Biden sticking to pullout deadline though lawmakers complain

By JONATHAN LEMIRE, ROBERT BURNS and ELLEN KNICKMEYER

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden has decided to instrumentality with his deadline adjacent week for completing the U.S.-led evacuation from Afghanistan, an medication authoritative said Tuesday. The determination reflects a increasing fearfulness of extremist attacks astatine the Kabul airdrome but besides opens Biden to home governmental complaints of caving to Taliban demands and of perchance leaving immoderate Americans and Afghan allies behind.

A Taliban spokesman, speaking anterior to connection of Biden’s decision, said anew that the militant radical would reason immoderate hold of the Aug. 31 deadline. It has allowed the airlift to proceed without large interference.

Pressure from U.S. allies, Democratic and Republican lawmakers, veterans groups and exile organizations has grown for Biden to widen his deadline, which helium acceptable good earlier the Taliban completed its lightning takeover of Afghanistan connected Aug. 15. It remains unclear whether the airlift from Kabul’s planetary airdrome tin get retired each American citizens and different foreigners by adjacent Tuesday, arsenic good arsenic erstwhile translators and different at-risk Afghans who fearfulness for their lives nether Taliban rule.

Some Republicans bristled Tuesday astatine the U.S. seeming to comply with a Taliban edict. “We request to person the apical precedence to archer the Taliban that we’re going to get each of our radical out, careless of what timeline was initially set,” said Rep. Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican.

And Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California, 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.

Biden asked his nationalist information squad to make contingency plans successful lawsuit a concern arose for which the deadline needed to beryllium extended slightly, the authoritative said.

The main Pentagon spokesman, John Kirby, said Aug. 31 leaves capable clip to get each Americans out, but helium was little circumstantial astir completing the evacuation of each at-risk Afghans.

“We judge we person the quality to get that done by the extremity of the month,” helium said, referring to the unspecified fig of American citizens who are seeking to leave. He said respective 100 were evacuated connected Monday and that “several thousand” person gotten retired since the airlift began. He would not beryllium much specific.

The U.S. has repeatedly stressed the hazard of continuing the airlift, owed to threats of unit by the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate. Germany’s apical subject commander, Gen. Eberhard Zorn, said Tuesday the United States and Germany were peculiarly acrophobic astir ISIS termination bombers perchance slipping into crowds successful Kabul.

The U.S. ramped up its round-the-clock airlift of evacuees from Afghanistan to its highest level yet connected Tuesday. About 21,600 radical were flown retired 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.

Biden had considered whether to widen his self-imposed deadline, taking into relationship the continued information threats by extremist groups successful the Afghan capital, 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.

At a quality league successful Kabul, Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said Tuesday his radical volition judge “no extensions” of the deadline.

Later Tuesday, Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said the subject volition request “at slightest respective days” to afloat retreat its respective 1000 troops and their instrumentality from Kabul.

NATO partners and different countries accidental they volition person to unopen down their ain evacuations if the U.S. withdraws the 5,800 troops it has flown successful to tally and support the monolithic airlifts retired of Taliban-ruled Kabul.

British Defense Minister Ben Wallace said earlier that nary state would person clip to implicit evacuations by Aug. 31.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who had pressed Biden via an exigency virtual G-7 leaders’ gathering Tuesday to stay, said British evacuations “will spell connected close up until the past infinitesimal that we can.”

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, Abdul Ghani Baradar, a U.S. authoritative told The Associated Press.

.The Washington Post archetypal reported Burns’ meeting. The U.S. authoritative aboriginal confirmed the gathering for the AP.

A 2020 woody struck by President Donald Trump and the Taliban initially acceptable a May deadline for U.S. troops to afloat retreat from Afghanistan, aft astir 20 years of warfare there. Biden extended the deadline to Aug. 31 but is adamant he, too, wants to extremity the U.S. subject relation successful Afghanistan, and helium is rejecting disapproval pursuing the Taliban’s abrupt conquest of the state this period and the illness of the U.S.-backed authorities and military.

With entree to the airdrome inactive dangerous, U.S. chopper crews person been carrying retired sorties beyond the airdrome walls to retrieve evacuees, including 16 Americans connected Monday.

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, Padmananda Rama, Darlene Superville, Aamer Madhani, Frank Jordans, Lolita C. Baldor, Hope Yen, Alexandra Jaffe, James LaPorta, Matthew Lee and Dan Huff contributed to this report.