Live updates Taliban fighters at airport checkpoints shoot harass Afghans seeking to board evacuation flights

The United States and other countries operated military evacuation flights from Afghanistan throughout Tuesday, though not all those seeking to leave the country were able to reach Kabul airport. The Taliban erected checkpoints throughout the capital and near the airport’s entrance, beating some Afghans who attempted to cross and intimidating others from leaving, according to reports and an eyewitness account.

In Washington, President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said the Taliban has agreed to allow “safe passage” from Afghanistan for civilians struggling to join a U.S.-directed airlift from the capital, although a timetable for completing the evacuation has yet to be worked out with the country’s new rulers. Sullivan said the United States is addressing with the Islamist group reports that militants are intimidating fleeing Afghans.

Thousands of U.S. troops have been flown into Kabul to protect evacuation efforts. Washington has moved some 3,200 people out so far, with an additional 2,000 Afghans relocated to the United States as special immigrants. About 11,000 people in Afghanistan have identified themselves as Americans, while more than 80,000 Afghans may need to be evacuated.

Here are some significant developments:

The U.S. military evacuated some 1,100 U.S. citizens, permanent residents and their families from the Kabul airport Tuesday. The pace was expected to pick up throughout the week.

Taliban co-founder and de facto leader Abdul Ghani Baradar arrived in the country for the first time in more than a decade, returning to the group’s birthplace in the southern city of Kandahar days after his fighters swept into power across the country.

The U.S. Air Force said Tuesday it is launching an investigation into the deaths of Afghan civilians related to a C-17 flight that departed Kabul, including reports of people falling from the airborne plane and human remains found later in a wheel well.

Analysis: Why no American president followed through on promises to end the Afghanistan war â€" until nowLink copied

If leaving Afghanistan were easy, it would probably have been done a long time ago. Four presidents have presided over the 20-year war. Three have said they wanted to get out. None, until President Biden, were willing to pull the plug and face the consequences.

So America stayed in, spending a trillion dollars and losing thousands of lives for what we’re finding out was a failure in nation-building.

Why did America pursue a war it didn’t want to fight? The answer, according to experts, is that its leaders were caught between the politics of an unpopular conflict and the reality of an intractable conflict that could make America less safe if it ended.

Here’s a brief history of America’s longest war through the lens of the decisions and statements of the four presidents who presided over it.

Key updateSeveral people killed in Afghanistan’s Jalalabad as Taliban fighters fire on protestersLink copied

Several people were killed and more than a dozen injured in the eastern city of Jalalabad on Wednesday when Taliban gunmen fired on protesters attempting to raise Afghanistan’s national flag.

At least three people died, Reuters reported, quoting witnesses and a former police official, although it was unclear whether they were killed by gunfire.

The demonstrators had marched through the city center Wednesday, flying the black, red and green flag of the Afghan Republic, according to local media reports and video footage posted online. They also tore down the Taliban’s signature white flag, after which the group’s fighters fired to disperse the crowd.

The Taliban, whose fighters swept to power in a stunning offensive this month, has sought to portray itself as a more moderate version of the movement that ruled the country with brutal force from 1996 to 2001.

But the demonstrations Wednesday were an early test for the Taliban and how its government will deal with dissent. Posting video footage of rapid gunfire as crowds fled on a busy street, Afghanistan’s Pajhwok news agency also reported that Taliban gunmen beat journalists who were covering the protests.

U.S. officials erase online content in bid to protect Afghans from Taliban retributionLink copied

Federal officials are deleting online content that can be used to identify Afghans who have worked with the U.S.-led coalition over the years, as fears of the Taliban enacting retributive violence grow days into the militant group’s return to national power.

The State Department has asked its staff to locate and remove online materials that may be used to pinpoint Afghan civilians, according to spokesman Ned Price, who said this is not standard procedure.

“The safety of our Afghan contacts is of utmost importance to us,” he said in a statement. “State Department policy is to only remove content in exceptional situations like this one. In doing so, Department personnel are following records retention requirements.”

The U.S. Agency for International Development began reviewing its public websites and social media last week to archive content that could pose safety risks to Afghans, the agency said. The Agriculture Department is taking similar precautions, according to the Associated Press.

U.S. officials fear that the Islamist group may use content posted on government websites or social media to target Afghan allies. The Taliban has promised a general “amnesty,” but the insurgents have a record of punishing those who cooperated with the U.S.-backed Afghan government.

Hundreds of abductions targeting people suspected of having links with the now-fallen government took place in 2016 alone, according to a December 2017 report by the European Asylum Support Office.

The website scrubbing is part of a broader U.S. policy to protect or evacuate Afghan allies who are threatened by the Taliban’s return to power. Price told reporters on Wednesday that U.S. officials are “doing as much as we can for as long as we can to relocate … vulnerable Afghans.”

The nature of the U.S. withdrawal, which led to Kabul falling much sooner than American officials had anticipated, has been heavily criticized by human rights groups, as well as international allies and Republican and Democratic lawmakers.

The Pentagon said this week that it intends to ramp up evacuation efforts to a level that will allow about 5,000 individuals to depart Afghanistan per day. More than 80,000 Afghans may need to be evacuated, The Washington Post has reported.

A once-vanquished insurgent returns as Afghanistan’s likely next leader Link copied

The man likely to be Afghanistan’s next leader entered Kandahar on Tuesday escorted by a fleet of white SUVs, showered by fireworks and greeted by thousands of Afghans, at least a few holding rocket-propelled grenades. For years, the Taliban’s political leaders were ghosts, the invisible strategists of a powerful insurgency, and now here was the convoy carrying Abdul Ghani Baradar.

Some people in the crowd cheered. Many others just stared ahead, transfixed.

Baradar had spent more than half of his adult life as an insurgent or a prisoner, once so certain of his defeat that he prepared a formal surrender after the U.S. intervention following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But he emerged from his convoy â€" in a flowing white robe, with wire-rimmed glasses and a long black beard â€" as the leader of a force that had vanquished the United States and its allies.

Pence says Biden’s perceived weakness emboldened the TalibanLink copied

Former vice president Mike Pence has weighed in on the situation in Afghanistan, claiming that President Biden’s perceived weakness emboldened the Taliban and led to “a foreign-policy humiliation unlike anything our country has endured since the Iran hostage crisis.”

He said in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Tuesday night that the administration of President Donald Trump, who set the U.S. troop withdrawal in motion, required several conditions of the Taliban, including negotiation with Afghan leaders on creation of a new government.

“The progress our administration made toward ending the war was possible because Taliban leaders understood that the consequences of violating the deal would be swift and severe,” Pence wrote.

Pence, who is eyeing a potential White House bid in 2024, argued that Biden’s delay of the U.S. troop withdrawal date by four months broke the deal struck by the Trump administration with the Taliban and that the militants sensed weakness on Biden’s part because of how he has handled other foreign policy issues.

“They knew there was no credible threat of force under this president,” Pence wrote. “Weakness arouses evil â€" and the magnitude of evil now rising in Afghanistan speaks volumes about the weaknesses of Mr. Biden.”

Pence also claimed there was no justification for pushing back the withdrawal date, which Biden said was needed for an orderly process.

“Rather, it seems that the president simply didn’t want to appear to be abiding by the terms of a deal negotiated by his predecessor,” he said.

Top figure of feared Haqqani network meets former president Karzai in Kabul amid discussions over Afghanistan’s futureLink copied

The meeting came as the Taliban stepped up efforts to form a government after sweeping to power in a lightning-quick offensive earlier this week. The Taliban’s de facto leader, Abdul Ghani Baradar, arrived in the southern city of Kandahar on Tuesday following more than a decade out of the country. He was imprisoned in Pakistan from 2010 to 2018, then released so he could head the Taliban’s diplomatic office in Qatar and lead the group’s negotiations with the United States.

Karzai and Abdullah have together formed an ad hoc “coordinating committee” to help establish a new government after the previous one collapsed.

The yellow-turbaned Haqqani â€" a member of the Taliban’s negotiating team and deputy head of the Haqqani network, a semiautonomous faction of the insurgency â€" was shown in photos greeting Abdullah in the garden of a secure compound in the Afghan capital Wednesday.

The Haqqani network is considered a terrorist network by the United States and one the U.S. forces’ most implacable foes in the Afghan conflict.

Later, in images distributed by the Taliban’s press office, Haqqani, Karzai and Abdullah were all shown seated together in a room.

Abdullah previously served as the chief executive of the government of President Ashraf Ghani, and before that as foreign minister from 2002 to 2006. Haqqani was sentenced to death in Afghanistan in 2016 but was later released in a prisoner swap between the Taliban and the United States.

Analysis: Biden’s bogus claim that Afghanistan’s military was larger than NATO alliesLink copied

Ever since the president announced his plans to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan, he has emphasized how the Afghan security forces totaled more than 300,000. He made this claim when he announced his plan April 14, when he reaffirmed his decision July 8 and again Aug. 10 when the situation deteriorated in the country.

On Monday, after Kabul fell to Taliban forces, Biden once again used the figure and favorably compared the “Afghan military force” to the military might of NATO allies.

This obviously raises the question â€" how could such a large, “well-equipped” military fall apart so quickly?

It’s because this is an inflated number.

Former interpreter for Australian army shot outside Kabul airportLink copied

A former interpreter for the Australian army was shot in the leg by a Taliban fighter during the crush to enter the Kabul airport, Australian news outlet SBS reported.

The interpreter, who was not identified out of concern for his safety, was trying to reach Australia’s first military evacuation flight. SBS reported 26 people made the flight, including Australian citizens as well as Afghans.

The former interpreter was taken to a hospital for treatment. He worked with the Australian army in Uruzgan province between 2010 and 2011, according to the report.

While Afghans desperate to leave the country are no longer flooding the airport runways as happened on Monday, crowds are still rushing to make evacuation flights, often following announcements on short notice.

They are encountering newly established Taliban checkpoints, and there have been reports of scuffles between the fighters and those desperate to leave.

While Western diplomats have told news agencies that evacuation flights have proceeded apace, there have been reports of people unable enter the airport. Dutch Foreign Minister Sigrid Kaag said Tuesday that one of the country’s military flights left empty that evening.

In the case of the Dutch flight, however, the problem was that U.S. forces securing the military half of the airport were not allowing in Afghans, even if they had the necessary credentials.

A NATO security official told Reuters that a stampede at the airport gate on Wednesday injured at least 17 people in an incident that did not involve any Taliban fighters.

Former defense secretary blames both Biden and Trump for Afghanistan situation Link copied

Former U.S. defense secretary Mark T. Esper blames both President Biden and his predecessor, Donald Trump, for the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan.

Biden in particular is responsible for the chaotic execution of the U.S. withdrawal, Esper said during an interview with CNN late Tuesday. He maintained that the disorganized evacuation of thousands of Americans and Afghans from Kabul could have been avoided.

The commander in chief could have postponed the Sept. 11 deadline he had set for the pullout of all American forces, or pressured the Taliban to better adhere to a February 2020 pact it signed with Washington, Esper said.

The 2020 agreement obliged the Taliban to pursue peace talks with the U.S.-backed Afghan government. The talks largely lagged, with few concessions from the Taliban side, while its forces gained ground in rural offensives across the country.

Esper was Trump’s secretary of the army and later defense secretary. Esper said his former boss’s attempts to accelerate the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan helped embolden the Taliban last year.

In an abrupt tweet in October 2020, Trump expressed hope for bringing back by Christmas the 5,000 or so American troops in Afghanistan at the time. The announcement â€" made a month before Trump was voted out of office â€" drew criticism from Esper and senior military officers. They feared that such a move would precipitate the events unfolding now. Esper said in the interview that he had opposed bringing troop strength below 4,500 at the time.

Esper was fired the week after the November election, and his replacement, Christopher C. Miller, announced a drawdown of American forces that put the troop level at 2,500 by mid-January.

In the same interview, Esper defended the Afghan forces that Biden has blamed for not having the will to fight the Taliban.

Dollars remaining in Afghan central bank ‘close to zero’ as Taliban consolidates control, bank governor saysLink copied

ISTANBUL â€" Afghanistan’s central bank governor said Wednesday that members of the Taliban were apparently seeking to locate the bank’s international reserves, the lion’s share of which are held overseas, including at the Federal Reserve in New York.

In a lengthy thread on Twitter, the governor, Ajmal Ahmady, detailed the location of Afghanistan’s more than $9 billion in reserves, because, he said, he had heard that Taliban members were asking staff at the central bank “about the location of the assets.”

“If this is true â€" it is clear they urgently need to add an economist on their team,” Ahmady wrote, referring to the Taliban.

The Biden administration, reeling from the Taliban’s breakneck advance across Afghanistan, has moved to cut off the movement’s access to billions of dollars held in U.S. institutions â€" an attempt to gain leverage over the militants that risked strangling the economy of Afghanistan, a deeply impoverished country that is heavily dependent on U.S. and international aid.

The central bank was “reliant on obtaining physical shipments of cash every few weeks,” Ahmady said, but the amount remaining was “close to zero” because the Biden administration canceled bulk shipments of dollars over the past few days as security deteriorated, he said.

“Seems like our partners had good intelligence as to what was going to happen,” he said.

Funds that remained accessible to the Taliban amounted to “.1-.2% of Afghanistan’s total international reserves. Not much,” Ahmady wrote. Without approval from the U.S. Treasury, “it is also unlikely that any donors would support the Taliban government,” he added. Decisions about freezing Afghanistan’s overseas funds were made by the United States and had nothing to do with the central bank or its staff, he said.

“Taliban and their backers should have foreseen this result,” Ahmady wrote. “Taliban won militarily â€" but now have to govern. It is not easy.”

Britain’s Boris Johnson opens emergency Afghanistan debate as officials vow to continue with evacuation plansLink copied

LONDON â€" British Prime Minister Boris Johnson recalled Parliament on Wednesday morning to discuss the unfolding catastrophe in Afghanistan, as government officials vowed to continue working to evacuate British and Afghan nationals from the Taliban-held country.

Johnson opened debate in the House of Commons about 9:30 a.m., saying that the “sacrifice in Afghanistan is seared into our national consciousness.”

The debate is expected to last a number of hours.

In the face of mounting criticism, Johnson said it was unfair to say the government was unprepared for the takeover, adding that he believed the situation “unfolded faster than I think even the Taliban expected.”

“We have an enduring commitment to the Afghan people, and we will honour it,” he tweeted ahead of the session. “A new resettlement scheme will create a safe and legal route for those in most need to come and live safely in the UK.”

On Tuesday, Britain vowed to help 20,000 Afghan refugees through a five-year settlement program that some critics say is not supportive enough. Government officials say women, children and those from religious minorities will be prioritized under the new plan.

Speaking to the BBC, Home Secretary Priti Patel said the British military was working to help evacuate British and Afghan nationals. She said an estimated 1,000 people a day are being flown out to safety.

The shadow foreign secretary from the opposition Labour Party, Lisa Nandy, told “BBC Breakfast” that the government had not put “basic” plans in place regarding evacuations and visas despite knowing “for 18 months that our time in Afghanistan was coming to an end.”

Boris Johnson vows to help ex-royal marine who founded animal rescue charity in KabulLink copied

LONDON â€" A former royal marine who runs an animal charity in Kabul is desperately trying to evacuate his wife, staff and 200 dogs and cats from the Taliban-held capital and has appealed to British officials for help.

Pen Farthing, 52, founded the Nowzad charity after befriending a stray dog while serving in the military in 2006. The charity has spent 15 years rehoming stray dogs and says it has reunited over 1,600 soldiers with animals they bonded with during their deployment.

Nowzad trained Afghanistan’s first fully qualified female veterinarians and is now hoping to get them out of the country so they can be safe to practice their veterinary skills away from Taliban rule, Dominic Dyer, an animal welfare campaigner who works closely with the charity, told The Washington Post on Wednesday.

Dyer said the response to Farthing’s pleas has been “amazing” and that donations were pouring in to help evacuate workers and animals from the country.

He added that pressure was mounting on British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab to take action.

During an emergency debate with lawmakers Wednesday, Johnson was asked about support for Farthing and the charity. Johnson said he was aware of their cause, adding: “We will do everything we can to help.”

On Monday, Farthing denounced Johnson and Raab â€" saying they were not helping those stranded in Afghanistan.

“My wife is at the North gate of Kabul airport being crushed in the stampede to get with my 34 week pregnant country manager,” he tweeted. “The UK military will not come out to rescue them.”

He later told followers that his wife and colleague had reached a safe house.

Farthing also said some of the older or injured dogs in his care may have to be “put to sleep” because there is “no other option.” He said dog ownership was banned under Taliban rule when the group was last in power.

He is campaigning to raise $200,000 to charter a plane to Britain that he hopes can transport his animals and staff away from Taliban fighters, who he says are stationed minutes away from the sanctuary.

Taliban moves toward forming government as evacuations proceed calmly Link copied

The Taliban’s top political leader arrived Tuesday in Afghanistan, as the militants moved toward organizing a new government and insisted that all Afghans and foreigners inside the country would be safe.

The Biden administration tentatively accepted the assurances but said it was interested in deeds, not words. The U.S. military said it has established direct lines of communication with the Taliban on the ground and that evacuations of American and other civilians were proceeding calmly and quickly after Monday’s chaotic airport scenes.

At times, it seemed as if much of the world, and the citizens of Afghanistan, were holding their collective breath, waiting to see if the apparent calm and outreach were just tactical maneuvers by militants with a long history of brutality and isolation as they consolidate their grip on power.

The Taliban controls Afghanistan. International legitimacy is another matter. Link copied

Having seized control of Afghanistan, the Taliban will now seek international legitimacy, analysts say.

Neighboring Pakistan said it will decide whether to recognize the Islamist militants as Afghanistan’s authorities after consulting with regional and international powers. Prime Minister Imran Khan has spoken positively of the Taliban’s takeover, and his information minister said Tuesday that officials were pleased the change of power has so far “neither caused any bloodshed nor triggered a war.”

When the Taliban last ruled Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001, only Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates recognized it. Experts say it’s not a foregone conclusion that they will make the same decision.

“Since 2001, both Saudi Arabia and the UAE have grown increasingly concerned about the risks associated with Muslim insurgents,” wrote Matthew J. Nelson, an expert in Islam and politics at the University of Melbourne. “This is unsurprising. Muslim-majority states around the world have suffered greatly at the hands of such insurgents.”

Anwar Gargash, a senior diplomatic official in the United Arab Emirates, said a Taliban spokesman’s pledges during the group’s first news conference were encouraging. “We welcome his emphasis on amnesty and tolerance over revenge, as well as his promise to honor the rights of women to education and work,” Gargash wrote on Twitter.

China and Russia are already looking to build ties and hosted Taliban officials even before the militants took over the country. But both Moscow and Beijing also worry that Afghanistan could again become a haven for terrorists.

One option for Western democracies, analysts say, is to recognize the Taliban’s control without promising diplomatic relations or according other benefits to the Islamist group. (Diplomatic history has examples, including the U.S. relationship with Iran after 1979.)

The European Union’s top diplomat said Tuesday the bloc intends to communicate with Taliban leaders over evacuations and to facilitate aid, but he stopped short of promising any sort of official recognition.

The Biden administration has repeatedly said it would seek to isolate a Taliban government if it did not uphold basic freedoms. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also said Tuesday that his country has “no plans” to recognize the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan after the militants “have taken over and replaced a duly elected democratic government by force.”

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