[The American withdrawal coincided
with a threat by the Taliban to stop Afghans from traveling to the airport, an
ominous sign that the window may be slamming shut for thousands of people
desperate to leave.]
By Mark Landler and Michael D. Shear
Even as Mr. Biden spoke from the
White House, officials said the United States had already begun to reduce its
military presence at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, sending about
300 of the 5,800 Marines and soldiers home in anticipation of the conclusion of
their rescue mission within a week.
“The sooner we can finish, the
better,” the president said, hours after informing world leaders of his
intentions during an emergency virtual meeting. Citing the threat from an
Islamic State affiliate known as ISIS-K and operating in Afghanistan, he said
that “every day we’re on the ground is another day we know that ISIS-K is
seeking to target the airport, attack both U.S. and allied forces and innocent
civilians.”
But Mr. Biden did not close the
door to extending what has become an immense evacuation effort. He said that he
had asked the Pentagon and the State Department for contingency plans in case
it became necessary to stay longer.
“I’m determined to ensure that we
complete our mission,” he said.
The president said that more than
70,000 people had been ferried out of harm’s way since Aug. 14, the day
before the
Taliban swept into power in Kabul; on Tuesday, the Pentagon reported its
biggest number of daily evacuations from the Kabul airport so far, saying it
had airlifted 21,600 people out of the country over 24 hours.
The fast-approaching American
withdrawal coincided with a
threat by the Taliban to stop Afghans from traveling to the airport, which
crowds have mobbed for days, under pitiless sun and at risk of brutal attacks
by militants. It was an ominous sign that for the thousands of people still
desperate to leave, the window may already be slamming shut.
The rapidly unfolding developments
came as the world leaders pledged unity in the face of the changing landscape
in Afghanistan and the C.I.A. director met
secretly with the Taliban’s leader. But the flurry of diplomacy failed to
alter a harrowing dynamic: The Taliban are tightening their grip, the Americans
are leaving and the options for countries scrambling to extract their citizens
and Afghan allies are dwindling.
Even though the pace of evacuations
has accelerated in recent days, the number of people airlifted out is well
below the total number of Americans, foreign citizens and Afghan allies who are
trying to leave the country. And the timetable for civilian evacuations is
probably significantly shorter than a week.
The Pentagon spokesman, John F.
Kirby, said it would take several days to remove all of the 5,800 troops who
are securing Kabul’s airport, as well as their equipment. At some point in the
coming days, the military’s focus will shift from evacuations to the drawdown.
As crowds continued to throng the
airport, the Taliban sought to assert their authority over a country they
conquered in lightning fashion. A spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said Taliban
militants would block Afghans from the airport for their own safety and
reiterated that the United States must leave by Aug. 31.
“The road that ends at the Kabul
airport has been blocked,” Mr. Mujahid said at a news conference on Tuesday.
“Foreigners can go through it, but Afghans are not allowed to take the road.”
For the first time, the Taliban
warned women to stay off the streets and not to go to their jobs — also
ostensibly for their own safety and only as a temporary measure. It was a
chilling portent of the harsh
repression that the Taliban imposed on women and girls the last time
they ruled Afghanistan.
“We are worried our forces, who are
new and have not yet been trained very well, may mistreat women,” Mr. Mujahid
said. “Until we have a new procedure, they should stay home. They won’t be
counted as absent, and their salaries will be paid in their homes.”
The White House has conducted its
own outreach to the Taliban, dispatching the C.I.A. director, William J. Burns,
to Kabul this week for talks with the Taliban leadership, according to American
officials familiar with his visit.
Mr. Burns, a longtime diplomat who
conducted secret nuclear talks with Iran during the Obama administration, met
on Monday with Abdul
Ghani Baradar, the Taliban leader who led diplomatic negotiations in
Qatar with the United States government.
It was not clear whether Mr. Burns
made much headway, either on the Aug. 31 deadline or broader human rights or
security issues. But in his remarks at the White House on Tuesday, the president
expressed nervousness about relying on assurances from the Taliban despite the
high-level diplomatic outreach.
“Thus far, the Taliban have been
taking steps to work with us so we can get our people out,” he said. “But it’s
a tenuous situation. We’ve already had some gun fighting break out. We run a
serious risk of it breaking down, as time goes on.”
Mr. Biden also rejected calls from
lawmakers in both parties, who urged
some of his top officials to extend the Aug. 31 deadline during a
closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill, arguing that it would not be possible to
evacuate all Americans and Afghan allies by then.
“There is a broad bipartisan
agreement within the United States Congress that we have to get American
citizens out and we have to get our Afghan partners and allies out,” said
Representative Jason Crow, Democrat of Colorado, who is a former Army Ranger.
“That can’t be accomplished between now and the end of the month, so the date
has to extend until we get that mission done.”
For weeks, members of Congress have
been inundated with thousands of pleas from American citizens and Afghans
trying to escape Afghanistan. Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, the top
Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee, said that if the president did not
extend the withdrawal date, “he will have blood on his hands.”
“People are going to die, and they
are going to be left behind,” Mr. McCaul said.
Mr. Biden has emphasized that he
was taking the threats to the safety of Americans in Kabul seriously. In a
closed-door meeting with leaders of the Group of 7 nations on Tuesday, the
president told them that the danger of a terrorist attack was “very high,”
according to a senior American official.
A deadly attack against American
and Afghan civilians by ISIS-K would be a disaster not only for the United
States, but also for the Taliban, who are moving to consolidate control over
Kabul. The Taliban and the Islamic State have been enemies, fighting each other
on the battlefield for control of parts of the country.
ISIS-K refers to the Islamic
State’s Khorasan affiliate in Afghanistan.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson of
Britain, who led the meeting, sought to put a good face on the discussions,
saying the evacuation had been remarkably successful. He said leaders had
agreed on a road map for dealing with the Taliban in the long term, vowing to
use Afghan funds held in Western banks as a lever to pressure the Taliban.
“The No. 1 condition is that
they’ve got to guarantee, right the way through to Aug. 31 and beyond, safe
passage for those who want to come out,” Mr. Johnson said to the BBC after the
meeting.
But Mr. Johnson failed in his
effort to
persuade Mr. Biden to extend the evacuation beyond Aug. 31, and it was not
clear what other options the allies had to protect their own citizens and
Afghan allies without American military might.
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany
said that plans were being made to find a way to ensure that “afterward we can
still get as many local employees and people needing protection to be allowed
to leave the country.” But her downbeat tone laid bare the sense of futility
felt by Western leaders about Afghanistan.
“How can it be that the Afghan
leader left the country so quickly?” Ms. Merkel said. “How can it be that
Afghan soldiers who we trained for so long gave up so quickly? We will have to
ask these questions, but they were not the most pressing today.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of
Canada, who broke away from campaigning to attend the meeting, said that
Canadian troops would stay in Afghanistan to continue evacuations beyond Aug.
31 if it was necessary and possible.
“We’re going to continue to work
every single day to get as many people out alongside our allies,” Mr. Trudeau
told reporters in Hamilton, Ontario, before boarding a campaign bus. “The
commitment by our fellow G7 nations is clear: We’re all going to work together
to save as many people as possible.”
The meeting, however, came at a
moment of acute strain in the trans-Atlantic alliance, with Britain and other
allies bruised by what they view as the White House’s lack of consultation on
the timing or tactics of the withdrawal.
Diplomats said the meeting was
important to clear the air and prevent the chaotic withdrawal from undermining
other joint efforts in security and counterterrorism. But it also demonstrated
yet again the impotence of European allies, who acknowledged they could not
stay in Kabul after the United States left.
“The withdrawal was pathetically
botched but a tactical defeat doesn’t make a strategic one,” said Gérard Araud,
a former French ambassador to the United States. “All the pillars of U.S. power
are intact.”
Wolfgang Ischinger, a former German
ambassador to Washington, said: “There is serious loss of trust, and that will
require a significant reassurance effort by Washington. But the real lesson
from this for Europe is this: Do we really want to be totally dependent on U.S.
capabilities and decisions forever, or can Europe finally begin to be serious
about becoming a credible strategic actor?”
In Taliban-controlled Kabul, the
questions were more elemental. With banks closed, cash scarce, food prices
rising and public services unavailable, Afghans
were struggling to make sense of what life would be like under their
new rulers.
Kabul’s streets were unusually
quiet, in contrast to the havoc playing out at the airport. To some, however,
the quiet carried its own air of menace. One man said it showed that people
were hiding in their homes, “scared and terrorized.”
Reporting was contributed
by Sharif Hassan, Annie Karni, Catie Edmondson, Helene
Cooper, Eric Schmitt, Melissa Eddy and Ian Austen.
Mark Landler is the London bureau
chief. In 27 years at The Times, he has been bureau chief in Hong Kong and
Frankfurt, White House correspondent, diplomatic correspondent, European
economic correspondent, and a business reporter in New York. @MarkLandler
Michael D. Shear is a veteran White
House correspondent and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who was a member of team
that won the Public Service Medal for Covid coverage in 2020. He is the
co-author of “Border Wars: Inside Trump's Assault on Immigration.” @shearm
