz, which fell on Aug. 8, they set up checkpoints and went door to door in search of absentee civil servants, warning that any who did not return to work would be punished.

The change in atmosphere in Kabul was as swift as it was frightening for many who thought that they could build a life under the protection of their American allies.

Some in the city said the Taliban had already visited government officials’ homes. They entered the home of one former official in western Kabul and removed his cars and took over the home of a former governor in another part of town.

In other parts of the country, there were reports that fighters were searching for people they consider collaborators of the Americans and the fallen government.

Residents of Kabul began tearing down advertisements that showed women without head scarves for fear of upsetting the Taliban, whose ideology excludes women from much of public life.

Some police officers were taken into custody by Taliban fighters, while others were seen changing into civilian clothes and trying to flee.

The Taliban said their forces had entered Kabul to ensure order and public safety.

A member of the Taliban’s negotiating team in Qatar told the BBC that “there will be no revenge” on civilians. “We assure the people in Afghanistan, particularly in the city of Kabul, that their properties, their lives are safe,” Suhail Shaheen said on Sunday night. “There will be no revenge on anyone.”

Credit…Wakil Kohsar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The crowds outside Kabul’s international airport swelled on Monday morning, leaving the fences and security forces straining to contain the mass of people desperate to escape Afghanistan as the Taliban took control.

They rushed through the perimeter of the airport’s civilian section and swarmed the tarmac. Soldiers stood guard, many with weapons drawn.

EPA, via Shutterstock
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Wakil Kohsar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
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As flights prepared to depart, people clung dangerously to the sides of military planes even as one taxied down the runway. A U.S. military official confirmed that some Afghans were killed in the airplane incident. However, the official could not confirm how many died.

As the chaos spread, U.S. troops took control of the airport’s civilian section, while people rushed through the boarding gates and tried to push their way onto two commercial planes that were parked beside the terminal.

With civilian air travel temporarily halted, the arriving and departing military planes underscored the stark divide between foreign nationals and some Afghans who were a flight away from safety, and many more who would have no escape.

Evacuation flights resumed on Monday evening, the Pentagon said, after suspending them during the day.

The U.S. government said that in the coming days it would evacuate thousands of American citizens, embassy employees and their families, and “particularly vulnerable Afghan nationals.”

The desperation was evident as some people broke down in tears, recognizing that their chance of escape was slim. Reports of gunfire also circulated throughout the morning.

Although the Taliban has seized control of the country, there is no government in any real sense. That made it hard to get reliable information, both for people inside the country and the wider world watching the events unfold.

Video from journalists recorded sounds of gunfire at the airport as people ran across the tarmac and approached gates from outside. The local news media aired video of young Afghans clinging to a plane as it taxied. Apache helicopters flew low over the crowds to clear the way for military planes.

The Afghan Civil Aviation Authority said on Monday that all civilian flights in and out of the Kabul airport had been suspended because of the chaos. The agency urged people to not travel to the airport.

But the tracking site Flightradar24 reported that a Boeing 777-300 from Turkish Airlines had departed for Istanbul after five hours on the ground.

Twenty years after the United States invaded Afghanistan, the airport was the nation’s final redoubt, one of the last places in the capital not controlled by the Taliban. The State Department said all embassy personnel had been evacuated to the airport, where they were being defended by the U.S. military.

But for the thousands of others hoping to find refuge, there was no escape.

Witnesses said they saw a growing number of Taliban around the civilian side of the airport. They appeared to be clearing groups of people away, sometimes shooting into the air to get them moving.

Several witnesses said that the Taliban were now controlling access to entrances on the civilian side — allowing groups of people and vehicles to leave the airport but turning people away if they were trying to get in.

One international worker for a humanitarian group who was trying to get to the airport was told that no one would be allowed to leave the country now without permission from the “new government.”

Credit…Wakil Kohsar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Flights of U.S. military planes bringing thousands of Marine and Army reinforcements to Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul were delayed for a few hours on Monday because of crowds of civilians on the runway, a military official said.

The official said the flights had eventually resumed when the runways were cleared. But later in the day, the Pentagon said that all flights were suspended again because of a security breach on the civilian side of the airport.

About 3,000 U.S. Marines and soldiers were expected to be on the ground at the airport by Monday morning, with another 3,000 troops en route, Pentagon officials said.

A day after the fall of Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, U.S. warplanes and armed drones flew cover over the airport but did not carry out airstrikes, the official said.

The military official disclosed for the first time that Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the head of the Pentagon’s Central Command, had met in Doha, Qatar, on Sunday with senior Taliban representatives.

In a 45-minute meeting, General McKenzie told the Taliban officials that the United States would defend itself during the evacuations of American personnel and Afghan civilians at the airport, and warned the insurgents not to interfere in the operation, the official said.

General McKenzie, who assumed command last month of the residual U.S. military operation in Afghanistan, flew to Qatar over the weekend to oversee the mission.

U.S. troops fatally shot at least two armed men who approached the Americans at the airport security perimeter and brandished their weapons, the military official said. But otherwise Taliban fighters did not appear to be interfering with the frenzied evacuation at the airport.

Credit…Wakil Kohsar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

With thousands desperate to escape the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, other countries are bracing for a flood of people seeking refuge.

Five Mediterranean countries on the forefront of mass migration to Europe — Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Malta and Spain — have requested European Union-level talks on Wednesday about how to respond, according Greece’s migration ministry.

There are also concerns about refugees flowing to Iran, Pakistan and Turkey.

Canada said last week that it would resettle more than 20,000 Afghan citizens from groups that it considers likely targets of the Taliban, including leading women, rights workers and L.G.B.T.Q. people.

“We will continue to work to get as many Afghan interpreters and their families out as quickly as possible as long as the security situation holds,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters on Sunday, “and we will continue to work over the coming months to resettle refugees.”

In Australia, Prime Minister Scott Morrison told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Monday that more than 430 embassy employees and their families had been resettled there since April and that the government was working to evacuate more.

In New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern called on the Taliban “to acknowledge what the international community has called for: human rights and the safety of their people.”

She declined to say whether New Zealand would recognize a Taliban-led government.

“What we want to see is human rights upheld. We want to see women and girls being able to access work and education,” she said at a news conference. “These are things that traditionally have not been available to them when there has been governance by the Taliban.”

Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Biden offered a defiant defense on Monday of his decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, returning to the White House from a weekend at Camp David amid chaotic scenes at the Kabul airport following the collapse of the Afghanistan government to the Taliban.

Speaking to the American people from the ornate East Room, Mr. Biden stood by his decision to end the longest war in United States history and rejected criticism from allies and adversaries about the events of the weekend that left hundreds of Afghans desperately running after military planes as they ferried Americans to safety out of the country’s capital.

“The choice I had to make as your president was either to follow through on the agreement to drawdown our forces,” Mr. Biden said, “or escalating the conflict and sending thousands more American troops back into combat and lurching into the third decade of conflict.”

He added: “I stand squarely behind my decision.”

Mr. Biden, who immediately left the White House to return to Camp David, acknowledged the truth told by dramatic images over the past 72 hours: a frantic scramble to evacuate the American embassy in Kabul in the face of advancing Taliban fighters, which has drawn grim comparisons to the country’s defeated retreat from Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War. The president conceded during his remarks that the result of his decision to pull out troops had become “hard and messy,”

But he rejected the analogy, insisting that the administration had planned for the possibility of a rapid Taliban takeover and expressed pride that diplomats and other Americans had been evacuated to relative safety at the Kabul airport, which aides said was in the process of being secured by several thousand American troops. And he blamed the fall of the Afghan regime on the failure of the country’s military and political leaders to stand up for themselves.

“Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country,” he said, accusing the military of laying down their arms after two decades of U.S. training and hundreds of billions of dollars in equipment and resources. “If anything, the developments of the past week reinforce that ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan now was the right decision.”

He directed his ire at Afghanistan’s political leaders, saying he urged them to engage in real diplomacy.

“This advice was flatly refused,” he said.

Mr. Biden vowed again to rescue thousands of Afghans who had helped Americans during the two-decade conflict, but the fate of many who remained in Kabul and other parts of Afghanistan was uncertain Monday. And thousands of Afghans with dual American citizenship remained unaccounted for amid reports of revenge attacks by the Taliban as they seized control.

The political impact of the weekend’s dramatic collapse of the Afghan government caught the White House off guard throughout the fast-moving events, even as howls of criticism poured in from Republican and Democratic lawmakers, Afghan activists, former President Donald Trump, foreign policy experts and officials from previous administrations.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the top Republican in the Senate, called it a “monumental collapse” in Afghanistan and said responsibility rests squarely with Mr. Biden. Seth Moulton, a Democratic lawmaker and former Marine captain said the administration had made “not just a national security mistake, but a political mistake too.” The American Civil Liberties Union said the president is “failing at the fundamentally important task of humanitarian protection.”

Mr. Trump, who himself sought a withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan with an even earlier deadline of May 2021, issued repeated denunciations of his successor.

“The outcome in Afghanistan, including the withdrawal, would have been totally different if the Trump administration had been in charge,” Mr. Trump said Monday morning. “Who or what will Joe Biden surrender to next? Someone should ask him, if they can find him.”

Mr. Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., tweeted out a hashtag: #WheresBiden?

Mr. Biden had been scheduled to remain on vacation through the week, including heading to Wilmington for several days. Previous presidents have chosen to cut vacations short to be seen as dealing with developing crises at the White House.

Over the weekend, Mr. Biden chose to remain with his family at the presidential retreat in the Maryland mountains while the situation in Afghanistan worsened rather than quickly return to the White House. In addition a long written statement on Saturday, the White House released a photo of Mr. Biden, sitting alone at a conference room table at Camp David, as he conducted a virtual meeting with his foreign policy advisers on a large television monitor.

This morning, the President and Vice President met with their national security team and senior officials to hear updates on the draw down of our civilian personnel in Afghanistan, evacuations of SIV applicants and other Afghan allies, and the ongoing security situation in Kabul. pic.twitter.com/U7IpK3Hyj8

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) August 15, 2021

White House officials described several hours of meetings throughout the weekend and said the president was briefed numerous times by top intelligence, diplomatic and military aides as the administration raced to keep up with a reality in Afghanistan that was changing by the hour.

Thursday evening, officials urged reporters not to call the activities in Kabul an “evacuation.” By the next day, that admonition was gone as the president ordered new military deployments to protect embassy workers as they fled from the arriving Taliban fighters.

White House officials said there were “active discussions” throughout the weekend about when Mr. Biden should publicly address the situation, and what he would say when he did. Officials said they did not want the president to speak before the situation on the ground in Kabul was stable.

But by Monday, officials had settled on a message in which the president and his top aides would acknowledge that the Taliban takeover was more rapid than they expected, but that the situation was under control and in line with Mr. Biden’s goal of finally removing the United States from a never-ending war.

Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser, said on NBC’s “Today” program on Monday morning that the administration was in the process of executing what he called a “successful drawdown of our embassy” even as he acknowledged that “the speed with which cities fell was much greater than anyone anticipated, including the Afghans.”

In July, in response to questions from reporters, Mr. Biden said he thought the fall of the Afghan government was not inevitable because the country’s army was 300,000 strong and as well equipped as any in the world.

On Sunday, the national Republican Party posted a link of Mr. Biden’s response on Twitter, adding: “This was just 38 days ago.”

So far, Mr. Biden had left it to Mr. Sullivan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other aides to try to explain how the president’s prediction proved so wrong.

White House officials, finding few defenders of their efforts in Afghanistan, even among Democrats on Capitol Hill, on Monday distributed talking points to allies to bolster Mr. Biden’s position.

The talking points, distributed by the office of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, include the “topline” assertion that “the president was not willing to enter a third decade of conflict and surge in thousands of troops to fight in a civil war that Afghanistan wouldn’t fight for themselves.”

The administration said the collapse of the Afghan government and ensuing chaos were not indictments of U.S. policy but proof that the only way to forestall disaster would have been to ramp up America’s troop presence.

Answering critics who say the president was caught flat-footed, the talking points assert, “The administration knew that there was a distinct possibility that Kabul would fall to the Taliban. It was not an inevitability. It was a possibility.”

The document also says that the administration “had contingency plans in place for any eventuality — including a quick fall of Kabul. That’s why we had troops pre-positioned in the region to deploy as they have done.”

The lengthy talking points may give allies something to say, but asserting that plans existed may not be much of a defense when televised images show those plans have not been carried out effectively.

VideoDominic Raab, the British foreign secretary, outlined efforts to combat the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and to ensure British citizens are out of harm’s way.CreditCredit…Steve Parsons/Press Association, via Associated Press

Having sent thousands of troops to Afghanistan during two decades of conflict, Britain is one of the biggest losers from a Taliban takeover that has humiliated the United States and its allies and left thousands stranded.

Estimates vary, but about 3,000 Britons are thought to be in Afghanistan. Officials say they are confident that the citizens can be evacuated as part of an airlift expected to involve hundreds each day. They are less sure about being able to provide a safe exit to all of the Afghans who aided the British and whose lives could now be at risk.

Time is critical, because once the U.S. withdraws the remainder of its forces, there will be no way of safely having planes land and take off.

One option to speed up the process is to initially fly people leaving Kabul to a safe Middle Eastern country rather than repatriating them directly to Britain.

On Monday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson chaired a meeting of an emergency committee in Downing Street after cutting short his vacation. Britain’s Parliament is also being recalled from its summer recess to discuss the crisis in Afghanistan on Wednesday amid growing alarm about the humanitarian and strategic consequences of the Taliban’s advances.

The last time Parliament was recalled for an emergency session to discuss a similar foreign policy question was in 2014, during a crisis in Iraq.

In the past two decades, 150,000 British military personnel have served in Afghanistan, mainly in Helmand Province, though combat missions ended in 2014, leaving behind a small contingent for support work.

In all, 457 British personnel died in Afghanistan, and on Monday, amid the chaotic scenes in Afghanistan, the front-page headline of one tabloid newspaper, the Daily Mail, read: “What the hell did they all die for?”

Last month, Britain announced the withdrawal of its remaining forces from Afghanistan to coincide with the American military’s pullout, though it said last week that it was sending an additional 600 military personnel to help with the evacuation.

This weekend, about 370 embassy employees and British citizens were flown out of the country, the British defense ministry said.

Britain’s defense secretary, Ben Wallace, acknowledged on Monday that some of those who aided the United States and its allies in the last two decades in Afghanistan risked being abandoned to their fate under the Taliban.

“It’s a really deep part of the regret for me that some people won’t get back,” he told LBC Radio, his voice breaking with emotion. “Some people won’t get back, and we will have to do our best in third countries to process those people.”

Asked why he felt it so personally, Mr. Wallace started his reply by saying that it was because of his experience as a soldier. But he then added: “Because it’s sad, and because the West has done what it has done and we have to do our best to get people and stand by our obligations and 20 years of sacrifice is what it is.”

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United Nations Must Not ‘Abandon’ Afghanistan, Secretary General Says

António Guterres, the United Nations Secretary General, voiced concern over accounts of human rights violations in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, and fears that its seizure of power would bring “a return to the darkest days” for Afghan women and girls.

The world is following events in Afghanistan with a heavy heart and deep disquiet about what lies ahead. All of us have seen the images in real time: chaos, unrest, uncertainty and fear. Much lies in the balance: the progress, the hope, the dreams of a generation of young Afghan women and girls, boys and men. At this grave hour, I urge all parties, especially the Taliban, to exercise utmost restraint to protect lives and to ensure that humanitarian needs can be met. We are receiving chilling reports of severe restrictions on human rights throughout the country. And I am particularly concerned by accounts of mounting human rights violations against the women and girls of Afghanistan who fear a return to the darkest days. Looking ahead, I call for an immediate end to violence, for the rights of all Afghans to be respected and for Afghanistan to comply with all international agreements to which it is a party. Mr. President, Afghans are a proud people with a rich cultural heritage, they have known generations of war and hardship. They deserve our full support. The following days will be pivotal. The world is watching. We cannot and must not abandon the people of Afghanistan.

António Guterres, the United Nations Secretary General, voiced concern over accounts of human rights violations in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, and fears that its seizure of power would bring “a return to the darkest days” for Afghan women and girls.CreditCredit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

The United Nations’ leader and the Security Council appealed on Monday for an end to hostilities in Afghanistan, humanitarian aid to the country and the creation of a representative government that will protect the rights of women, prevent human rights abuses and keep the country from once again becoming a haven for global terrorist plots.

At an emergency meeting of the 15-member Security Council about the rapidly escalating chaos in Afghanistan, Secretary General António Guterres said the U.N. remained committed to providing aid and other services in Afghanistan. About 18 million people in the country, half of its population, currently need humanitarian assistance.

The statements by Mr. Guterres and the council tacitly acknowledged that the Taliban were effectively in control of Afghanistan, and referred to its history of brutality and repression of women. They came a day after the fall of the government and the capital, Kabul, with the U.S. military still scrambling to airlift Americans and their Afghan allies out of the country after two decades of war.

“At this grave hour, I urge all parties, especially the Taliban, to exercise utmost restraint to protect lives and to ensure that humanitarian needs are met,” Mr. Guterres said in his prepared remarks. He urged all other countries “to be willing to receive Afghan refugees and refrain from any deportations.”

The secretary general also conveyed alarm at “accounts of mounting human rights violations against the women and girls of Afghanistan, who fear a return to the darkest days” under the Taliban, who severely restricted women’s rights and gave Qaeda extremists sanctuary there to plot attacks on the United States and elsewhere.

In a statement released later, the Security Council called for “a new government that is united, inclusive and representative — including the full, equal and meaningful participation of women.” Afghan leaders who have remained in the country, including Hamid Karzai, a former president, say they want to negotiate formation of a government with the Taliban, but it is not clear that the victorious insurgents have any interest in compromise.

Afghanistan surged toward the top of U.N. humanitarian priorities over the past few weeks as it became increasingly clear that the Afghan government was collapsing. On Friday, Mr. Guterres said the country was “spinning out of control.”

It remains unclear how the United Nations will regard the Taliban should the militant movement declare itself the legitimate power in Afghanistan and demand a seat in the 193-member organization. Many countries have condemned the Taliban’s brutality and would probably not recognize such a declaration.

The United Nations employs roughly 3,000 employees who are Afghan and about 720 international staff members in Afghanistan, although roughly half of the international employees have been working outside the country since the coronavirus pandemic started. U.N. officials have said that there are no plans to evacuate any staff members from the country.

The Taliban have pledged not to interfere in U.N. aid operations, but they attacked a U.N. office in the western city of Herat on July 30, and a local security official guarding the office was killed.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

A high school student in Kabul, Afghanistan’s war-scarred capital, worries that she now will not be allowed to graduate.

The girl, Wahida Sadeqi, 17, like many Afghan civilians in the wake of the U.S. troop withdrawal and ahead of a Taliban victory, keeps asking the same question: What will happen to me?

The American withdrawal, which effectively ends the longest war on foreign soil in United States history, is also likely to be the start of another difficult chapter for Afghanistan’s people.

“I am so worried about my future. It seems so murky. If the Taliban take over, I lose my identity,” said Ms. Sadeqi, an 11th grader at Pardis High School in Kabul. “It is about my existence. It is not about their withdrawal. I was born in 2004, and I have no idea what the Taliban did to women, but I know women were banned from everything.”

Uncertainty hangs over virtually every facet of life in Afghanistan. It is unclear what the future holds and whether the fighting will ever stop. For two decades, American leaders have pledged peace, prosperity, democracy, the end of terrorism and rights for women.

Few of those promises have materialized in vast areas of Afghanistan, but now even in the cities where real progress occurred, there is fear that everything will be lost when the Americans leave.

The Taliban, the extremist group that once controlled most of the country and continues to fight the government, insist that the elected president step down. Militias are increasing in prominence and power, and there is talk of a lengthy civil war.

Over two decades, the American mission evolved from hunting terrorists to helping the government build the institutions of a functioning government, dismantle the Taliban and empower women. But the U.S. and Afghan militaries were never able to effectively destroy the Taliban, who sought refuge in Pakistan, allowing the insurgents to stage a comeback.

The Taliban never recognized Afghanistan’s democratic government. And they appear closer than ever to achieving the goal of their insurgency: to return to power and establish a government based on their extremist view of Islam.

Women would be most at risk under Taliban rule. When the group controlled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, it barred women from taking most jobs or receiving educations and practically made them prisoners in their own homes — though this was already custom for many women in rural parts of the country.

“It is too early to comment on the subject. We need to know much more,” Fatima Gailani, an Afghan government negotiator who is involved in the continuing peace talks with the Taliban, said in April. “One thing is certain: It is about time that we learn how to rely on ourselves. Women of Afghanistan are totally different now. They are a force in our country — no one can deny them their rights or status.”

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

DUSHANBE, Tajikistan — The U.S.-supplied Afghan Air Force took to the skies for a final flight overnight Sunday to Monday — not to attack the Taliban, as it had so many times before, but to save some of its planes and pilots from capture as the insurgents took control of the country.

At least six military aircraft departed Afghanistan in a flight for safety in former Soviet states to the north. Five landed in Tajikistan, Tajik authorities said. One plane was shot down in Uzbekistan, but its two pilots reportedly parachuted and survived.

The departure of some of the Afghan Air Force’s planes, once the jewels of the American aid program to the Afghan military, kept them and their airmen out of Taliban hands.

It also added to the chaos in the skies in and around Afghanistan. Dozens of passenger planes that have taken off from Hamid Karzai International Airport, also flew to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, neighboring countries with strong cultural ties to Afghanistan. A total of 46 airliners had departed by Monday morning, carrying asylum seekers, many of whom were employees of the airport, Tolo News, an Afghan news agency, reported.

A spokesman for the Uzbek military confirmed it had shot down an airplane that traveled without permission into the country’s airspace. It did not specify the type of plane, but pictures of the wreckage suggested it was a Super Tucano, a turboprop light attack aircraft made by the Brazilian company Embraer and provided by the United States to Afghanistan, according to Paul Hayes, director of Ascend, a U.K.-based aviation safety consultancy.

Uzbek media posted videos showing a pilot in a green flight suit, lying on the ground and receiving medical care.

In Tajikistan, the Ministry of Emergency Situations said three Afghan military airplanes and two military helicopters carrying 143 soldiers and airmen were allowed to land after transmitting distress signals.

“Tajikistan received an SOS signal, and after this in accordance with international obligations the country decided to allow landings,” a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, Interfax reported.

It was unclear what would happen to the aircraft now in Tajikistan. Afghan pilots had been targets of particular hatred by the Taliban and risked assassination.

The shoot-down in Uzbekistan and the Tajik authorities’ emphasis on their neutrality in allowing landings reflected the hard response that Central Asian nations, worried about antagonizing the Taliban, have had to fleeing Afghan soldiers.

Uzbekistan last week allowed 84 soldiers to cross a bridge to safety but left many more behind. Tajikistan in June and July allowed fleeing soldiers to enter the country but deported nearly all of them back to Afghanistan.

An Uzbek think tank close to the government has argued that what matters in Afghanistan is stability and economic development, whoever is charge.

“They say, ‘we are ready to accept any centralized force that can help Afghanistan,’” Daniel Kiselyov, the editor of Fergana, a Russian-language news site focused on Central Asia, said in a telephone interview. “If the Taliban provides that, they are willing to work with the group,” he said.

Credit…Wakil Kohsar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

European leaders should prevent mass migration of Afghans into the continent following the Taliban’s return to power, President Emmanuel Macron of France said on Monday, reflecting a hardening European view on a volatile political issue.

“Europe alone cannot assume the consequences of the current situation,” Mr. Macron said in a broadcast statement. He called on the European Union to prevent a major flow of asylum-seekers.

His statement came a few days after six E.U. countries — Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece and the Netherlands — called jointly for a policy of deporting migrants back to Afghanistan, despite the growing Taliban control of the country, and for talks with the Afghan government on taking them back. That Afghan government has since evaporated, but there has been no indication that European views have softened.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany was the leading voice for accepting refugees during the 2015-16 migrant crisis, when Germany accepted far more people than any other country, more than one million, primarily from Syria.

But on Monday, she said that Germany should support Afghanistan’s neighbors so those fleeing would remain there rather than try to reach Europe.

That earlier crisis became a flashpoint in Europe and continues to shape its politics today. Right-wing nationalists across Europe painted the wave of people from the Middle East and Africa as a threat to European identity and culture, and capitalized on it in elections.

Mr. Macron has staked out conservative positions ahead of an election next year, and analysts say he is trying to cede as little room as possible to a leading challenger, the far-right, anti-immigrant politician Marine Le Pen.

The flow of migrants into Europe has slowed to a fraction of what it was five to six years ago, and the main burden shifted to Turkey, which has been sheltering millions of asylum seekers, preventing them from moving on to Europe.

On Monday, Ben Wallace, the British defense secretary, told Sky News that with the Taliban victory, “I suspect we will see significant migrant flows around the world.” Turkey, Iran and Pakistan are already being affected, he said.

E.U. foreign ministers will meet to discuss Afghanistan on Tuesday, and the issue is all but certain to come up in the European Commission’s biweekly news conference.

Credit…Kiana Hayeri for The New York Times

The people of Kabul were given reassurances that they would be safe, that a deal had been struck to avoid a full-fledged attack by the Taliban on their city. But for many Afghans, the scenes now playing out around them in their capital tell another story.

It was not just that their president had fled the country on Sunday. There were innumerable smaller signs that their world was changing.

Police posts had been abandoned, and the officers had shed their uniforms in favor of civilian garb. Posters of women at beauty salons were painted over — presumably to avoid retribution from Afghanistan’s new fundamentalist rulers. And on the east side of the city, inmates at Kabul’s main prison, many of them Taliban members, seized the opportunity to break out.

“This is the Day of Judgment,” declared one onlooker as he filmed the inmates carrying bundles of belongings away from the prison.

The Afghan interior minister, Abdul Sattar Mirzakwal, said in the early afternoon that an agreement had been made for a peaceful transfer of power for greater Kabul.

“We have ordered all Afghan National Security Forces divisions and members to stabilize Kabul,” he said in a video statement. “There will be no attack on the city. The agreement for greater Kabul city is that under an interim administration, God willing, power will be transferred.”

Residents seemed unconvinced.

Many had fled to Kabul as their own cities fell. The capital, if nowhere else in their country, seemed that it might provide a haven for at least the near future.

But the future was nearer than almost anyone knew, and on Sunday, with the Taliban in Kabul, many people — among them President Ashraf Ghani and other senior government officials — were looking for an exit from the country itself.

Afghans and non-Afghans alike headed to the airport, where the scene was chaotic. At the civilian domestic terminal, thousands of Afghans crammed in and swarmed around planes on the tarmac, desperately seeking flights out.

With the evacuation of U.S. diplomats and some civilians underway on Sunday, helicopter after helicopter could be seen ferrying passengers to Kabul’s airport. But many Afghans could do little more than look on in despair.

The Taliban themselves appeared to be trying to strike a tone of reassurance. “Our forces are entering Kabul city with all caution,” they said in a statement.

But as the sun set behind the mountains, the traffic was clogged as crowds grew bigger. More and more Taliban fighters appeared on motorbikes, police pickups and even a Humvee that once belonged to the Afghan security forces.

With rumors rife and reliable information hard to come by, the streets were filled with scenes of panic and desperation.

Sahraa Karimi, the head of Afghan Film, filmed her attempt to flee her neighborhood and posted it on Facebook. The video shows her fleeing on foot, out of breath and clutching at her head scarf as she urges people around her to get out while they can.

“Greetings,” she can be heard saying. “The Taliban have reached the city. We are escaping.”

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Taliban Occupy Afghan Presidential Palace

The Afghan government collapsed after the Taliban entered Kabul on Sunday. Evacuations of international diplomats and civilians have been underway at the international airport in the capital.

Reporter voice over: We’re back inside. Taliban fighters behind the desk of the presidential palace.

The Afghan government collapsed after the Taliban entered Kabul on Sunday. Evacuations of international diplomats and civilians have been underway at the international airport in the capital.CreditCredit…Zabi Karimi/Associated Press

The sight of gun-toting Taliban fighters behind President Ashraf Ghani’s ornate wooden desk, deep inside the Afghan presidential palace now under their control, served as visual confirmation that power in the country had fully shifted hands.

Few people imagined two decades ago — or even two weeks ago — that the heavily defended palace in a heavily defended capital would fall so swiftly. Just several days ago, Mr. Ghani addressed the nation from behind the same desk, in front of the same painting.

But hours after Mr. Ghani fled the country on Sunday, Taliban leaders were addressing the news media there, saying that they would use the palace to announce the restoration of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

Their takeover of the palace, known as the Arg, was made peacefully. The head of the Presidential Protection Service, which has guarded it for most of the last two decades, shook hands with a Taliban commander and announced the handover.

The government official, Muhammadullah Amin, said he had been asked to meet and escort the Taliban commander, whom he addressed by the religious title Maulvi, into the palace by the government’s longtime chief negotiator with the Taliban.

“After a few contacts with Maulvi Saheb, I came here together and currently we are in the Gulkhana palace,” he said, referring to one of the palace buildings.

The Taliban commander stood and shook his hand. “I said, ‘We will take a selfie, and now we have taken it together,’” Mr. Amin said.

The encounter, filmed and aired by Al Jazeera on Sunday night, was widely shared on social media.

Mr. Amin said that Mr. Ghani had left from the palace via helicopter for Kabul’s international airport on Sunday afternoon and then boarded a flight out of the country. He did not say where the president had gone, but Mr. Ghani is thought to be in Tajikistan.

“In the beginning here, during the day, the situation was not good,” Mr. Amin said. “Everybody was frightened that, God forbid, something would happen here. Most of the officials left. I myself left.”

The peaceful seizing of the palace stood in contrast to past exchanges of power in Afghanistan, when the palace was the scene of violence and vandalism.

In 1978, rebel troops killed President Mohammad Daud inside the palace, which suffered severe damage during a daylong siege. The next year, President Noor Mohammad Taraki was mortally wounded in a gun battle inside the palace. His successor, Hafizullah Amin, was executed when Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan and stormed the palace in December 1979.

When the Taliban took control in 1996, fighters damaged parts of the buildings and much of the artwork, according to the government, but successive governments preserved artifacts and gold stored in underground vaults in the palace.

Credit…Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

As the world reacts with a combination of shock, sadness and worry to the rapid collapse of Afghanistan’s government, it remains unclear which global powers might recognize a government led by the Taliban.

Almost five dozen countries, in a joint statement, called on all parties in Afghanistan to allow “the safe and orderly departure of foreign nationals and Afghans who wish to leave the country.”

“Those in positions of power and authority across Afghanistan bear responsibility — and accountability — for the protection of human life and property,” the statement said, “and for the immediate restoration of security and civil order.”

The Taliban got a somewhat warmer reception in China and Russia, both countries that the group’s leaders traveled to last month for diplomatic meetings. The Foreign Ministry in China, which shares a short border with Afghanistan, said Beijing hoped the Taliban would ensure a smooth transition of power and help the Afghan people avoid the chaos of war.

A spokeswoman for the ministry, Hua Chunying, said the Taliban had expressed a desire for good relations with China and said they looked forward to China’s participation in the rebuilding of Afghanistan.

In an editorial published on Sunday night, Global Times, a Chinese state-backed nationalist tabloid, said that recent events in Afghanistan illustrated the failure of the U.S. strategy there.

“The United States’ reckless withdrawal also showed how unreliable its commitments to allies are: When its interests require it to abandon its allies, it will not hesitate to find every excuse to do so,” it said.

Russia will decide whether to recognize the Taliban government based on its behavior in the coming days and weeks, Reuters reported, citing a radio interview on Monday by Zamir Kabulov, Russia’s special envoy to Afghanistan.

Russia’s ambassador to Afghanistan is set to meet with the Taliban in Kabul on Tuesday to discuss the security of the Russian Embassy there.

In Europe, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain said on Sunday that no country should recognize a Taliban government without consulting others.

“We want a united position amongst all the like-minded, as far as we can get one, so that we do whatever we can to prevent Afghanistan lapsing back into being a breeding ground for terror,” he said.

President Emmanuel Macron of France was expected to speak publicly on Monday night after meeting with his advisers.

Credit…Rahmat Gul/Associated Press

MOSCOW — Amid the chaos at Kabul’s airport on Monday, at least one country was not scrambling to get out: Russia.

The Taliban has guaranteed the security of the Russian Embassy in Kabul, a senior Russian official said Monday. The Russian ambassador, who plans to meet with Taliban representatives on Tuesday, said there was no reason for anyone to flee the country and that the Western media was exaggerating the danger of the situation.

“The situation is a good one, calm,” Dmitri Zhirnov, Russia’s ambassador to Kabul, said on Russian state television.

The Taliban fighters now guarding the Russian Embassy, he added, had pledged that they would keep it safe.

“Not a single hair will fall from Russian diplomats,” the Taliban told Russian officials, according to Mr. Zhirnov. “You can work in peace.”

It was a day when Russia, beyond official tut-tutting about the West’s latest failures, was reaping a payoff from the relentless pragmatism of its own Afghan strategy. Russia has spent years courting the Taliban, hosting the group for talks in Moscow even though the Taliban is officially banned in Russia as a terrorist organization.

“It is not for nothing that we have been establishing contacts with the Taliban movement the last seven years,” Zamir N. Kabulov, the special envoy to Afghanistan for President Vladimir V. Putin, said in a radio interview Monday. “We saw that this force would play a leading role in Afghanistan’s future, if not take power entirely.”

Underscoring Russia’s growing sway in Afghanistan, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken called his Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov, on Monday to discuss the evacuation of Americans from Kabul, the Russian Foreign Ministry said. Mr. Lavrov, his ministry said, described to Mr. Blinken Russia’s contacts “with representatives of all the main political forces in Afghanistan in the interest of helping to foster stability and rule of law.”

At Russia’s most recent round of talks with the Taliban in Moscow, in July, the group pledged that their military gains would not be a threat to Russia or its interests. Still, Mr. Kabulov said that Russia would not cease considering the Taliban a terrorist organization until all members of the U.N. Security Council, which includes the United States, agreed.

“All members of the Security Council must first make sure that the new government is ready to behave, as we say, in a civilized manner,” Mr. Kabulov said.

There was a hint of schadenfreude to be heard in Moscow, as Russian officials said they were stunned by how quickly Afghanistan’s security forces, trained by the United States and its allies, fell. They pointed out that the pro-American government in Afghanistan collapsed far more quickly than did the one the Soviet Union installed during its own failed war in the 1980s. The Soviet-backed government in Kabul lasted until 1992, three years after the Soviet military had left.

“That was an organized withdrawal” in 1989, Vladimir Dzhabarov, deputy head of the Foreign Affairs committee of Russia’s upper house of Parliament, told the state-run television network RT. “Whereas the Americans leave, and they haven’t even exited Afghan territory before the army they claimed to have prepared turned out to be totally demoralized.”

Credit…Wakil Kohsar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The fall of Kabul leaves the Biden administration facing the once-unthinkable prospect of whether, and how, to engage with a Taliban-led government in Afghanistan’s capital — or cede all influence in the country to an extremist group that brutalized Afghans and harbored Osama bin Laden as he planned attacks on America.

The sudden exile of President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan on Sunday, just hours after President Biden and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken each assured him of full American support, gives the Taliban little incentive to negotiate a transitional government for a country in crisis, said two U.S. officials involved in discussions inside the administration.

The officials said Mr. Ghani had fled his country without telling his cabinet or leaving plans for a government handover. That has all but ensured the Taliban’s ascent to power — one that the Biden administration can only hope will be carried out as peacefully as possible.

It also most likely extinguishes a long-stalled American effort for peace talks toward establishing a power-sharing system between the Taliban and Afghanistan’s elected leaders, and leaves U.S. officials hoping that a group that has defied nearly all pleas for moderation in recent months will protect some semblance of women’s and political rights and honor a pledge not to harbor Qaeda terrorists.

Mr. Blinken said the United States would support talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban “about the way forward.”

Credit…Abdullah Sahil/Associated Press

It was his first day as the Taliban-appointed mayor of Kunduz, and Gul Mohammad Elias was on a charm offensive.

Last Sunday, the insurgents seized control of the city in northern Afghanistan, which was in shambles after weeks of fighting. Power lines were down. The water supply, powered by generators, did not reach most residents. Trash and rubble littered the streets.

The civil servants who could fix those problems were hiding at home, terrified of the Taliban. So the insurgent-commander-turned-mayor summoned some to his new office, to persuade them to return to work.

But day by day, as municipal offices stayed mostly empty, Mr. Elias grew more frustrated — and his rhetoric grew harsher.

Taliban fighters began going door to door, searching for absentee city workers. Hundreds of armed men set up checkpoints across the city. At the entrance to the regional hospital, a new notice appeared on the wall: Employees must return to work or face punishment from the Taliban.

The experience of those in Kunduz offers a glimpse of how the Taliban may govern, and what may be in store for the rest of the country.

In just days, the insurgents, frustrated by their failed efforts to cajole civil servants back to work, began instilling terror, according to residents reached by telephone.

“I am afraid, because I do not know what will happen and what they will do,” said one, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation. “We have to smile at them because we are scared, but deeply we are unhappy.”

Nearly every shop in Kunduz was closed. Shopkeepers, fearing that their stores would be looted by Taliban fighters, had taken their goods home. Each afternoon, the streets emptied of residents, who feared airstrikes as government planes buzzed in the sky. And about 500 Taliban fighters were stationed around the city, staffing checkpoints on nearly every street corner.

At the regional hospital, armed Taliban members were keeping track of attendance. Out of fear, one health worker said, female staff members wore sky-blue burqas as they assisted in surgeries and tended to wounds from airstrikes, which still splintered the city each afternoon.

Credit…Adam Ferguson for The New York Times

While Afghanistan’s future seems more and more uncertain, one thing is becoming exceedingly clear: The United States’ 20-year endeavor to rebuild Afghanistan’s military into a robust and independent fighting force has failed, and that failure is playing out in real time as the country slips into Taliban control.

The Afghan military’s disintegration first became apparent months ago, in an accumulation of losses that started even before President Biden’s announcement that the United States would withdraw by Sept. 11.

It began with outposts in rural areas where hungry and ammunition-depleted soldiers and police units were surrounded by Taliban fighters and promised safe passage if they surrendered and left behind their equipment. That gave the insurgents more and more control of roads, and then entire districts.

As positions collapsed, the complaint was almost always the same: There was no air support, or they had run out of supplies and food.

Even before that, the systemic weaknesses of the Afghan security forces were apparent.

And when the Taliban started building momentum after the United States’ announcement of its withdrawal, it only increased the belief that the security forces — fighting for President Ashraf Ghani’s government — weren’t worth dying for. In interview after interview, soldiers and police officers described moments of despair and feelings of abandonment.

VideoPro-government soldiers crossed the Friendship Bridge in order to find safety in Uzbekistan. The scene was similar to an iconic moment when the Soviet Army used the bridge to escape after it was defeated.CreditCredit…V. Kiselev/Sputnik, via Associated Press

In a chaotic retreat from the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif in recent days, pro-government soldiers streamed onto the Friendship Bridge, seeking safety on the other bank in neighboring Uzbekistan.

The scene echoed an iconic moment from 32 years ago in the failed Soviet war in Afghanistan, when it was the final exit route out of the country for the defeated Soviet Army.

Then, red flags fixed to the armored vehicles flapped in a winter wind as the departing Soviet troops drove and marched across the bridge on Feb. 15, 1989. That movement was meant to signal an organized, dignified exit after a decade of occupation and defeats.

The Biden administration had made a point of avoiding a similar ceremonial scene for the U.S. Army in Afghanistan, a notion hardly imaginable now given the rapid collapse of the U.S.-backed government on Sunday.

And the retreat on Thursday over the Friendship Bridge of soldiers loyal to the American-backed Afghan government, which collapsed just three days later, was chaotic.

Credit…Kiana Hayeri for The New York Times

The Pentagon said Monday that at this time there were no flights coming or going, military or civilian, into Hamid Karzai International Airport.

John F. Kirby, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said that a security breach on the civilian side of the airport led the American Marines there — 2,500 as of Monday morning — to shut down flights until troops have secured the airport.

He said that by Tuesday morning the military expects around 3,000 Marines would be on the ground at the airport to aid the evacuation effort. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III is sending an additional 1,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne to Kabul, instead of to Kuwait, to help secure the area.

Altogether by later this week there will be 6,000 American troops conducting security at the airport and helping the evacuation.

Mr. Kirby also said that there was a preliminary report that one American soldier had been injured.

“All the images coming out are of concern and troubling,” Mr. Kirby said, in reference to a video of an American transport plane taking off from Kabul’s airport with desperate Afghans hanging onto the wings. Those people were later seen falling from the airborne plane.

He said that all Americans and Afghan allies should continue to “shelter in place until security can be re-established at the airport.”

He said that the Turkish troops at the airport were helping the Marines to secure it.

Tags Afghanistan, Charge, Kabul, Live, Takes, Taliban, Updates

World News

Afghanistan Reside Updates: Taliban Enter Kabul, Authorities Collapses as President Flees

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Post date August 15, 2021

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

Afghanistan’s government collapsed on Sunday with President Ashraf Ghani’s flight from the country and the Taliban’s entry into the capital, effectively sealing the insurgents’ control of the country after dozens of cities fell to their lightning advance.

On Sunday evening, former President Hamid Karzai announced on Twitter that he was forming a coordinating council together with Abdullah Abdullah, chairman of the Afghan delegation to peace talks, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the leader of the Hesb-i-Islami party, to manage a peaceful transfer of power. Mr. Karzai called on both government and Taliban forces to act with restraint.

As it became clear that members of the Taliban had entered Kabul, the capital, thousands of Afghans who had sought refuge there after fleeing the insurgents’ brutal military offensive watched with growing alarm as the local police seemed to fade from their usual checkpoints.

At 6:30 p.m. local time, the Taliban issued a statement that their forces were moving into police districts in order to maintain security in areas that had been abandoned by the government security forces. Taliban fighters, meeting no resistance, took up positions in parts of the city, after Zabiullah Mujahid, spokesman for the Taliban, posted the statement on Twitter.

“The Islamic Emirates ordered its forces to enter the areas of Kabul city from which the enemy has left because there is risk of theft and robbery,” the statement said. The Taliban had been ordered not to harm civilians and not to enter individual homes, it added. “Our forces are entering Kabul city with all caution.”

As the sun set behind the mountains in the western part of the city, the traffic was clogged up as crowds grew bigger, with more and more Taliban fighters appearing on motorbikes, police pickups and even a Humvee that once belonged to the American-sponsored Afghan security forces.

Earlier in the afternoon, Interior Minister Abdul Sattar Mirzakwal announced that an agreement had been made for a peaceful transfer of power for greater Kabul, and that his forces were maintaining security.

“The city’s security is guaranteed. There will be no attack on the city,” he said. “The agreement for greater Kabul city is that under an interim administration, God willing, power will be transferred.”

Mr. Mirzakwal later announced a 9 p.m. curfew in the capital, and called on its residents to go home.

Mr. Ghani left in a plane for Uzbekistan with his wife, Rula Ghani, and two close aides, according to a member of the Afghan delegation in Doha, Qatar, that has been in peace negotiations with the Taliban since last year. The official asked not to be named because he did not want to be identified speaking about the president’s movements.

In a Facebook video, Mr. Abdullah, former chief executive of the Afghan government, criticized Mr. Ghani for fleeing.

“That the former president of Afghanistan has left the country and its people in this bad situation, God will call him to account and the people of Afghanistan will make their judgment,” Mr. Abdullah said in the video.

In negotiations being managed by Mr. Abdullah, Mr. Ghani had been set to travel to Doha on Sunday with a larger group to negotiate the transfer of power, but flew instead to Uzbekistan, the peace delegation member said.

Mr. Ghani had resisted pressure to step down. In a recorded speech aired on Saturday, he pledged to “prevent further instability” and called for “remobilizing” the country’s military. But the president was increasingly isolated, and his words seemed detached from the reality around him.

With rumors rife and reliable information hard to come by, the streets were filled during the day with scenes of panic and desperation.

“Greetings, the Taliban have reached the city. We are escaping,” said Sahraa Karimi, the head of Afghan Film, in a post shared widely on Facebook. Filming herself as she fled on foot, out of breath and clutching at her headscarf, she shouted at others to escape while the could.

“Hey woman, girl, don’t go that way!” she called out. “Some people don’t know what is going on,” she went on. “Where are you going? Go quickly.”

Wais Omari, 20, a street vendor in the city, said the situation was already dire and he feared for the future.

“If it gets worse, I will hide in my home,” he said.

The United States military stepped up its evacuation of American diplomatic and civilian staff. A core group of American diplomats who had planned to remain at the embassy in Kabul were being moved to a diplomatic facility at the international airport, where they would stay for an unspecified amount of time, according to a senior United States official.

On the civilian side of the airport, a long line of people waited outside the check-in gate, unsure if the flights they had booked out of the country would arrive.

After days in which one urban center after another fell to the insurgents, the last major Afghan cities that were still controlled by the government, other than Kabul, were seized in rapid succession over the weekend.

The insurgents took Mazar-i-Sharif, in the north, late on Saturday, only an hour after breaking through the front lines at the city’s edge. Soon after, government security forces and militias — including those led by the warlords Marshal Abdul Rashid Dostum and Atta Muhammad Noor — fled, effectively handing control to the insurgents.

On Sunday morning, the Taliban seized the eastern city of Jalalabad. In taking that provincial capital and surrounding areas, the insurgents gained control of the Torkham border crossing, a major trade and transit route between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Taliban offensive, which started in May when the United States began withdrawing troops, gathered speed over the past week. In city after city, the militants took down Afghan government flags and hoisted their own white banners.

Despite two decades of war with American-led forces, the Taliban have survived and thrived, without giving up their vision of creating a state governed by a stringent Islamic code.

After the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in the 1990s, movie theaters were closed, the Kabul television station was shut down and the playing of all music was banned. Schools were closed to girls.

Despite many Afghans’ memories of years under Taliban rule before the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, the insurgents have taken control of much of the country in recent days with only minimal resistance.

Their rapid successes have exposed the weakness of an Afghan military that the United States spent more than $83 billion to support over the past two decades. As the insurgents’ campaign has accelerated, soldiers and police officers have abandoned the security forces in ever greater numbers, with the cause for which they risked their lives appearing increasingly to be lost.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

Panic gripped the Afghan capital, Kabul, Sunday as Taliban fighters started arriving in the city, inmates broke out of the main prison on the east side of the city, and the American-backed government appeared to crumble.

By the afternoon, President Ashraf Ghani was reported to have fled. And as American forces focused their energies on evacuation flights for embassy staff and other personnel, Afghan government officials were shown in video footage accepting a handover of power to their Taliban counterparts in several cities.

Early in the day, senior Afghan politicians were seen boarding planes at Kabul airport. Bagram Air Base was taken by Taliban forces midday Sunday as was the provincial town of Khost in eastern Afghanistan, according to Afghan media reports. The fall of Khost was part of a domino-like collapse of power of astonishing speed that saw city after city fall in just the last week, leaving Kabul as the last major city in government hands.

Interior Minister Abdul Sattar Mirzakwal announced in a video statement in the early afternoon that an agreement had been made for a peaceful transfer of power for greater Kabul and sought to reassure residents, saying that the security forces would remain in their posts to ensure security in the city.

“As the minister of interior, we have ordered all Afghan National Security Forces divisions and members to stabilize Kabul,” he said in a video statement released on the Facebook page of the ministry at 2 p.m. local time. “The city’s security is guaranteed. There will be no attack on the city. The agreement for greater Kabul city is that under an interim administration, God Willing, power will be transferred.”

But residents seemed unconvinced by their leaders’ assurances. In the center of the city people were pictured painting over advertisements and posters of women at beauty salons, apparently preparing for a takeover by the fundamentalist Taliban who do not allow images of humans or animal life, and have traditionally have banned music and the mixing of the sexes.

The Taliban denied rumors that their chief negotiator, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, was already in the capital and preparing to take over control at the Interior Ministry.

Throughout the day, surreal scenes played out as it appeared ever more clear the Taliban were taking over.

The insurgency has long had its own power structure of shadow governors appointed for every province, and Sunday it was clear who was in control in strategic areas. The governors and tribal and political leaders who had been in power were shown in videos formally handing control to their Taliban counterparts in the strategic cities of Kandahar, the main stronghold of the south, and in Nangarhar, the main city of the east.

But in Kabul fears of the city being overrun were running high after a breakout of prisoners, many of them members of the Taliban, from the main prison at Pul-i-Charkhi.

“Look at this, the whole people are let free,” a man said as he filmed a video footage of people carrying bundles walking away from the prison, posted on Facebook. “This is the Day of Judgment.”

The breakout seems to have been by the prisoners from the inside, rather than an attack by Taliban forces from the outside.

Some Afghans still found room for humor amid the chaos: “Taliban have reached Kabul airport … their speed is faster than 5G,” one resident of Kabul posted on Facebook.

But others fled, though it is unclear where they could go with the Taliban in control of so much of the country.

Ruhullah Khapalwak contributed reporting.

Credit…Wakil Kohsar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

KABUL, Afghanistan — As the Taliban entered Kabul on Sunday, completing the near total takeover of Afghanistan two decades after the American military drove them from power, an eerie quiet that had enveloped the city in recent days transformed into chaos.

A frenzied evacuation of U.S. diplomats and civilians kicked into high gear, while Afghans made a mad dash to banks, their homes and the airport. Crowds of people ran down the streets as the sound of gunfire echoed in downtown Kabul.

Helicopter after helicopter — including massive Chinooks with their twin engines, and speedy Black Hawks that had been the workhorse of the grinding war — touched down and then took off loaded with passengers. Some shot flares overhead.

Those being evacuated included a core group of American diplomats who had planned to remain at the embassy in Kabul, according to a senior administration official. They were being moved to a compound at the international airport, where they would stay for an unspecified amount of time, the official said.

The runway of the airport was filled with a constellation of uniforms from different nations. They joined contractors, diplomats and civilians all trying to catch a flight out of the city. Those who were eligible to fly were given special bracelets, denoting their status as noncombatants.

On the civilian side of the airport, a long line of people waited outside the check-in gate, unsure if the flights they had booked out of the country would arrive.

For millions of Afghans, including tens of thousands who assisted the U.S. efforts in the country for years, there were no bracelets. They were stuck in the city.

Rumors abounded: The Taliban were in the city, or weren’t they? Were the Americans securing the palace?

The streets of the city were packed, and many shops were closed. Traffic barely moved.

At one bank in downtown Kabul, hundreds of people clambered to get in once doors opened. Two men tried to climb a barred gate into the building.

At Abdul Haq Square in the center of the capital, five men who appeared to be Taliban fighters gathered as cars drove by showing their support for the militants.

Two other men, outside the American Embassy, said that they had just been freed by the Taliban from the giant Pul-e-Charkhi Prison.

On one street downtown, a pair of police officers said that they were readying for a fight with the Taliban and had changed into militia clothing. Another group of officers, none with weapons, seemed more curious about whether a house in the once coveted and protected green zone was now empty.

Some police officers appeared to have abandoned their usual checkpoints, leading to speculation that the government was no longer in control.

At a bus station in Kabul, members of the Afghan security forces were seen changing into civilian clothes as they waited for transport to their hometowns.

While President Biden has defended his decision to hold firm and pull the last U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by Sept. 11, his administration has become increasingly worried about images that could evoke a foreign policy disaster of the past: the fall of Saigon at the end of the conflict in Vietnam in 1975.

The swift advance of the Taliban has stunned many in the White House.

On Sunday, as a sense of panic gripped Kabul, guards at checkpoints inside the fortified green zone, who typically stop vehicles and check identity cards, lifted their metal barriers and waved all the cars through as the neighborhood drained of foreigners.

Convoys of armored vehicles raced to find safety in the headquarters of what had been the NATO center for its Operation Resolute Support. Others flocked to the Serena Hotel, a heavily fortified hotel popular among foreigners.

At the NATO center, military personnel handed out matchbox-size cardboard containers with ear plugs, and corralled people onto the helicopters. As the aircraft took off for the international airport, dozens of people evacuating got their last glimpses of the capital below — the fate of the city hanging in the balance.

Two Marines, standing by the runway at the Kabul airport, acknowledged that they were living a moment of history. A little earlier, they said, someone walked by after exiting one of the helicopters cradling a poorly folded American flag: It had just come down off the embassy.

Fahim Abed, Fatima Faizi, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Christina Goldbaum, Sharif Hassan, Jim Huylebroek, Najim Rahimand Lara Jakes contributed reporting.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

Confusion reigned in Washington early Sunday as the Taliban entered Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, with U.S. officials scrambling to determine how safe Americans still there would be.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was expected to discuss the crisis on three television news shows on Sunday morning, hours after the American Embassy in Kabul closed and its small core of remaining diplomats fled to the capital’s international airport for safety.

Embassy staff had begun a vigorous effort to destroy documents and other sensitive materials before leaving the sprawling compound. A fourth senior U.S. official would not say whether the chargé d’affaires, Ross Wilson, and his immediate circle of advisers would remain at a diplomatic facility at the Kabul airport or return to the United States with other Americans who were being evacuated.

The Biden administration has repeatedly warned the Taliban against taking Kabul by force or even entering the city while the immense evacuation effort is underway, a process that could take days or even weeks to complete. Zalmay Khalilzad, the chief American envoy who has been negotiating with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, has sought to broker a deal to reduce violence as the extremist group seized control of most of Afghanistan.

At the same time, Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the head of the military’s Central Command, has flown to the gulf region to oversee the military operations in Afghanistan. The Central Command’s forward headquarters is in Qatar.

A Defense Department official said Sunday that Bagram Air Base, the headquarters of the 20-year American war effort in Afghanistan, had also fallen to the Taliban.

Taliban fighters entered the base — which the United States turned over last month to Afghan security forces — on Sunday, the official said. More ominously, Taliban forces have also taken nearby Parwan prison, where thousands of prisoners, including Qaeda fighters, had been housed.

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, raced to the Pentagon on Sunday morning for meetings on the unfolding crisis.

Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, who sits on the Intelligence Committee, called Afghanistan’s rapid deterioration an “unmitigated disaster” and blamed President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump for the troop withdrawals that Mr. Sasse said caused the country’s undoing.

“History must be clear about this: American troops didn’t lose this war — Donald Trump and Joe Biden deliberately decided to lose,” the senator said in a statement on Sunday morning.

“The looming defeat will badly hurt American intelligence and give jihadis a safe haven in Afghanistan, again,” Mr. Sasse said. “America will regret this.”

Kandahar

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With their seizure of Jalalabad on Sunday, the Taliban appeared to be on the verge of a complete takeover of Afghanistan. Planes departing the airport in Kabul, the capital, were filled with people fleeing the city.

Credit…Afghan Ministry of Defense, via Associated Press

With the Taliban on the verge of regaining power in Afghanistan, President Biden has defended his decision to leave the country after two decades of U.S. military involvement.

In a statement on Saturday, Mr. Biden said that the United States had invested nearly $1 trillion in Afghanistan over the past 20 years and had trained and equipped more than 300,000 Afghan security forces, including maintaining the Asian country’s air force.

“One more year, or five more years, of U.S. military presence would not have made a difference if the Afghan military cannot or will not hold its own country,” Mr. Biden said. “And an endless American presence in the middle of another country’s civil conflict was not acceptable to me.”

Mr. Biden’s statement came hours after the Taliban seized Mazar-i-Sharif, in northern Afghanistan, but before the group captured the eastern city of Jalalabad on Sunday, The group entered Kabul, the capital, on Sunday as President Ashraf Ghani fled.

Mr. Biden partly blamed President Donald J. Trump for the unfolding disaster in Afghanistan, saying that the deal made with the Taliban in 2020 had set a deadline of May 1 this year for the withdrawal of American forces and left the group “in the strongest position militarily since 2001.”

“I faced a choice — follow through on the deal, with a brief extension to get our forces and our allies’ forces out safely, or ramp up our presence and send more American troops to fight once again in another country’s civil conflict,” Mr. Biden said.

This year, a study group appointed by Congress urged the Biden administration to abandon the May 1 deadline and slow the withdrawal of American troops, saying that a strict adherence to the timeline could lead Afghanistan into civil war. Pentagon officials made similar entreaties, but Mr. Biden maintained his long-held position that it was time for Afghanistan to fend for itself.

Since international troops began withdrawing in May, the Taliban have pursued their military takeover far more swiftly than U.S. intelligence agencies had anticipated. On Saturday, Mr. Biden accelerated the deployment of 1,000 additional troops to Afghanistan to help ensure the safe evacuation from Kabul of U.S. citizens and Afghans who worked for the American government. That deployment will temporarily bring to 5,000 the number of American troops in the country.

In his statement, Mr. Biden warned the Taliban that “any action on their part on the ground in Afghanistan, that puts U.S. personnel or our mission at risk there, will be met with a swift and strong U.S. military response.”

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

A high school student in Kabul, Afghanistan’s war-scarred capital, worries that she now will not be allowed to graduate.

The girl, Wahida Sadeqi, 17, like many Afghan civilians in the wake of the U.S. troop withdrawal and ahead of a Taliban victory, keeps asking the same question: What will happen to me?

The American withdrawal, which effectively ends the longest war on foreign soil in United States history, is also likely to be the start of another difficult chapter for Afghanistan’s people.

Few of those promises have materialized in vast areas of Afghanistan, but now even in the cities where real progress occurred, there is fear that everything will be lost when the Americans leave.

Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

If there is a consistent theme over two decades of war in Afghanistan, it is the overestimation of the results of the $83 billion the United States has spent since 2001 training and equipping the Afghan security forces and an underestimation of the brutal, wily strategy of the Taliban.

The Pentagon had issued dire warnings to President Biden even before he took office about the potential for the Taliban to overrun the Afghan Army. But intelligence estimates indicated that it might happen in 18 months, not within weeks.

Commanders did know that the afflictions of the Afghan forces had never been cured: the deep corruption, the failure by the government to pay many Afghan soldiers and police officers for months, the defections, the soldiers sent to the front without adequate food and water, let alone arms.

Mr. Biden’s aides say that the persistence of those problems reinforced his belief that the United States could not prop up the Afghan government and its military in perpetuity. In Oval Office meetings this spring, he told aides that staying another year, or even five, would not make a substantial difference and was not worth the risks.

In the end, an Afghan force that did not believe in itself and a U.S. effort that Mr. Biden, and most Americans, no longer believed would alter events combined to bring an ignoble close to America’s longest war. The United States kept forces in Afghanistan far longer than the British did in the 19th century, and twice as long as the Soviets — with roughly the same results.

For Mr. Biden, the last of four American presidents to face painful choices in Afghanistan but the first to get out, the debate about a final withdrawal and the miscalculations over how to execute it began the moment he took office.

“Under Trump, we were one tweet away from complete, precipitous withdrawal,” said Douglas E. Lute, a retired general who directed Afghan strategy at the National Security Council for Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

“Under Biden, it was clear to everyone who knew him, who saw him pressing for a vastly reduced force more than a decade ago, that he was determined to end U.S. military involvement,” Mr. Lute added, “but the Pentagon believed its own narrative that we would stay forever.”

He continued, “The puzzle for me is the absence of contingency planning: If everyone knew we were headed for the exits, why did we not have a plan over the past two years for making this work?”

Credit…Pool photo by Brendan Smialowski

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Sunday that the defeat of Afghan security forces that has led to the Taliban’s takeover “happened more quickly than we anticipated,” although he maintained the Biden administration’s position that keeping U.S. troops in Afghanistan was not in American interests.

“This is heart-wrenching stuff,” said Mr. Blinken, who looked shaken, in an interview on CNN after a night that saw members of the Taliban enter the Afghan capital, Kabul, and the shuttering of the U.S. Embassy as the last remaining American diplomats in Afghanistan were moved to a facility at the city’s airport for better protection.

Mr. Blinken stopped short of saying that all American diplomats would return to the United States, repeating an intent to maintain a small core of officials in Kabul.

But he forcefully defended the administration’s decision to withdraw the military from Afghanistan after 20 years of war, saying it could have been vulnerable to Taliban attacks had the United States reneged on an agreement brokered under President Donald J. Trump for all foreign forces to leave the country.

“We would have been back at war with the Taliban,” Mr. Blinken said, calling that “something the American people simply can’t support — that is the reality.”

He said it was not in American interests to devote more time, money and, potentially, casualties, to Afghanistan at a time that the United States was also facing long-term strategic challenges from China and Russia. But, Mr. Blinken said, American forces will remain in the region to confront any terrorist threat against the United States at home that might arise from Afghanistan.

He also appeared to demand more conditions for the prospect of recognizing the Taliban as a legitimate government or establishing a formal diplomatic relationship with them.

Earlier, the Biden administration had said the Taliban, in order to acquire international financial support, must never allow terrorists to use Afghanistan as a haven, must not take Kabul by force and must not attack Americans.

On Sunday, Mr. Blinken said the Taliban must also uphold basic rights of citizens, particularly women who gained new freedoms to go to work and school after the Taliban were ousted from power in 2001.

There will be no recognition of a Taliban government “if they’re not sustaining the basic rights of the Afghan people, and if they revert to supporting or harboring terrorists who might strike us,” the secretary of state said.

Mr. Blinken’s comments were swiftly criticized by the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, who said the Taliban’s swift takeover of Afghanistan “is going to be a stain on this president and his presidency.”

“They totally blew this one,” Mr. McCaul said. “They completely underestimated the strength of the Taliban.”

“I hate to say this: I hope we don’t have to go back there,” he said. “But it will be a threat to the homeland in a matter of time.”

Tags Afghanistan, Collapses, enter, Flees, Government, Kabul, Live, President, Taliban, Updates