Pentagon: U.S., Taliban coordinate as Kabul evacuation speeds

WASHINGTON — The U.S. subject is coordinating with the Taliban portion accelerating the airlift of Americans and Afghan allies from the Kabul airport, and besides bringing successful further U.S. troops successful a scramble to implicit the evacuation successful 2 weeks, Pentagon officials said Tuesday.

The disclosure by Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby that U.S. commanders are speaking with Taliban commanders is an denotation that the caller rulers of Afghanistan, who swept to powerfulness aft 20 years of warfare against the U.S.-supported Kabul government, volition not interfere with the evacuation. Kirby would not sermon details of the Taliban arrangement.

“There are interactions aggregate times a day” betwixt U.S. and Taliban commanders, helium said.

Overnight astatine the airport, 9 Air Force C-17 transport planes arrived with instrumentality and astir 1,000 troops, and 7 C-17s took disconnected with 700-800 civilian evacuees, including 165 Americans, Army Maj. Gen. William Taylor told a Pentagon quality conference. The full included Afghans who person applied for Special Immigrant Visas and third-country nationals, helium said.

The extremity is to ramp up to 1 evacuation formation per hr by Wednesday, with perchance a full of 5,000 to 9,000 evacuees leaving per day, Taylor and Kirby said. Taylor said that much than 4,000 U.S. troops are present astatine the airport. That fig is expected to apical 6,000 successful coming days, with airdrome information to beryllium headed by an 82nd Airborne commander.

On Monday the airlift had been temporarily suspended erstwhile Afghans hopeless to flight the state breeched information and rushed onto the tarmac. Seven radical died successful respective incidents.

Kirby, said U.S. commanders astatine the airdrome are successful nonstop connection with Taliban commanders extracurricular the airdrome to debar information incidents. He indicated this connection was successful enactment with an statement made connected Sunday by the caput of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Frank McKenzie, erstwhile helium met with Taliban leaders successful Qatar and won statement to “deconflict” forces and let a harmless U.S. evacuation.

Kirby said determination person been nary hostile actions by the Taliban, and that respective 100 members of the now-defeated Afghan service are astatine the airdrome assisting successful the evacuation.

He said U.S. forces program to wrapper up their oversight of the evacuation by Aug. 31, besides the day President Joe Biden has acceptable for officially ending the U.S. combat relation successful Afghanistan.

On Monday, a defiant Biden rejected blasted for chaotic scenes of Afghans clinging to U.S. subject planes successful Kabul successful a hopeless bid to fly their location state aft the Taliban’s casual triumph implicit an Afghan subject that America and NATO allies had spent 2 decades trying to build.

Biden called the anguish of trapped Afghan civilians “gut-wrenching” and conceded the Taliban had achieved a overmuch faster takeover of the state than his medication had expected. The U.S. rushed successful troops to support its ain evacuating diplomats and others astatine the Kabul airport.

But the president expressed nary 2nd thoughts astir his determination to instrumentality by the U.S. commitment, formulated during the Trump administration, to extremity America’s longest war, nary substance what.

“I basal squarely down my decision” to yet retreat U.S. combat forces, Biden said, portion acknowledging the Afghan illness played retired acold much rapidly than the astir pessimistic nationalist forecasts of his administration. “This did unfold much rapidly than we anticipated,” helium said.

Despite declaring “the subordinate stops with me,” Biden placed astir each blasted connected Afghans for the shockingly accelerated Taliban conquest.

His grim comments were his archetypal successful idiosyncratic to the satellite since the biggest overseas argumentation situation of his still-young presidency. Emboldened by the U.S. withdrawal, Taliban fighters swept crossed the state past week and captured the capital, Kabul, connected Sunday, sending U.S.-backed Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fleeing the country.

Biden said helium had warned Ghani — who was appointed Afghanistan’s president successful a U.S.-negotiated statement — to beryllium prepared to combat a civilian warfare with the Taliban aft U.S. forces left. “They failed to bash immoderate of that,” helium said.

At home, it each sparked crisp criticism, adjacent from members of Biden’s ain governmental party, who implored the White House to bash much to rescue fleeing Afghans, particularly those who had aided the two-decade American subject effort.

“We didn’t request to beryllium seeing the scenes that we’re seeing astatine Kabul airdrome with our Afghan friends climbing aboard C-17s,” said Rep. Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat and Iraq and Afghanistan subject veteran.

He said that is wherefore helium and others called for the evacuations to commencement months ago. “It could person been done deliberately and methodically,” Crow said. “And we deliberation that that was a missed opportunity.”

Besides the life-and-death concern successful Kabul, the timing of the situation was unfortunate for Biden’s home efforts astatine home. It could good weaken his governmental lasting arsenic helium works to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and physique legislature enactment for a $1.2 trillion infrastructure measure and an adjacent larger enlargement of the societal information net.

Still, the absorption astatine location and overseas was connected Kabul’s airport, wherever thousands of Afghans trapped by the abrupt Taliban takeover rushed the tarmac and clung to U.S. subject planes deployed to alert retired staffers of the U.S. Embassy, which unopen down Sunday, and others.

At slightest 7 radical died successful the chaos, including 2 who clung to the wheels of a C-17 and plunged to the tarmac arsenic it flew away, and 2 others changeable by U.S. forces. Americans said the men were equipped but determination was nary grounds that they were Taliban.

Kirby said Tuesday during tv interviews that plans were being made to location up to 22,000 evacuated Afghans and their families astatine 3 U.S. Army installations successful the continental United States. Those locations are Camp McCoy, Wisconsin; Fort Bliss, Texas, and Fort Lee, Virginia.

Associated Press writers Matthew Lee, Eric Tucker and Mary Clare Jalonick successful Washington and Kirsten Grieshaber successful Berlin contributed to this report.