Biden faces decision on Afghanistan airlift, Taliban edict

By ROBERT BURNS and ELLEN KNICKMEYER

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. ramped up its round-the-clock airlift of evacuees from Afghanistan to its highest level yet connected Tuesday, but President Joe Biden faced a pressing determination connected whether to unopen down the monolithic subject airlifts successful a week, arsenic the Taliban are insisting.

Biden has been considering whether to widen his self-imposed deadline for completing the airlift by Aug. 31, taking into relationship the continued information threats, the Taliban’s absorption to an hold and the imaginable that not each Americans and at-risk Afghan allies tin beryllium evacuated by adjacent Tuesday.

America’s European allies arsenic good arsenic U.S. lawmakers, veterans groups and exile organizations are urging Biden to proceed the evacuations arsenic agelong arsenic needed to get retired each foreigners, Afghan allies and others astir astatine hazard from the Taliban. At a quality league successful Kabul, Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said Tuesday his radical volition judge “no extensions” of the deadline.

Amid the tense cognition to get radical retired of the country, CIA Director William Burns secretly swooped into Kabul connected Monday to conscionable with the Taliban’s apical governmental leader, a U.S. authoritative told The Associated Press.

About 21,600 radical were flown safely retired of Taliban-held Afghanistan successful the 24-hour play that ended aboriginal Tuesday, the White House said. That compares with astir 16,000 the erstwhile day.

Thirty-seven U.S. subject flights — 32 C-17s and 5 C-130s — carried astir 12,700 evacuees. An further 8,900 radical flew retired aboard 57 flights by U.S. allies.

Pentagon main spokesperson John Kirby said Monday the faster gait of evacuation was partially owed to coordination with Taliban commanders connected getting evacuees into the airport.

“Thus far, and going forward, it does necessitate changeless coordination and deconfliction with the Taliban,” Kirby said. “What we’ve seen is, this deconfliction has worked good successful presumption of allowing entree and travel arsenic good arsenic reducing the wide size of the crowds conscionable extracurricular the airport.”

CIA Director Burns and Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s apical governmental leader, secretly met successful Kabul connected Monday arsenic the evacuations continued. The Washington Post archetypal reported Burns’ meeting. The U.S. authoritative aboriginal confirmed the gathering for the AP.

The elder U.S. subject commandant astatine the Kabul airport, Rear Adm. Peter Vasely, has been communicating regular with Taliban commanders successful an effort to facilitate the evacuation, but the past known interaction betwixt the subject and Baradar was erstwhile Gen. Mark Milley, president of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, flew to Doha, Qatar, to conscionable with him and different Taliban officials past December. Milley tried to transportation the Taliban to trim their attacks against Afghan forces, yet to nary avail.

With entree to the airdrome inactive hard Monday, the U.S. subject went beyond the perimeter to transportation retired different chopper retrieval of Americans. U.S. officials said a subject chopper picked up 16 American citizens Monday and brought them to the airfield for evacuation. This was astatine slightest the 2nd specified rescue ngo beyond the airport; Kirby said that past Thursday, 3 Army helicopters picked up 169 Americans adjacent a edifice conscionable beyond the airdrome gross and flew them onto the airfield.

President Joe Biden’s nationalist information adviser, Jake Sullivan, said astatine the White House connected Monday that talks with the Taliban were continuing arsenic the medication looks for further ways to safely determination much Americans and others into the Kabul airdrome by the end-of-August deadline.

He said yet it volition beryllium Biden’s determination unsocial whether to proceed military-led evacuation operations beyond Aug. 31. That’s the day Biden has acceptable for completing the withdrawal of troops.

California Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff, president of the House quality committee, told reporters aft a committee briefing Monday connected the Afghanistan withdrawal that “it was hard for maine to imagine” wrapping up the airlifts by the extremity of the month. He besides said it was wide determination had been “any fig of warnings” to the medication “of a precise accelerated takeover” by the Taliban.

After much than a week of evacuations plagued by large obstacles, including Taliban forces and crushing crowds that are making approaching the airdrome hard and dangerous, the fig of radical flown retired met — and exceeded — U.S. projections for the archetypal time.

Army Gen. Stephen Lyons, caput of U.S. Transportation Command, which manages the subject craft that are executing the Kabul airlift, told a Pentagon quality league that much than 200 planes are involved, including aerial refueling planes, and that arriving planes are spending little than an hr connected the tarmac astatine Kabul earlier loading and taking off. He said the nonstop ngo is taking a toll connected aircrews.

“They’re tired,” Lyons said of the crews.

On a affirmative note, Lyons said that successful summation to the wide reported lawsuit of an Afghan pistillate giving commencement aboard a U.S. evacuation aircraft, 2 different babies person been calved successful akin circumstances. He did not supply details.

The Pentagon said it has added a 4th U.S. subject base, successful New Jersey, to 3 others — successful Virginia, Texas and Wisconsin — that are prepared to temporarily location arriving Afghans. Maj. Gen. Hank Williams, the Joint Staff lawman manager for determination operations, told reporters determination are present astir 1,200 Afghans astatine those subject bases. The 4 bases combined are susceptible of lodging up to 25,000 evacuees, Kirby said.

Afghan evacuees continued to get astatine Dulles International Airport extracurricular of Washington. Exhaustion clouded the faces of galore of the adults. A writer asked 1 antheral however it felt to beryllium successful the U.S. “We are safe,” the antheral answered.

An older pistillate sank with alleviation into an offered wheelchair, and a small miss carried by an older lad shaded her eyes to look curiously around. The scramble to evacuate near galore arrivals carrying lone a bookbag oregon purse, oregon a integrative buying container of belongings. Some arrived for their caller lives wholly empty-handed.

Biden said Sunday helium would not regularisation retired extending the evacuation beyond Aug. 31. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who volition conscionable with Biden virtually connected Tuesday successful a G-7 leaders’ acme connected the chaotic withdrawal, is expected to property Biden for an hold to get retired the maximum fig of foreigners and Afghan allies possible.

Lawmakers, veterans organizations and exile advocates successful the U.S. besides are urging Biden to support up the U.S. military’s evacuation retired of the Kabul airdrome arsenic agelong arsenic it takes to airlift not conscionable Americans, but Afghan allies and different Afghans astir astatine hazard from the Taliban.

But Taliban spokesperson Suhail Shaheen, successful an interrogation with Sky News, said that Aug. 31 is simply a “red line” the U.S. indispensable not transverse and that extending the American beingness would “provoke a reaction.”

Monday’s informing signaled the Taliban could importune connected shutting down the airlifts retired of the Kabul airdrome successful conscionable implicit a week. Lawmakers, exile groups, veterans’ organizations and U.S. allies person said ending the evacuation past could strand countless Afghans and foreigners inactive hoping for flights out.

Since Aug. 14, the U.S. has evacuated and facilitated the evacuation of much than 58,000 people.

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Associated Press writers Nomaan Merchant, Darlene Superville, Aamer Madhani, Lolita C. Baldor, Hope Yen, Alexandra Jaffe, James LaPorta, Jonathan Lemire, Matthew Lee and Dan Huff contributed to this report.