WITH thousands of desperate Afghans and foreigners massed at Kabul’s airport in the hope of fleeing Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers, US President Joe Biden is expected to decide as soon as Tuesday on whether to extend an Aug 31 deadline to airlift Americans and their allies to safety.
Biden warned on Sunday (Aug 22) that the evacuation was going to be “hard and painful” and a lot could still go wrong. US troops might stay beyond Biden’s Aug 31 deadline to oversee the evacuation, he said.
On Monday (Aug 23), an administration official told Reuters that Biden would decide within 24 hours whether to extend the timeline in order to give the Pentagon time to prepare.
Beyond the need to remove thousands of Americans, citizens of allied countries and Afghans who worked with US forces, Department of Defense officials said it would still take days to fly out the 6,000 troops deployed to secure and run the airlift.
Biden was mulling how to proceed but some advisers were arguing against extending the self-imposed deadline for security reasons. Biden could signal his intentions at a virtual meeting of Group of Seven wealthy nations on Tuesday.
Two US officials had said the expectation was that the US would continue evacuations past Aug 31. A senior State Department official told reporters the country’s commitment to at-risk Afghans “doesn’t end on Aug 31”.
A Taliban official said foreign forces had not sought an extension and it would not be granted if they had. Washington said negotiations were continuing.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the US was in daily talks with the Taliban and making “enormous progress” in evacuating Americans and others.
Between 3am and 3pm local time on Monday, some 10,900 people were evacuated from Kabul, meaning the US had facilitated the evacuation of 48,000 people since Aug 14.
US defense officials had told Reuters that almost everything would have to go perfectly to extricate every American citizen by Aug 31 given concerns about reaching the airport, terrorist attacks and complicated processing times.
US State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters the US had discussed future control of the airport with the Taliban as well as with US partners and allies.
The Taliban’s swift takeover and ensuing chaos in Afghanistan have roiled US politics with opposition Republicans piling criticism on Biden for the withdrawal which was initiated by his Republican predecessor, Donald Trump. Biden’s opinion poll numbers have slipped.
For its part, the powerful US military has been grappling with the collapse of US-backed Afghan forces after 20 years of training. “Was it worth it? Yes. Does it still hurt? Yes,” General David Berger, the commandant of the Marine Corps, wrote in a memo to Marines. – Aug 24, 2021
