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Up to 15,000 Americans remain in Afghanistan after the Taliban took full control of the nation last weekend.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said earlier Wednesday that the US military does not have the forces and firepower in Afghanistan to expand its current mission from securing the Kabul airport to collecting Americans and at-risk Afghans elsewhere in the capital and escorting them for evacuation.
The question of whether those seeking to leave the country before Biden’s deadline should be rescued and brought to the airport has arisen amid reports that Taliban checkpoints have stopped some designated evacuees.
“I don’t have the capability to go out and extend operations currently into Kabul,” Austin said. “And where do you take that? How far do you extend into Kabul, and how long does it take to flow those forces in to be able to do that?”
Here’s a round up of the key developments from the last few hours:
- Joe Biden has said he could not see a way to withdraw from Afghanistan without “chaos ensuing”. In an exclusive interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, and the president’s first since the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban, President Joe Biden defended his decision to withdraw troops when he did.
- Ousted Afghan president Ashraf Ghani confirmed he was in the United Arab Emirates but said he was in “consultation” to return to Afghanistan.
- Taliban militants attacked protesters in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday after they dared to take down their banner and replace it with the country’s flag, killing at least one person and fuelling fears about how the insurgents plan to govern.
- A senior Taliban commander met a former Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, for talks on Wednesday, as the Taliban worked to establish a government in Afghanistan amid allegations of women and children being beaten and at least three protesters being shot dead.
- The United Nations has started moving staff out of Afghanistan while stressing it is still “committed to staying and delivering in support of the Afghan people in their hour of need”.
- British media organisations have again urged the government to evacuate Afghan journalists and translators who worked with UK media outlets, with many local staff fearing Taliban reprisals.
- Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi on Wednesday told his Russian and Chinese counterparts that Tehran is ready to cooperate with the two countries to establish “stability and peace” in Afghanistan.
- President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Wednesday said Turkey was still prepared to protect Kabul airport following the Taliban takeover, and Ankara was talking with all concerned parties.
- Britain fears US forces may pull out of Kabul international airport within days, putting it at risk of closure and raising concerns over the emergency airlift of thousands of people from Afghanistan.
- Both the Trump and Biden administrations were warned by US intelligence that the Afghan army’s resistance to the Taliban could collapse “within days” after an over-hasty withdrawal, according to a former CIA counter-terrorism chief.
- Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers are likely to face a rapidly developing financial crisis, with foreign currency reserves largely unreachable and western aid donors – who fund the country’s institutions by about 75% – already cutting off or threatening to cut payments.
Updated
Biden – US troops may stay longer than 31 August to evacuate Americans
US President Joe Biden has just said that troops may stay in the country beyond 31 August to evacuate all Americans, AP reports.
Biden said Wednesday that he is committed to keeping US troops in Afghanistan until every American is evacuated, even if that means maintaining a military presence there beyond his 31 August deadline for withdrawal.
He also pushed back against criticism that the U.S. should have done more to plan for the evacuation and withdrawal, which has been marked by scenes of violence and chaos as thousands attempted to flee while the Taliban advanced.
In an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, Biden said the US will do “everything in our power” to evacuate Americans and US allies from Afghanistan before the deadline.
Pressed repeatedly on how the administration would help Americans left in the nation after 31 August, Biden said, “If there’s American citizens left, we’re gonna stay till we get them all out.”
Updated
Hi, Helen Sullivan taking over our live coverage of Afghanistan now.
The AFP is reporting that Biden says US troops may stay in the country beyond 31 August to evacuate all Americans.
We’ll have more on this shortly.
In the meantime, if you see news you think we may have missed, the best place to get in touch with me is in Twitter @helenrsullivan.
Updated
The Netherlands said it got 35 of its citizens and 20 other foreign nationals out of Afghanistan on Wednesday, in a slow start to its evacuation operation amid chaos outside Kabul airport.
A flight, which included 16 Belgians, two Germans and two British passport holders landed in Amsterdam late on Wednesday, the Foreign Ministry said on Twitter. It added that brought the total number of Dutch nationals evacuated to 50.
The Dutch aim to evacuate a total of 1,000 local embassy workers, translators and their families from Afghanistan following the seizure of the capital by Taliban insurgents.
An evacuation effort on Tuesday evening failed as a military plane operated by the Dutch and other nations left Kabul without anyone destined for the Netherlands aboard after US. forces, struggling to control panicky crowds, denied Afghans access to the airport even if they had the correct credentials, Reuters reports.
The situation seemed to have improved on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Sigrid Kaag said in a debate in the Dutch parliament.
We still get mixed messages, but Afghans now also seem to be allowed to reach the gates of the airport. We will now try to get local staff, translators and their families on Western military planes as soon as possible. The U.S. allows this.
More than 2,200 diplomats and civilians have been evacuated from Afghanistan on military flights, a Western security official said on Wednesday.
Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers are likely to face a rapidly developing financial crisis, with foreign currency reserves largely unreachable and western aid donors – who fund the country’s institutions by about 75% – already cutting off or threatening to cut payments.
While the hardline Islamist group has moved in recent years to become more independent of outside financial supporters including Iran, Pakistan and wealthy donors in the Gulf, its financial flows – amounting to $1.6bn (£1.2bn) last year – are far short of what it will require to govern.
On Wednesday, Afghanistan’s central bank governor disclosed that the country has $9bn in reserves abroad but not in physical cash inside the country after the Biden administration ordered the freezing of Afghan government reserves held in US bank accounts on Sunday.
Ajmal Ahmady wrote on Twitter on Wednesday that the majority of that – about $7bn – was being held in US Federal Reserve bonds, assets and gold, adding that its holdings of US dollars were “close to zero” as the country had not received a planned cash shipment during the Taliban offensive that swept the country last week.
“The next shipment never arrived,” he wrote. “Seems like our partners had good intelligence as to what was going to happen.”
Ahmady noted that the lack of US dollars would probably cause the afghani to depreciate and inflation to rise, hurting the poor. Getting access to those reserves will probably be complicated by the US government considering designating the Taliban as a sanctioned terror group.
The “Taliban won militarily – but now have to govern”, he wrote. “It is not easy.”
Read the full story:
UK ministers will embark on a diplomatic blitz to encourage allies to “match” their own commitment to take in Afghan refugees fleeing the Taliban, Downing Street has said.
With a meeting of G7 leaders pencilled in for next week, the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, will lay the groundwork in talks with his counterparts on Thursday to discuss international co-operation.
Raab was also due to hold talks on Wednesday evening with his opposite number in India and the US – the second time he will have spoken with the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, this week.
The UK has announced it will take up to 20,000 people looking to exit Afghanistan as part of its resettlement scheme, with 5,000 due to be accepted in the next 12 months.
Downing Street said the government would be encouraging international partners to emulate “one of the most generous asylum schemes in British history”, but Labour said the offer was not bold enough.
The shadow foreign secretary, Lisa Nandy, told BBC’s Question Time that it was “absolutely clear that 5,000 is too small a number over the next 12 months” and called for a “more generous offer” to be made.
A Downing Street spokeswoman said
Today the prime minister set out the UK’s significant offer to address the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan – doubling our humanitarian aid to the region and establishing one of the most generous asylum schemes in British history.
He also outlined the UK’s broader strategy for Afghanistan and the region, including the need to unite the international community behind a clear plan for dealing with the Taliban regime in a unified and concerted way.
We are now asking our international partners to match the UK’s commitments and work with us to offer a lifeline to Afghanistan’s most vulnerable people.
Updated
Joe Biden says there was no way to exit Afghanistan without "chaos"
Joe Biden has said he could not see a way to withdraw from Afghanistan without “chaos ensuing”.
In an exclusive interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, and the president’s first since the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban, President Joe Biden defended his decision to withdraw troops when he did.
Asked if the exit could have been handled better in any way, the president said
No, I don’t think it could have been handled in a way that, we’re gonna go back in hindsight and look – but the idea that somehow, there’s a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, I don’t know how that happens. I don’t know how that happened.
Biden said he didn’t know what the Taliban would do “in terms of trying to keep people from getting out”.
He said:
What are they doing now? They’re cooperating, letting American citizens get out, American personnel get out, embassies get out, etc ... we’re having some more difficulty having those who helped us when we were in there.
Asked what he thought when he saw the images of hundreds of people packed in a C-17 leaving Kabul and those of people falling from planes.
“What I thought was, we have to gain control of this. We have to move this more quickly. We have to move in a way in which we can take control of that airport. And we did,” Biden said.
Asked whether the failure was one of intelligence, planning, execution or judgment, the US president said:
Look, it was a simple choice, George. When you had the government of Afghanistan, the leader of that government, get in a plane and taking off and going to another country; when you saw the significant collapse of the Afghan troops we had trained, up to 300,000 of them, just leaving their equipment and taking off ... That’s simply what happened. And so the question was, in the beginning, the threshold question was, do we commit to leave within the timeframe we set, do we extend it to Sept. 1, or do we put significantly more troops in?
He later added:
“I had a simple choice. If I said, ‘we’re gonna stay,’ then we’d better be prepared to put a whole lot hell of a lot more troops in.”
Updated
Britain fears US forces may pull out of Kabul international airport within days, putting it at risk of closure and raising concerns over the emergency airlift of thousands of people from Afghanistan.
Whitehall and security sources said they could not guarantee how long the US would keep its contingent of 6,000 troops on the ground and cautioned that the UK could not continue the rescue without their presence. They also indicated Britain was not engaging with the Taliban directly over security or other issues after the militant group seized the Afghan capital.
The Guardian has learned that some in government, however, believe there is a shift by UK ministers and the military towards dealing directly with the Taliban and legitimising their role – a position that would anger those who believe they have not changed.
Gen Sir Nick Carter, the head of the British armed forces, said on Wednesday he thought the Taliban wanted an “inclusive Afghanistan” and described them as “country boys” who had “honour at the heart of what they do”. Asked on Sky News about the Taliban’s repression of women, Carter said: “I do think they have changed and recognise Afghanistan has evolved and the fundamental role women have played in that evolution.”
Boris Johnson also hinted at the possibility of recognising the Taliban, potentially in conjunction with other countries, telling MPs: “We will judge this regime based on the choices it makes and by its actions rather than by its words.”
A Whitehall source said uncertainty over the Taliban’s actions, however, and the US position, meant the UK wanted to complete its evacuation as rapidly as it could, saying: “There’s a realistic view that we want to just go as quickly as possible.”
The airport in Kabul was the scene of chaos this week but has since been secured by the US ahead of a planned evacuation deadline of 31 August. British attempts to seek reassurances from the US over that timeline had not proved successful, a source said, although on Tuesday the US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, tweeted that the country would hold the airport “to get all Americans out of Afghanistan”.
A total of 700 Britons, Afghans and others were airlifted out of Kabul on Tuesday, according to official figures, taking the total to more than 1,150 out of as many as 6,000, half of which are Britons and dual nationals and the remainder Afghans eligible to settle in the UK because they previously helped the British. Of the 1,150, 300 are Britons.
Carter said he expected seven aircraft to head to Kabul, enabling up to a further 1,000 people to leave on Wednesday. “The situation has stabilised since the weekend but it remains precarious,” he said.
Read more from my colleagues Dan Sabbagh, Rowena Mason and Jessica Elgot here:
Both the Trump and Biden administrations were warned by US intelligence that the Afghan army’s resistance to the Taliban could collapse “within days” after an over-hasty withdrawal, according to a former CIA counter-terrorism chief.
Press accounts of White House decision-making in recent days have suggested that Joe Biden was led to believe that it might take 18 months for Kabul and Ashraf Ghani’s government to fall. Last week, unnamed officials were widely quoted as saying it could be 30 to 90 days.
On Wednesday, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Mark Milley told reporters: “There was nothing that I or anyone else saw that indicated a collapse of this army or this government in 11 days.”
Speaking to the nation on Monday, Biden said: “The truth is: This did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated.”
Douglas London, the CIA’s former counter-terrorism chief for south and south-west Asia, said the president was being “misleading at best”.
“The CIA anticipated it as a possible scenario,” London said.
London left his post in 2019 but served as a volunteer adviser to the Biden campaign. In a detailed account on the Just Security website on Wednesday, he described intelligence briefings to the Trump and Biden teams which gave different estimates of how long Ghani and the Afghan forces could endure a Taliban offensive, depending on the speed and depth of the US retreat.
“So, was it 30 days from withdrawal to collapse? 60? 18 months? Actually, it was all of the above, the projections aligning with the various ‘what ifs’,” London wrote.
“Ultimately, it was assessed, Afghan forces might capitulate within days under the circumstances we witnessed, in projections highlighted to Trump officials and future Biden officials alike.”
The former counter-terrorism chief said that both Donald Trump and Biden had made decisions to leave for political and ideological reasons and were ultimately impervious to intelligence briefings on possible outcomes.
“The decision Trump made, and Biden ratified, to rapidly withdraw US forces came despite warnings projecting the outcome we’re now witnessing. And it was a path to which Trump and Biden allowed themselves to be held captive owing to the ‘ending Forever Wars’ slogan they both embraced,” London argued.
Read more from my colleagues Julian Borger and Hugo Lowell in Washington, Dan Sabbagh defence and security editor here:
The International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday that Afghanistan will not be able to access IMF resources, including a new allocation of Special Drawing Rights reserves, due to a lack of clarity over the recognition of its government after the Taliban seized control of Kabul.
An IMF spokesperson said in a statement:
As is always the case, the IMF is guided by the views of the international community.
There is currently a lack of clarity within the international community regarding recognition of a government in Afghanistan, as a consequence of which the country cannot access SDRs or other IMF resources.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Wednesday said Turkey was still prepared to protect Kabul airport following the Taliban takeover, and Ankara was talking with all concerned parties.
Erdogan said in a televised interview:
We aimed at ensuring the security of the airport and contributing to the security of this country after the withdrawal of American (troops). We still maintain this intention.
Ankara has negotiated with US defence officials since offering to help secure and run Kabul airport, which is key to allowing countries to retain a diplomatic presence in Afghanistan after the US troop withdrawal, AFP reports.
But the swift Taliban takeover has left the Turkish plan in limbo.
Erdogan said:
We are now doing our planning according to the new realities that emerged on the ground and holding our negotiations accordingly.
Americans officials say they continue to talk to Ankara about security arrangements for the airport and have expressed gratitude for the role of Turkey in evacuating civilians from Kabul.
He said:
Turkey’s military presence in Afghanistan will give the new administration an upper hand in the international arena and facilitate its job.
He said Turkey sought agreement with the Afghan authorities. “We can discuss different options,” he said.
Whoever holds power, Erdoğan added, Turkey will stand by Afghanistan, repeating that he was ready to meet the Taliban leaders.
“We welcome restrained and moderate statements made by the Taliban,” he added.
Erdogan said he would speak with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, in the coming days. Turkey has so far evacuated 552 Turkish citizens from Kabul.
Updated
Here’s a good thread by Jeff Seldin of Voice of America News:
Happening now: @SecDef Lloyd Austin, @thejointstaff Chairman Gen Mark Milley speaking to reporters for the 1st time since the fall of #Kabul, collapse of the @ashrafghani-led #Afghanistan gvt pic.twitter.com/k6Q8dSEZyz
— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) August 18, 2021
In the US, General Mark A. Milley speaking at the Pentagon said:
We are the United States military, and we will successfully evacuate all American citizens who want to get out of Afghanistan. That is our priority number one.
The Taliban are in and around the Kabul airport, but are not interfering with our operations.
There was nothing that I or anyone else saw that indicated a collapse of this [Afghan] army or this government in 11 days.
Milley said about 5,000 people have been evacuated from Afghanistan, Lucas Tomlinson of Fox News reported.
Wendy Sherman, the US deputy secretary of state, has said the US will cast the net wide when it comes to Afghans who will get help in getting out of the country.
“This is an all hands on deck effort and we aren’t going to let up,” Sherman has told journalists at the state department.
We are working with the international community to help those who are vulnerable to the Taliban who are facing Taliban reprisals to get to safety.
And will we use every economic, diplomatic and political tool we have to hold the Taliban accountable for their words.
Lisa Nandy said the UK government’s offer to take 5,000 Afghan refugees this year was not generous enough.
The shadow foreign secretary, who said Labour would not put a number on how many refugees should be taken, told the BBC’s Question Time:
I don’t think they are on the right track for two reasons.
One is that it is absolutely clear that 5,000 is too small a number over the next 12 months and we have to make a more generous offer than that.
The second reason I don’t think this is sufficient is that what became apparent today is that there is absolutely no plan to deliver it.
The home secretary has not picked up the phone to any of the local authorities or mayors who have offered to take refugees.
Ned Price, the state department spokesman, says the window for evacuating US and allied citizens from Kabul could be “a little longer” than the end of the month if needed.
He said:
We are going to do as much as we can for as many people as we can for as long as we can.
If the window is two weeks, we will make the most of that window. If the window is slightly longer, we will make the most of that window.
Foreign office minister James Cleverly said there is a “risk” that the UK is less safe from terrorists now that Afghanistan is controlled by the Taliban.
Asked whether the British public were more at risk of terrorism following the Taliban victory, Cleverly told BBC’s Question Time:
There is, of course, that risk. This is why the UK’s position had always been that we withdrew when certain conditions had been met, rather than to a specific date or timeline.
We are going to have to work very closely with countries in the immediate vicinity around Afghanistan and some of those countries are countries we have a very difficult set of relationships with, including Iran for example.
But none of those countries want to see Afghanistan turn into a terrorist breeding ground.
It is going to be incredibly hard work and it is going to require a degree of focus and attention, but we are absolutely committed to make sure we put in that diplomatic work in Afghanistan.
We are deeply suspicious of the promises made by the Taliban, both in Doha and most recently, but we will judge them on their actions rather than their words.
Boris Johnson talked his Italian counterpart through his five-point plan for international support for Afghanistan during a phone call on Wednesday.
A Downing Street spokeswoman said:
The prime minister spoke to Italian prime minister Mario Draghi this evening about the situation in Afghanistan.
The leaders shared their understanding of the current situation on the ground and agreed to work together to help the urgent evacuation of our nationals and others.
The prime minister outlined his five-point proposal for the international community to support the people of Afghanistan and to contribute to regional stability.
The prime minister and prime minister Draghi agreed to work together to prevent a humanitarian emergency in Afghanistan and the surrounding region, and to discuss next steps at a virtual meeting of G7 leaders in the coming days.
Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi on Wednesday told his Russian and Chinese counterparts that Tehran is ready to cooperate with the two countries to establish “stability and peace” in Afghanistan.
“Iran is ready to cooperate with China to establish security, stability and peace in Afghanistan and strive for its people’s development, progress and prosperity,” Raisi told China’s Xi Jinping in a phone call initiated from Beijing, Raisi’s official website said.
He also expressed Iran’s readiness for “any cooperation for establishing peace and calm in Afghanistan” in a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, AFP reports.
He said:
We believe all Afghan groups should work together... and turn the US withdrawal into a turning point for lasting peace and stability in Afghanistan.
Analysts say the Taliban’s advances have put neighbouring Iran on edge, but the majority Shiite Islamic republic is taking a pragmatic stance on the hardline Sunni group’s resurgence.
Iran had tense relations with the Taliban between 1996 when they took power and 2001 when they were toppled in an American-led invasion over their links to Al-Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks.
Iran never recognised the Taliban’s rule, but has stressed in recent months that they must be “part of a future solution” in Afghanistan.
Despite its swift takeover of the government in Afghanistan, the Taliban will not have access to most of the nation’s cash and gold stocks, the central bank chief said Wednesday.
The Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB) had around $9 billion in reserves, but most of that is held in banks overseas, out of reach of the Taliban, DAB governor Ajmal Ahmady said on Twitter.
“As per international standards, most assets are held in safe, liquid assets such as Treasuries and gold,” said Ahmady, who fled the country on Sunday, fearing for his safety as the Taliban swept into the capital.
A US administration official told AFP on Monday that “any central bank assets the Afghan government have in the United States will not be made available to the Taliban.”
Ahmady said the US Federal Reserve holds $7 billion (£5bn) of the country’s reserves, including $1.2 billion (£872m) in gold, while the rest is held in international accounts including the Basel-based Bank for International Settlements.
Amid reports the Taliban were quizzing central bank staff on the location of the assets, he said:
If this is true – it is clear they urgently need to add an economist on their team.
He repeated that on Friday the US had cut off cash shipments to the country as the security situation deteriorated, which may have fuelled reports the Taliban stole the reserves since the country’s banks could not return dollars to account holders.
“Please note that in no way were Afghanistan’s international reserves ever compromised,” and are held in accounts that are “easily audited,” Ahmady said.
British media organisations have again urged the government to evacuate Afghan journalists and translators who worked with UK media outlets, with many local staff fearing Taliban reprisals.
Dozens of local reporters and producers associated with British organisations remain in Afghanistan after the fall of Kabul on Sunday. This month the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, promised to consider relocating local journalists to the UK on an “exceptional basis” if there was evidence they were under imminent threat because of their involvement with Britain.
However, sources in Kabul suggested that during the last week the UK government had not evacuated a single Afghan journalist linked to British media. By comparison, the US military has already begun flying local staff who worked for American news outlets such as the Washington Post out of the country.
Earlier this month, the Guardian led a coalition of British newspapers and broadcasters in an appeal to the government to expand its refugee visa programme for Afghans. Now representatives of the Guardian, the Observer, the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, the Economist, the Mail on Sunday, the Sun, the Sunday Telegraph, Sky News, and ITN have written again to Boris Johnson and Rabb to ask for rapid progress to ensure the safety of staff who have worked for UK media organisations.
In the letter, they said:
When British media organisations wrote to you earlier this month about the grave Taliban threat to Afghan journalists and translators who had worked with us, you responded almost immediately. You recognised their vital contribution to a free press to reporting on the British mission in Afghanistan and promised colleagues at risk a path to safety. President [Joe] Biden did the same in the United States.
But now, the Taliban have arrived in Kabul and our colleagues are trapped there. With evacuation flights resuming, we need you to act on your promise to protect those who worked with journalists and get them to safety outside of Afghanistan. As I am sure you have seen, our American colleagues have asked for and expect the same. Given the threats to the safety of Afghan journalists we ask the British government to urgently take these steps to protect our colleagues.
Last month Raab said: “The vibrant Afghan media is one of the greatest successes in Afghanistan in the last 19 years, and it should be celebrated and protected.”
He acknowledged the threat faced by Afghan staff who have worked for British media organisations in Afghanistan, “in particular the risk of reprisals they face from the Taliban from their association with the UK”.
Read more here:
Updated
Former Afghan president in consultation to return to country
Ousted Afghan president Ashraf Ghani confirmed he was in the United Arab Emirates but said he was in “consultation” to return to Afghanistan.
Ghani told a Facebook live broadcast, according to translation by Al Jazeera:
What had happened 25 years ago in Afghanistan was going to take place again. That was something that needed to be avoided, a shameful development like that.
The dignity of Afghanistan was important for me, and that was to be ensured, so I had to leave Afghanistan in order to present bloodshed, in order to make sure that a huge disaster (was) prevented.
When it comes to the political leadership of the Taliban, it was a failure on their part and a failure on our part that the negotiations did not lead to anything, the peace process should lead to the end of war.
Currently I am in the UAE so that disasters are avoided. I’m in consultation with others until I (can) return so that I can continue my efforts for justice for the Afghans.
Afghanistan’s ambassador to Tajikistan has accused Afghan President Ashraf Ghani of stealing $169 million from state funds and has called on international police to arrest him, Associated Press.
Ghani fled Afghanistan on Sunday, just as the Taliban approached Kabul, and his whereabouts remained unknown until Wednesday, when the United Arab Emirates said it has accepted him and his family on account of “humanitarian considerations.”
Ambassador Mohammad Zahir Aghbar told a news conference on Wednesday that Ghani “stole $169 million from the state coffers” and called his flight “a betrayal of the state and the nation.”
The ambassador did not elaborate or explain his claim further. Aghbar also promised to file a request to the Interpol to arrest Ghani.
Shahriyor Nazriev, director of the Interpol’s National Central Bureau in Tajikistan, told Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti that they haven’t received such a request yet.
A senior Taliban commander met a former Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, for talks on Wednesday, as the Taliban worked to establish a government in Afghanistan amid allegations of women and children being beaten and at least three protesters being shot dead.
Karzai, president from December 2001 to September 2014, has been leading efforts to ensure there is a peaceful transfer of power after Kabul fell on Sunday and the president, Ashraf Ghani, fled while the Taliban declared themselves the victorious rulers of Afghanistan.
Ghani’s whereabouts have been the source of much speculation, but on Wednesday a statement by the United Arab Emirates foreign ministry confirmed that he and his family had been welcomed into the UAE “on humanitarian grounds”. Many Afghans consider Ghani to have betrayed his country, and the Afghan embassy in Tajikistan called for an Interpol arrest warrant to be issued for him on the grounds of “treasury theft”.
The Taliban have been forceful in their efforts to portray themselves as the civilised new leaders of Afghanistan, saying they sought to form an “inclusive, Islamic” government. They declared an “amnesty” for government workers, and officials were told to return to work as normal. “We want to make sure that Afghanistan is not a battlefield of conflict any more,” Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesperson, told a press conference on Tuesday.
But their talk of moderation and peace was punctured by allegations of women and children being beaten and whipped by Taliban fighters as they tried to reach Kabul airport, protesters in several cities being beaten and shot dead, and the statue of an enemy figure being blown up.
The meeting on Wednesday was between Karzai and Anas Haqqani, senior leader of the Haqqani Network militant group, an important faction of the Taliban. The previous government’s main peace envoy, Abdullah Abdullah, was also present.
The US has classed the Haqqani Network, based in the border regions with Pakistan, as a terrorist network, holding it responsible for some of the most deadly militant attacks in Afghanistan in recent years. The group’s involvement in a future Taliban government is likely to be problematic for the international community.
A spokesperson for Karzai said the meeting’s aim was to facilitate negotiations with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the influential Taliban political leader who led the agreement for the withdrawal of US troops and is believed to be taking an important role in the government. Baradar returned to Afghanistan on Tuesday for the first time in 20 years.
Waheedullah Hashimi, a spokesperson for the Taliban, told Reuters that the country was likely to be governed by a ruling Taliban council, while the Islamist militant movement’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, was expected to remain in overall charge, in a role akin to the president.
Read the full story here:
German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke by phone on Wednesday with US president Joe Biden about the situation in Afghanistan, her office said.
During the call, Merkel stressed the importance of enabling as many Afghans as possible who supported German military and civilian efforts in the country to leave. The two leaders “agreed to fly out as many people in need of protection as possible,” her office said.
Germany’s foreign minister said his country’s ambassador in Kabul has begun talks in Doha with Taliban representatives to ensure they allow Afghans to reach the airport, Associated Press reports.
Heiko Maas said Germany has flown more than 500 people out of Afghanistan, including about 200 Afghan citizens, since Sunday “and we want to continue doing so in this quantity in the coming days.”
Maas said the assumption is that the window for evacuation flights will be limited “but all those in positions of responsibility on the ground, in particular the United States, are trying to use this time as best as possible.”
He added that according to his information there are currently hundreds, if not thousands of people massed outside the gates of the airport, and sporadic outburst of violence.
Maas said Germany is also trying to bring supplies of food to Kabul to provide for those waiting to be evacuated, and has a Medevac plane in the region.
Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said Germany would “do everything to get as many local staff out of Kabul as possible.”
Former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani has said he will “speak to the nation” according to AFP.
No details have been released as to when this address will take place.
#BREAKING Former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani says he will 'speak to the nation' pic.twitter.com/7dEQ7t0zFj
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) August 18, 2021
Updated
Migration from Afghanistan is likely to increase under Taliban rule, the EU said on Wednesday, calling on member states to ramp up admission quotas for Afghans in need of protection, particularly for women and girls.
Commissioner Ylva Johansson, who is responsible for migration and asylum in the EU’s executive Commission, said in a statement:
The instability in Afghanistan is likely to lead to increased migratory pressure.
I have called on member states to step up their engagement on resettlement, to increase resettlement quotas to help those in need of international protection.
Many EU member states are nervous that developments in Afghanistan could trigger a replay of Europe’s 2015/16 migration crisis when the chaotic arrival of more than a million people from the Middle East stretched security and welfare systems and fuelled support for far-right groups, Reuters reports.
EU countries accused Belarus on Wednesday of conducting “a direct attack” by pushing asylum seekers across its border and, uneasy about the prospect of a surge of Afghan migrants, agreed they need to strengthen their external borders in the future.
Johansson said discussions had begun between EU countries about possible developments and the bloc’s preparedness.
She said the EU should support countries bordering Afghanistan to which a significant number of Afghans have already fled, and if necessary increase this help as the situation evolves, while at the same time letting in more people in need.
She ruled out deportations to Afghanistan, a ban that several EU countries had still fought for two weeks ago.
Johansson said:
As things stand, the situation in Afghanistan is clearly not safe and it will not be safe for some time. Therefore we cannot force people to return to Afghanistan.
The UK government’s “obligation” to provide basic necessities for millions of people struggling for food in Afghanistan is “not being fulfilled at all”, according to Save the Children’s campaigns director Athena Rayburn.
Around 14 million people in the war-torn nation are in need of supplies, which is “the highest number in more than a decade”, according to the charity’s Asia director Hassan Noor.
When asked whether the government is doing enough to provide supplies, Rayburn, who was working in Kabul from January until July this year, told PA:
Absolutely not. I think one of the problems with the conversation (in the UK) is that yes, we need to make sure that those Afghans who want to leave have safe passage, but we have an obligation to both those in Afghanistan and those who have left.
So, while we hear about the resettlement scheme today with the target of 20,000 from the UK government, they cut their aid budget to Afghanistan by 78% last year.
This is a country that the UK has a historical engagement with, has had a military presence in, and has a very concrete obligation to the Afghan people. That obligation at the moment is not being fulfilled at all.
UN starts moving staff out of Afghanistan as 'temporary measure'
The United Nations has started moving staff out of Afghanistan while stressing it is still “committed to staying and delivering in support of the Afghan people in their hour of need”.
The UN, which has about 300 international staff and 3,000 national staff in Afghanistan, has moved up to 100 international staff to work from Kazakhstan, it said on Wednesday.
UN spokesman Stephane Durjarric said:
This is a temporary measure intended to enable the UN to keep delivering assistance to the people of Afghanistan with a minimum disruption, while at the same time reducing reducing the risk to UN personnel.
Updated
One person killed after protesters replace Taliban banner with Afghanistan flag
Taliban militants attacked protesters in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday after they dared to take down their banner and replace it with the country’s flag, killing at least one person and fuelling fears about how the insurgents plan to govern.
While the Taliban have insisted they will respect human rights unlike during their previously draconian rule, the attack in Jalalabad comes as many Afghans are hiding at home or trying to flee the country as allegations of abuses by the loosely controlled militant organisation grow.
Many have expressed dread that the two-decade Western experiment to remake Afghanistan will not survive the resurgent Taliban, who took control of the country in a blitz that took just days, Associated Press reports.
In an early sign of protest to the Taliban’s rule, dozens gathered in the eastern city of Jalalabad and a nearby market town to raise the tricolour national flag, a day before Afghanistan’s Independence Day, which commemorates the 1919 treaty that ended British rule. They lowered the Taliban flag — a white banner with an Islamic inscription — that the militants have raised in the areas they captured.
Video footage later showed the Taliban firing into the air and attacking people with batons to disperse the crowd. Babrak Amirzada, a reporter for a local news agency, said the Taliban beat him and a TV cameraman from another agency.
A local health official said the violence killed at least one person and wounded six. The official spoke on condition of anonymity has he wasn’t authorised to brief journalists.
The Taliban did not acknowledge the protest or the violence.
Updated
Dominic Raab has dismissed criticism from Keir Starmer of his handling of the situation in Afghanistan, saying the Labour leader has no “credible” alternatives to the government’s approach.
The foreign secretary told the House of Commons:
The leader of the Labour Party made clear his support for the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, I think that is clear. He listed a range of things he wants the government to do, quite rightly, including supporting the UN efforts, taking action in the UN Security Council, support through Nato, support for ordinary Afghans and not allowing money aid to go to the Taliban. We are doing all of those things, and rightly so.
The right honourable gentleman did not give a single example of an action he would have taken that we have not – not one. But then issued a series of searing criticisms. The shadow foreign secretary took a similar approach in her speech.
The leader of the Labour Party agreed the decision to withdraw, but now, with his predictable proclivity for hindsight, the right honourable gentleman criticises the consequences of a decision that he backed. He does so with no serious or credible alternative of his own, not even a hint, a reminder of Shakespeare’s adage, the empty vessel makes the greatest sound.
We’ve seen the images of hundreds of people desperate to flee Afghanistan, chasing after a US air force jet as it took off from Kabul airport and many more climbing walls trying to find a way to escape Taliban rule.
We’ve heard reports of women and children being beaten and whipped as they attempted to pass through checkpoints set up by the militants despite assurances of “safe passage”.
So, as the west’s 20-year occupation of Afghanistan ends, the Guardian’s senior international correspondent Emma Graham-Harrison looks at who exactly the Taliban are, how they were able to take control so quickly, and what their rule could mean for the people of Afghanistan.
Dominic Raab said the government is “continuing the big-hearted tradition of the British people” by offering asylum to 20,000 Afghans.
The foreign secretary said:
Let me just say as the son of a refugee, I am deeply proud that this government is continuing the big-hearted tradition of the British people in offering safe haven to those who need it.
So, we are getting our nationals out, those that work for us out, and we are providing a lifeline to the most vulnerable.
Raab also said securing peace in Afghanistan may require communication with Russia and China.
He said:
We must work to safeguard regional stability and that will require us to work with different partners, and it will require engagement with key regional players including India, China, Russia, Pakistan, central Asian states, however difficult or complex that may prove and outside of our comfort zone.
The foreign secretary also said counter-terrorism and aid initiatives would be needed to support Afghanistan.
Shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said the US withdrawal from Afghanistan had created an “impossible situation” for the UK but criticised the lack of preparation in the last 18 months.
During the emergency Commons debate on Afghanistan, she also accused the government of making “desperate” attacks on the opposition, adding:
They have been warned and warned and warned about the consequences by members on all sides of this house, and they have ignored us, they have ignored their own backbenchers and they have abandoned the people of Afghanistan.
It’s a moment of shame and they should apologise.
Poll shows British public split on Afghanistan
The British public is split on whether withdrawing troops from Afghanistan was the right thing to do, a survey suggests.
The polling comes as the prime minister, Boris Johnson, faced fierce criticism from senior members of this own party and defended the final pull-out of British troops, saying it was an “illusion” to think the international military mission could have continued without US forces.
A survey of 1,970 British adults by Ipsos MORI found:
• 39% said it was the right decision to completely withdraw British troops from Afghanistan this year, while 40% said it was the wrong decision.
• 31% said it was the right decision for US troops to withdraw, while 47% said it was the wrong decision.
• 19% said Britain should not intervene at all over the next few months if the Taliban regime commits widespread human rights abuses or allows extremist groups to operate.
• 34% said Britain should step in with diplomatic and economic interventions against the regime, while 32% said Britain should step in with humanitarian interventions such as increasing support for Afghan refugees.
• 22% of those polled said they would support military interventions such as targeted air strikes.
The head of the Afghan Service at Germany’s DW News has this tweet, which will fuel concerns about the future of a free media in Afghanistan and one in which women can play a role:
Afghan state TV anchor Shabnam Dawran was kept from attending work today. https://t.co/YlblizoUvc
— Waslat Hasrat-Nazimi (@WasHasNaz) August 18, 2021
Updated
Afghanistan may be governed by a ruling council now that the Taliban has taken over, while the Islamist militant movement’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, was likely to remain in overall charge, a senior member of the group told Reuters.
The Taliban would also reach out to former pilots and soldiers from the Afghan armed forces to join its ranks, Waheedullah Hashimi, who has access to the group’s decision-making, added in an interview.
The power structure that Hashimi outlined would bear similarities to how Afghanistan was run the last time the Taliban were in power from 1996 to 2001.
Then, supreme leader Mullah Omar remained in the shadows and left the day-to-day running of the country to a council.
Akhundzada would probably play a role above the head of the council, who would be akin to the country’s president, Hashimi added.
“Maybe his [Akhundzada’s] deputy will play the role of ‘president’,” Hashimi said, speaking in English.
Updated
A plea for a “compassionate and urgent response” from international governments to the situation in Afghanistan has been issued by Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of European Rabbis (CER).
“We have a particular concern for women and girls given the Taliban’s deplorable record of the suppression of human rights and equality,” he said.
“We must not let the Afghan people become subjected to the cruel repression of this barbaric regime and we call for the immediate restoration of security and civil order. The Afghan people – like all peoples of the world – deserve to live in safety, security and dignity. We continue to pray for the protection of innocent civilians.”
Updated
The Labour MP, Zarah Sultana, has told other MPs during the emergency Commons debate on Afghanistan that some in parliament do not want to acknowledge a “hard but clear truth” that the 20-year war in the country was a mistake of catastrophic proportions.
“This house must never again send British military personnel to die in futile wars,” she said.
“Rather than repeating the mistake, we must learn this lesson for the future. The west cannot build liberal democracies with bombs and bullets. That dangerous fantastic cooked up by neoconservative fanatics in Washington and championed by their faithful followers in misery has brought misery.”
Updated
The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned against interrupting humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, saying the country’s fragile health system is vulnerable.
“Sustained access to humanitarian assistance, including essential health services and medical supplies, is a critical lifeline for millions of Afghans, and must not be interrupted,” a statement said.
“Months of violence have taken a heavy toll on Afghanistan’s fragile health system, which had already been facing shortages in essential supplies amid the Covid-19 pandemic,” it added.
The WHO called on “all parties to respect and protect civilians, health workers, patients and health facilities”.
It said that between January and July this year, 26 health facilities were attacked and 12 health care workers were killed, making security at such facilities a “major challenge”.
Despite the insecurity, yesterday @WHO delivered 33 units of different modules of trauma kits & 10 basic medical kits to Wazir Akbar Khan Hospital - the biggest referral hospital for trauma in Kabul. The supplies will cover urgent medical needs of 11,750 people#StayandDeliver pic.twitter.com/4nXmvKzDa0
— WHO Afghanistan (@WHOAfghanistan) August 18, 2021
Updated
The chairman of the US House of Representatives foreign affairs committee has said that the US military should stay in Afghanistan beyond the planned 31 August withdrawal date if needed to evacuate Americans and Afghan allies.
“We need to make sure that every one of those individuals that we know put their lives on their lives are out,” Democratic party representative Gregory Meek told MSNBC.
“If that means we should stay longer, in my estimation, we should do that. If that means, that even if we have to bring more troops in to make sure we can get them out safely, we need to do that.”
Updated
The meeting on Wednesday between a former Afghan president, Hamid Karzai and the Taliban involved Anas Haqqani, senior leader of the Haqqani Network militant group, an important faction.
The previous government’s main peace envoy, Abdullah Abdullah, was also present.
The US has classed the Haqqani Network of the Taliban, based in the border regions with Pakistan, as a terrorist network, holding it responsible for some of the most deadly militant attacks in Afghanistan in recent years.
The group’s involvement in a future Taliban government is likely to be problematic for the international community.
A spokesperson for Karzai said the meeting’s aim was to facilitate negotiations with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the influential Taliban political leader who led the agreement for the withdrawal of US troops and is believed will hold an important role in the government.
Baradar returned to Afghanistan on Tuesday for the first time in 20 years.
Karzai, president from December 2001 to September 2014, has been leading efforts to ensure there is a peaceful transfer of power after Kabul fell on Sunday and the president, Ashraf Ghani, fled while the Taliban declared themselves the victorious rulers of Afghanistan. (read on..)
Updated
As Kabul fell to Taliban forces over the weekend, social networks struggled to cope with the renewed attention brought to the organisation – and its presence on their platforms.
In the US, Republicans expressed outrage that Twitter, which had permanently banned Donald Trump from its platform in January, seemed content to allow named Taliban members access to the social network to promote their narrative.
WhatsApp faced criticism for its role in enabling the Taliban to threaten, cajole and bribe local leaders into laying down their arms as they marched across the country. At Google, YouTube’s seeming lack of any substantial policy allowed it to avoid much of the attention, until it became the last network not to have rebuked the organisation.
At the core of the issue was an awkward bind for the social networks.
The Taliban are not on the US state department’s list of foreign terrorist organisations, which most major platforms defer to when deciding which groups should be flatly banned, although they are on the US treasury’s list of “specially designated global terrorists”, which subjects them to Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctions. (Read on...)
Updated
Jack Lopresti, a Conservative MP who served in Afghanistan in 2008 and 2009 as a member of the British army reserves, has told the Commons that he believes the time will come when UK troops will have to deploy again in future in Afghanistan.
For those who say it wasn’t worth it or it was not a success, and thankfully it’s a tiny number in this house today, may I gently remind people that the original objective which was to destroy al-Qaida on the ground, deprive them of a base to help terrorist attacks through out the world, try and keep our own streets safe was achieved,” he said.
There’s footage here meanwhile of that speech earlier from another military veteran of Afghanistan, Tom Tugendhat, a Tory MP who is chairman of the influential foreign affairs committee.
Theres’s a widely shared view that his contribution will have made the government’s frontbench distinctly uncomfortable.
Afghanistan “damn well feels like” defeat, as he urged a fresh “vision” must be developed to help.
Tugendhat, who served in Afghanistan as well as Iraq, was applauded following his emotive Commons speech in which he recalled his experiences in the country.
He was also among several MPs to criticise the US president, Joe Biden, and his predecessor Donald Trump for their decision to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan.
Addressing a silent Commons, he said said he had struggled through “anger, grief and rage” over the past week and noted he had previously watched “good men go into the earth, taking with them a part of me and a part of all of us”.
Updated
UAE says it is hosting former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani
The United Arab Emirates has said it is hosting former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani “on humanitarian grounds”, after he fled his country amid a Taliban takeover.
“The UAE ministry of foreign affairs and international cooperation can confirm that the UAE has welcomed President Ashraf Ghani and his family into the country on humanitarian grounds,” it said in a brief statement.
Ghani fled Afghanistan on Sunday as the Taliban closed in on Kabul, before the insurgents walked into the Afghan capital unopposed.
In a Facebook post, Ghani said the “Taliban have won” and that he fled to avoid a “flood of bloodshed”.
His whereabouts were unknown until Wednesday, with speculation that he had fled to Tajikistan, Uzbekistan or Oman, reports the Associated Press.
Updated
Tory MP tells of female Afghan politicians pleading for help
There have been two particularly powerful contributions from either side of the chamber in the last few minutes during the ongoing emergency Commons debate on Afghanistan.
The usual murmur of the House of Commons was silenced as the Conservative MP Nusrat Ghani briefly paused during her comments after telling colleagues about phone calls she was receiving from Afghan women she had worked with while a journalist at the BBC World Service.
“We made sure that female voices were heard. We did that under the grave threat to the Taliban. I was naively optimistic and thought these women’s lives would be improved for the better.
I am now receiving phone calls and they are telling me it’s game over,” said the MP, who took a moment to compose her self.
“We need to get them out and get them out soon. They can’t wait,” she said of the women who had been among the first female voices in the Afghan parliament.
Across the floor, the Labour MP Chris Bryant said he was personally moved to speak out about the plight of gay people in Afghanistan.
“I am fearful for Afghanistan’s women and girls, but also for the gay men. It has not exactly been a walk in the park for them, but now they know they will be exterminated,” he said.
“Sharia judges are already saying what they will do with them. There are two ways of dealing with homosexual men in Afghanistan [under Taliban rule]– one is stoning and the other is putting them behind a wall and toppling it upon them.”
Bryant had started by saying he felt ashamed, “more ashamed than I can remember than in any foreign policy debate in this house.
“It has been the most sudden collapse of any foreign and military policy objective on the part of the UK since Suez, and you might argue further back.”
Updated
The world should give the Taliban the space to form a new government and may discover that the insurgents cast as militants by the west for decades have become more reasonable, the head of the British army said on Wednesday.
The leaders of the Taliban will show themselves to the world, an official of the Islamist movement said on Wednesday, unlike during the last 20 years, when its leaders have lived largely in secret.
Nick Carter, the UK’s chief of the defence staff, said he was in contact with the former Afghan president Hamid Karzai, who he said would meet the Taliban on Wednesday. Carter told the BBC:
We have to be patient, we have to hold our nerve and we have to give them the space to form a government and we have to give them the space to show their credentials. It may be that this Taliban is a different Taliban to the one that people remember from the 1990s.
We may well discover, if we give them the space, that this Taliban is of course more reasonable but what we absolutely have to remember is that they are not a homogenous organisation – the Taliban is a group of disparate tribal figures that come from all over rural Afghanistan.
Carter said the Taliban were essentially “country boys” who lived by the so-called “Pashtunwali”, the traditional tribal way of life and code of conduct of the Pashtun people.
It may well be a Taliban that is more reasonable. It’s less repressive. And indeed, if you look at the way it is governing Kabul at the moment, there are some indications that it is more reasonable.
Updated
Summary
Here’s a summary of the latest developments:
- The US, EU and UK, as well as 18 other countries, have called on Afghan authorities to guarantee the protection of women and girls. Fears were mounting that the Taliban would use their recently won control to disempower thousands.
- A British veteran of the war in Afghanistan accused the US president Joe Biden of shameful behaviour over his criticism of Afghan government forces. Tom Tugendhat, now serving as a Conservative MP, said it was with “great sadness” that he did so, but said he could not stand by while Biden called “into the question the courage of men I fought with”.
- The UK prime minister faced heavy criticism from MPs as parliament was recalled. Some of the attacks came from his own side, with one of his predecessors in No 10 pointing out that he had insisted the Taliban were too weak to take power and asking why his preparation was so poor.
- Government ministers, including Boris Johnson, were also criticised for failing to return promptly from their holidays as the crisis unfolded. The opposition Labour leader, Keir Starmer, told the prime minister: “You cannot coordinate an international response from the beach.”
- A Taliban commander met with a former Afghan president. The talks between Anas Haqqani and Hamid Karzai came amid efforts by the group to set up a government and after the sitting president fled the country.
- Johnson expressed his concern for those left behind in Afghanistan. He said he particularly feared for the women and children and said the recent history of Afghanistan was seared on the mind of the UK after almost 20 years of military involvement there.
My colleague Ben Quinn is now taking over.
Updated
The UN refugee agency says the vast majority of those seeking to flee Afghanistan are women and children, highlighting what they call the disproportionate toll civilians are paying:
80% of those fleeing fighting in Afghanistan are women and children pic.twitter.com/kOJZgIQkIL
— UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency (@Refugees) August 18, 2021
Germany’s government will send 600 soldiers to help with the evacuation effort in Kabul, after Angela Merkel’s cabinet voted in favour of the deployment on Wednesday morning.
Over the last two days, Germany has flown 260 people out of Kabul on German military planes, though questions remain over the future of local Afghan hires and their families.
The German ambassador to Afghanistan has flown to Doha, the capital of Qatar, to negotiate directly with Taliban representatives over the evacuation of Afghan staff and their families, the foreign minister Heiko Maas said on Tuesday night. Currently, the Taliban are reported to only allow foreign nationals to pass through road blocks outside the airport.
Merkel’s government says it has so far granted some 2,500 local staff entry into Germany, of which 1,900 are already in the country. Those who remain in Kabul will not have to apply for a German visa before leaving, Maas said on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the government of Austria has said that the Taliban takeover is no reason to take in more Afghan refugees. The interior minister Karl Nehammer said:
Illegal immigration that runs through dozens of safe states, where migrants choose a destination country, has to be stopped. There is no reason why an Afghan citizen should come to Austria now.
The decision to withdraw troops during the Afghan fighting season was made for domestic political reasons and the weakness that it suggests exists in the coalition of nations who led the operation in the country will not go unnoticed, a former UK defence secretary has said.
Liam Fox, the Conservative MP for North Somerset, told the Commons:
The strategic weakness of our alliance will have been noted not just in Kabul, but in Moscow, and in Beijing, and in Tehran and in Islamabad.
We have mentioned many times today that 70,000 Afghan police and armed forces died in the struggle to protect their own country and for anyone to say they wouldn’t fight is a slight that is not worthy of any politician in a free country.
But the question we must ask is why would anyone choose to remove their troops, even if they had decided to do so, during the fighting season, when the Taliban were at their greatest strength.
The answer is that it was not a decision made for foreign policy or security reasons, it was done to suit a domestic political timetable. When you take security decisions for political reasons there is likely to be a detrimental outcome. It’s a lesson we would all do well to remember.
Updated
According to the Associated Press (AP), video footage showed the Taliban firing into the air and attacking people with batons to disperse the crowd.
Babrak Amirzada, a reporter for a local news agency, said he and a TV cameraman from another agency were beaten by the Taliban as they tried to cover the unrest.
The AP attributed its numbers of dead and wounded to a local health official, who it said was not authorised to speak to media and, therefore, did so on condition of anonymity.
As many as three people have been killed and 13 injured after Taliban militants opened fire during protests against the group in the Afghan city of Jalalabad on Wednesday, according to reports.
Two witnesses have told Reuters at least those numbers had been hurt, while the Associated Press said at least one had been killed and six wounded.
The witnesses who spoke to Reuters said the deaths followed an attempt by local residents to install Afghanistan’s national flag at a square in the city, some 150 km (90 miles) to the east of Kabul.
Video footage shot by Pajhwok Afghan News, a local news agency, showed protesters in the city who were carrying the Afghan flag fleeing with the sound of gunshots in the background.
A former police official told Reuters separately that four people had been killed and 13 injured in the protests, without elaborating further.
It was not possible to verify how the deaths occurred. A Taliban militant present in Jalalabad at the time of the incident told Reuters:
There were some troublemakers who wanted to create issues for us. These people are exploiting our relaxed policies.
Reuters said Taliban spokesmen could not immediately be reached for comment.
Updated
Spain plans to airlift about 500 people, including Spanish embassy staff and Afghans who worked with them and their families from Kabul, the radio station Cadena SER has said, citing sources close to the evacuation.
A first military plane landed at Kabul airport late on Wednesday morning, the Spanish foreign ministry said in a statement. It was due to take off shortly with some of the evacuees aboard.
Cadena SER said Spanish authorities were planning to fly back embassy workers including Afghan staff who worked as translators or in logistics and security.
Afghan contractors would be allowed to take their spouses, children and other close family with them, Cadena SER said.
Officials from the foreign and defence ministries declined to confirm the number of people to be evacuated from Kabul.
The first plane had taken off on Wednesday morning from Dubai, where it was sent earlier this week to carry out the evacuation. Another aircraft is currently in Dubai and a third, equipped with medical infrastructure, is on its way, the foreign and defence ministries said.
Updated
The number of American troops at Kabul’s international airport reached about 4,500, Reuters reports, citing a US official. Speaking on condition of anonymity, they said the number was set to hit 6,000 in the coming days.
An unnamed western official told the news agency that about 5,000 diplomats, security staff, aid workers and Afghan civilians had been evacuated from Kabul in the last 24 hours. The evacuations by military flights would continue around the clock, he said, adding that clearing the chaos outside the airport was a challenge.
Updated
International community 'deeply worried' – coalition of nations admit
The United States, the European Union and the UK, as well as 18 other countries, have called on people in authority in Afghanistan to guarantee the protection of women and girls in the country, as fears mount that the Taliban will use their recently won power to disempower thousands.
The 47 nations, among the most powerful on the international stage, have released a joint statement that reads:
We are deeply worried about Afghan women and girls, their rights to education, work and freedom of movement. We call on those in positions of power and authority across Afghanistan to guarantee their protection.
Afghan women and girls, as all Afghan people, deserve to live in safety, security and dignity. Any form of discrimination and abuse should be prevented. We in the international community stand ready to assist them with humanitarian aid and support, to ensure that their voices can be heard.
We will monitor closely how any future government ensures rights and freedoms that have become an integral part of the life of women and girls in Afghanistan during the last 20 years.
Besides the US, the 27 nations in the EU and the UK, the statement was co-signed by Albania, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada and Chile.
Colombia, Costa Rica and Ecuador were also signatories, as were El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. Added to them were North Macedonia, New Zealand, Norway, Paraguay, Senegal and Switzerland.
Updated
The success of the militants would also create a “safe space” for extremists, Manningham-Buller told the UK’s House of Lords.
Even if we believe the Taliban that it will not allow terrorists to operate from its territory, I doubt it could stop that happening.
The border with Pakistan is porous, its government supportive of the Taliban and there’s plenty of room to recruit, plot and train a new generation of terrorists.
I wish I could end on a more positive note and may be my pessimism is misjudged, but I expect more terrorism directed against the West based on extreme Islamist ideology.
A former MI5 chief has warned of more terror attacks against the west after the fall of Afghanistan to Taliban militants.
The withdrawal of US and coalition forces from the country after two decades will “excite, encourage and spur terrorists” as well as creating a “safe space” for extremists, Lady Manningham-Buller told the UK’s parliament.
The independent crossbencher, who served for more than three decades in the Security Service, including five as director general, made her pessimistic prediction as the recalled House of Lords debated the crisis in Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover at the weekend.
Manningham-Buller also highlighted the need “to begin when appropriate a dialogue with the Taliban, however unpalatable, to explore incentives for good behaviour”. Warning of “two major security concerns”, she said:
First, inspiration. The Taliban victory and its rout of western forces, as it appears, will inspire and embolden those who wish to promote jihad against the west. Events over the last few days show that the success of this ideology is possible. That will excite, encourage and spur terrorists.
Updated
The Netherlands managed to get 35 of its citizens out of Afghanistan on Wednesday in a slow start to its evacuation operation amid chaos outside Kabul airport, the defence minister, Ank Bijleveld, said.
The Dutch aim to evacuate 1,000 local embassy workers, translators and their families from Afghanistan following the seizure of the capital by Taliban insurgents.
An evacuation effort on Tuesday evening failed as a military plane operated by the Dutch and other nations left Kabul without anyone destined for the Netherlands aboard after US forces, struggling to control panicky crowds, denied Afghans access to the airport even if they had the correct credentials.
The situation seemed to have improved on Wednesday, the foreign minister, Sigrid Kaag, said in a debate in Dutch parliament.
We still get mixed messages, but Afghans now also seem to be allowed to reach the gates of the airport. We will now try to get local staff, translators and their families on Western military planes as soon as possible. The US allows this.
The 35 Dutch were flown to Tbilisi in Georgia, along with 16 Belgians, two Germans and two British citizens on a Boeing C-17 plane operated jointly by Nato countries, Bijleveld said.
More than 2,200 diplomats and civilians have been evacuated from Afghanistan on military flights, a western security official said on Wednesday.
Updated
Poland has evacuated around 50 people from Afghanistan, according to the country’s deputy foreign minister.
Reuters reports:
Poland said on Tuesday it had around 100 people on an evacuation list. It has pledged offer places on its planes to other people trying to leave Afghanistan from Kabul airport, where chaotic scenes have caused problems for some evacuation efforts.
“About 50 people were evacuated from Afghanistan, they are now safe in the care of the Polish consulate in Uzbekistan,” Marcin Przydacz told reporters. “A civilian plane is waiting for them that will soon transport them to Poland.”
Przydacz said that one Polish citizen was among those evacuated, while the others were people who had worked with the Polish military and diplomatic missions.
Poland is sending more planes to help evacuate people, he said.
Updated
A report from AFP details how Afghan refugees are making their way to Europe, bypassing a new wall along the border between Turkey and Iran.
The AFP reports:
The Afghans who make it this far spend days hiding from law enforcement and nights devising ways to get to big cities such as Izmir and Istanbul before finding smugglers to take them to Europe.
“I am coming from Kandahar. I have been on the road for 25 days,” said Mohammed Arif, 18, who paid $700 (£508) to a Turkish smuggler but was dropped off long before he could reach Istanbul.
The Taliban’s lightning offensive has revived memories in Europe of a 2015-16 refugee crisis that Turkey helped stop by sheltering millions of people in exchange for billions of dollars in aid.
The UN has recorded no “large-scale” moves across Afghan borders yet, and EU officials say the number of crossings into Europe by Afghans dropped by roughly 40% in the first six months of the year because of coronavirus-related border restrictions.
But young Afghans such as Arif give both EU nations and Turkey - where public opinion against migrants is turning - reasons to be concerned.
“If it hadn’t been for this misfortune, we wouldn’t have come here,” Arif said of the Taliban.
Sensing the nation’s mood, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has vowed to put a “complete stop” to irregular migrant crossings.
A 243-kilometre (151-mile) concrete wall, topped with barbed wire and surrounded by trenches, is being erected along its 534-kilometre frontier with Iran. Turkish officials told AFP that 156 kilometres have already been built, greatly limiting migrant flows.
But security officials say in private that tens of thousands of Afghans are believed to be massing on the Iranian side.
Until 2013, Turkey resettled Afghans in third countries, mostly in Europe and refugee-friendly places such as Canada. That practice ended when EU member states declared Afghanistan safe because of the Nato presence.
Updated
In the emergency debate, Yvette Cooper, Labour MP for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford, cited a harrowing testimony from a woman who worked on UK aid for three years, who has been hiding in Kabul.
“Only 3 weeks ago one of my neighbours told me he would tell them who I am and who my family is. A couple of days ago a strange man told me in the streets, ‘I know who you are and where you work.’
“I fear having my kids tortured before my eyes or having my skin peeled off while I am alive. We remain locked inside fearful of looking outside the window. Every time the door knocks fear goes through my body and I fear they are coming for me.”
Updated
The Help for Heroes charity is sharing tips for veterans from Afghanistan on looking after their wellbeing at a time when many will be struggling with feelings they haven’t been trained to cope with.
The tips include:
- Acknowledge the situation and how you feel about it, even if the emotions are challenging.
- Chat about how you’re feeling with someone you trust.
- Practise self-care and put your wellbeing first.
- Reach out for professional support if you need it.
- Look out for those around you who might be struggling too.
The full list is available on Twitter.
The news surrounding Afghanistan may be difficult for many of you & your loved ones.
— Help for Heroes (@HelpforHeroes) August 17, 2021
Here's our advice to support your wellbeing at this time:
(1/5) pic.twitter.com/lIOyjniAzI
Updated
Britain should take the lead in paying reparations to rebuild Afghanistan, according to the Stop the War Coalition, which convened a gathering that was addressed outside parliament today by MPs including the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Today was a sombre one on which it was time to speak up for the vulnerable and learn the mistakes of foreign policy, he told the event, which took place as MPs prepared to gather for an emergency sitting of parliament to discuss the unfolding crisis in Afghanistan.
“There are two priorities today - the first is absolutely to support those trying to get out of Afghanistan, those who are at risk, those who have worked for the occupying forces, those that have worked for the government, those that have worked as contractors employed by the government and those particularly prominent women in society who are obviously very vulnerable and at very serious risk,” he said.
“Then, there has to be a realisation of what the foreign policy initiatives actually end up doing: costing us a great deal of money, costing us lives and not leading to the outcome they were predicted to do at the time.”
Corbyn was joined by other Labour MPs including Zarah Sultana, who said that more than 240,000 people had died as a result of the Afghan conflict and an entire region faced decades of instability. “Here we are again making those same arguments that you cannot bomb a country into democracy,” she added.
Richard Burgon, another MP who attended, said on Twitter: “The crisis in Afghanistan is the result of 20 years of disastrous military intervention. Just as in Iraq & Libya, backing US-led invasions led to a huge loss of life.
“There is no military solution in Afghanistan. The focus now should be on reparations and supporting refugees.”
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A spokesman for Boris Johnson is answering questions on Afghanistan from reporters.
Reuters reported that when asked about whether Britain hoped to take 1,000 people out of Afghanistan a day, the spokesman told reporters they were “aiming to operate at that capacity”.
According to PA, Downing Street would not be drawn on whether the UK would recognise any government formed by the Taliban in Afghanistan. The prime minister’s official spokesman said any decision would need a “unified approach” internationally. “We’ll have to see what unfolds,” he said.
The spokesman also said that increased humanitarian aid for Afghanistan, which will be doubled to £286m, would not be handed to the Taliban, but would instead be distributed in conjunction with the UN and other NGOs (non-governmental organisations).
The spokesman said that the British embassy in Afghanistan “effectively has relocated to the airport” in Kabul, with the building currently unoccupied. The Foreign Office’s rapid deployment team had now arrived in the country and was “working on the ground, alongside the ambassador and others”.
He said: “There’s no plans to shut that, indeed there’s important work going on currently to bring back British nationals.”
Asked whether the surprise at the speed of the Taliban’s advance was a failure of UK intelligence, No 10 said the pace had “taken everyone internationally by surprise”.
Downing Street alos said that the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) could increase from 5,000 to 10,000, since the scheme is not a “capped” offer.
The spokesman said: “The prime minister has said we owe a debt to those Afghan nationals that have helped Britain over the last 20 years and we intend to honour them.”
Updated
In the Commons debate, Diane Abbott, MP for Hackney North, shared powerful quotes from a veteran, warning that abandoning Afghanistan equated to letting down those who fought, sustained injuries and died in the country over the past 20 years.
She said:
“One of the questions we have to address today and in days to come is how did it happen and what lessons are to be learned?
“We cannot let down the British veterans who over 20 years fought in Afghanistan particularly in Helmand, one of the most dangerous provinces. I can do no better than quote Jack Cummings, a former British soldier, who lost both legs on 14 August 2010 searching for improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan.
“He said a few simple sentences worth repeating: ‘Was it worth it?’ He replied to his own question: ‘Probably not.’ He asked: “Did I lose my legs for nothing?” And he replied to his own question: ‘Looks like it.’ Finally he said: ‘Did my mates die in vain?’ And he replied to his own question: ‘Yep.’
“We as a House of Commons and as a parliament should not, cannot, let down Jack Cummings and those 457 British soldiers that died in Afghanistan.”
Updated
Switzerland will not accept large groups of Afghan refugees arriving directly from the country, but instead will review asylum applications on a case-by-case basis.
Reuters reports:
Humanitarian visas will be considered for people facing an “immediate, concrete, serious and directly life-threatening threat”, the government said, as it worked to evacuate local workers who aided the Swiss development office in Kabul.
Applicants for visa must also have a close and current connection to Switzerland, it added.
“Belonging to a possibly endangered group is not sufficient,” the government said.
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The European Union has a responsibility to accept Afghan refugees and cannot leave people who worked for the bloc in Afghanistan to “face revenge”, according to the European parliament president, David Sassoli, who asked that refugees be distributed evenly among member states.
Reuters reports:
“We must protect those who worked and cooperated with us, we cannot allow them to be left to face revenge,” Sassoli, an Italian, told reporters during a visit to the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius.
“We have a responsibility. I think that European Commission can authorise even distribution of them among the member states to keep a parity, and this can be done quickly.”
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Britain has helped more than 2,000 Afghans to flee the country in recent days, according to the prime minister, Boris Johnson.
According to AFP’s report of this morning’s emergency debate, which saw MPs called back to parliament from their summer holidays, Johnson said Britain had so far secured the safe return of 306 British nationals and 2,052 Afghan nationals as part of its resettlement programme, while 2,000 more Afghan applications were complete and “many more” were being processed.
“UK officials are working round the clock to keep the exit door open in the most difficult circumstances and actively seeking those we believe are eligible but as yet unregistered,” Johnson said.
Rachel Hall here taking over from Kevin Rawlinson - do email over any tips to rachel.hall@theguardian.com.
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Conservative MP and British Afghanistan veteran delivers emotional speech
In London, the Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat, a former soldier who served in Afghanistan, was applauded following an emotive Commons speech. He recalled the efforts of the military, aid workers, journalists and others who worked in the country, before noting:
I know that we’ve all been struggling and if this recall has done one thing ... I’ve spoken to the health secretary, he’s already made a commitment to do more for veterans’ mental health.
Tugendhat said it was with “great sadness” that he was to criticise the US, noting:
To see their commander in chief call into the question the courage of men I fought with, to claim that they ran is shameful. Those who have not fought for the colours they fly should be careful about criticising those who have.
Tugendhat suggested the west and the UK had not shown patience, adding:
This is a harsh lesson for all of us and if we’re not careful it could be a very, very difficult lesson for our allies.
It doesn’t need to be. We can set out a vision, clearly articulate it, for reinvigorating our European Nato partners, to make sure that we are not dependent on a single ally, on the decision of a single leader, that that we can work together with Japan and Australia, France and Germany, with partners large and small and make sure we hold the line together.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) has reaffirmed its commitment to staying in Afghanistan to help with critical health services. Dr Ahmed Al-Mandhari, its regional director for the eastern Mediterranean, said:
Sustained access to humanitarian assistance, including essential health services and medical supplies, is a critical lifeline for millions of Afghans, and must not be interrupted. Months of violence have taken a heavy toll on Afghanistan’s fragile health system, which had already been facing shortages in essential supplies amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
As a result of the recent conflict, trauma injuries have increased, requiring scaled up emergency medical and surgical services. In July 2021, some 13 897 conflict-related trauma cases were received at 70 WHO-supported health facilities, compared to 4057 cases in July 2020.
He added:
In areas where people have fled to seek safety and shelter, including Kabul and other large cities, field reports indicate that there are increasing cases of diarrhoea, malnutrition, high blood pressure, Covid-19-like symptoms and reproductive health complications.
Delays and disruptions to health care will increase the risk of disease outbreaks and prevent some of the most vulnerable groups from seeking life-saving health care. There is an immediate need to ensure continuity of health services across the country, with a focus on ensuring women have access to female health workers.
Updated
The US withdrawal from Afghanistan underscores the need for South Korea to quickly secure wartime operational control of its troops from the United States, Reuters quotes a leader of the East Asian nation’s ruling Democratic party as saying.
The defeat of the Afghan government after the withdrawal of US forces has sparked debate over the strength of American commitments in places such as Taiwan and South Korea.
Since the 1950-1953 Korean War, the American military has retained authority to control hundreds of thousands of South Korean forces alongside the roughly 28,500 US troops in the country if another war breaks out.
The South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, has made obtaining operational control – termed Opcon – of those joint forces a major goal of his administration, but delays over the Covid-19 pandemic and other issues, appear to have made that impossible in its remaining term. Song Young-gil, the chief of Moon’s Democratic party, said:
We have to take the Afghanistan crisis as a chance to strengthen self-defence capability through Opcon transfer.
The South Korea-US alliance was necessary to not just counter North Korea but to maintain the balance of power and peace in north-east Asia, Song said.
But we also need to have the attitude to foster cooperative self-defence, that we defend our country ourselves, which is why we have to take over wartime Opcon transfer as soon as possible.
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May also highlighted her fears for women and girls in Afghanistan under Taliban rule.
Those girls who have been educated will have no opportunity to use that education.
The Taliban proclaim that women will be allowed to work and girls allowed to go to school but this will be under Islamic law – or rather their interpretation of Islamic law – and we have seen before what that means for the lives of women and girls.
She warned of the potential humanitarian crisis, adding:
Now, of course, we cut our international aid budget but I’m pleased that the foreign secretary has told me that more funding is going to be made available to deal with this crisis.
On the security risk, she said:
We must be deeply concerned about the possible impact here in the UK. The aim of our involvement in Afghanistan was to ensure that it could not be used as a haven for terrorists. Terrorists who could train, plot and encourage attacks here in the UK.
Al Qada has not gone away, Daesh (also known as the so-called Islamic State) may have lost their ground in Syria, but these terrorist groups remain and they have spawned others. We will not defeat them until we have defeated the ideology which feeds their extremism.
She added:
All of our military personnel, all who served in Afghanistan should hold their heads high and be proud of what they achieved in that country over 20 years, of the change of lives they brought to the people of Afghanistan and the safety they brought here to the UK.
The politicians sent them there, the politicians decided to withdraw, the politicians must be responsible for the consequences.
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UK prime minister criticised by own party colleagues
In the UK, the Conservative former prime minister Theresa May suggested her successor and party colleague Boris Johnson had hoped “on a wing and a prayer it’d be all right on the night” once the United States and its allies had withdrawn from Afghanistan.
Of course, the Nato presence was always going to end at some point in time. But the withdrawal when it came was due to be orderly, planned and on the basis of conditions. It has been none of these.
What has been most shocking has been the chaos and speed of the takeover by the Taliban.
In July this year, both President Biden and the prime minister indicated that they did not think the Taliban was ready or able to take over control of the country.
Was our intelligence really so poor? Was our understanding of the Afghan government so weak? Was our knowledge of the position on the ground so inadequate? Or did we really believe this? Or did we feel we just had to follow the United States and hope that on a wing and a prayer it’d be all right on the night?
Because the reality is that as long as this time limit was given and dates given for withdrawal, all the Taliban had to do was to ensure there were sufficient problems for the Afghan government not to be able to have full control of the country and then just sit and wait.
In Westminster, dozens of demonstrators have gathered at Parliament Square to protest over how the government has handled supporting citizens in Afghanistan after the Taliban launched a takeover of the country.
The protesters, who are former translators for the British Army, held banners and signs up in front of parliament as MPs returned to the House of Commons.
Signs they held included images of people gravely injured in Afghanistan, with the caption “Protect our loved ones”. One former interpreter, who gave his name only as Rafi, told the PA news agency:
Today, we are representing all those employees of the British government in Afghanistan who have served the British forces.
Today, their lives are at a very high risk, them and their families, and our families, they need protection and safety. The Taliban will butcher every single one of them if they are left behind.
The Afghan nation feels betrayed and let down. They deserved better. The Americans took the rug from under our feet and left the nation with no protection, no safety and under the control of the same terrorists that we started fighting 20 years ago.
Here’s a little more detail on the comments Starmer made on the actions of the British ambassador in Kabul. He said:
The prime minister’s response to the Taliban arriving at the gates of Kabul was to go on holiday. No sense of the gravity of the situation, not leadership to drive international efforts on the evacuation.
When asked by the Tory benches what he would do differently, Starmer said:
I wouldn’t stay on holiday whilst Kabul was falling.
Addressing the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, Starmer said:
He shouts now but he stayed on holiday while our mission in Afghanistan was disintegrating. He didn’t even speak to ambassadors in the region as Kabul fell to the Taliban. Let that sink in.
You cannot coordinate an international response from the beach. A dereliction of duty by the prime minister and the foreign secretary, a government totally unprepared for the scenario that it had 18 months to prepare for.
He said the British and Afghan people will “have to live with the consequences of the prime minister’s failure”, adding:
What we’ve won through 20 years of sacrifice could all be lost. That is the cost of careless leadership.
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In London, Starmer has said the prime minister’s judgment on Afghanistan has been “appalling” and there has been “a failure of preparation”. He told the Commons:
It should concern us all that the prime minister’s judgment on Afghanistan has been appalling.
Nobody believes that Britain and our allies could have remained in Afghanistan indefinitely or that Britain could have fought alone. Nato leaders were put in a difficult position after President Trump agreed with the Taliban that all US forces would withdraw by May 2021.
But that agreement was made in February 2020; 18 months ago.
We have had 18 months to prepare and plan for the consequences of what followed, to plan and to prepare for the resettlement of refugees and those that have supported us, for supporting the Afghan government in managing the withdrawal, for securing international and regional pressure on the Taliban, and support for the Afghan government.
The very problems we are confronting today in this debate were all known problems ... and there has been a failure of preparation.
Starmer said it is “unforgivable” and that the prime minister “bears a heavy responsibility”. He said Boris Johnson “was in a position to lead but he didn’t”.
The UK holds a seat at the United Nations security council, we are a key player within Nato, we are chair of the G7, everyone of these platforms could and should have been used to prepare for the withdrawal of forces, to rally international support behind a plan to stabilise Afghanistan through the process and keep us safe.
Did the prime minister use those platforms in those 18 months to prepare? No he didn’t.
The Labour leader said, instead, Johnson had “cut the development budget that was key to the strength and resilience of democracy in Afghanistan”, which he said was “short-sighted, small-minded and a threat to security”.
Starmer added that Johnson did not visit Afghanistan as prime minister and that his last visit to the country while foreign secretary was to “avoid a vote on Heathrow” that observers said at the time would have probably caused him serous embarrassment.
He failed to visit Afghanistan as prime minister, meaning that his last trip as foreign secretary in 2018 was not to learn or to push British interests but to avoid a vote on Heathrow.
Updated
Hungary has organised the evacuation of 26 of its nationals who were working as contractors in Afghanistan and said they would return home shortly on a flight organised by another country, Reuters reports.
In addition, the country is sending its own evacuation mission to Afghanistan to help other Hungarians still in Kabul, the deputy foreign minister Levente Magyar told a news conference.
Starmer called on the UK government to lead an international response and create an Afghan refugee resettlement programme that “meets the scale of the challenge”. He told the Commons:
The scale of the refugee crisis requires an international response but we must lead it, and lead with a resettlement programme that meets the scale of the challenge.
The scheme must be generous and welcoming. If it is not, we know the consequences, we know the consequences now: violent reprisals in Afghanistan, people tragically fleeing into the arms of human traffickers – we know this is what will happen – more people risking and losing their lives on unsafe journeys including across the English Channel.
We cannot betray our friends. We must lead.
The government is right not to recognise the Taliban as the official government and the prime minister has made that clear. But this must be part of a wider strategy developed with our UN security partners, our Nato allies, to apply pressure on the Taliban not only to stamp out a resurgence of terror groups but to retain the liberties and human rights of Afghans.
Earlier in his speech to the Commons in London, Starmer told MPs:
The desperate situation requires leadership and for the prime minister to snap out of his complacency.
The defence secretary has said that some people who worked with us will not get back. Unconscionable. The government must outline a plan to work with our allies to do everything that’s possible to ensure that does not happen.
There are reports this morning from NGOs that an evacuation plane left almost empty this morning because evacuees couldn’t get to the airport to get to that plane.
We do not turn our backs on friends at their time of need. We owe an obligation for the people of Afghanistan. There should be a resettlement scheme for people to rebuild their lives here. Safe and legal routes, it must be a resettlement scheme that meets the scale of the enormous challenge, but what the government has announced this morning does not do that.
Updated
Starmer: 'You cannot coordinate an international response from the beach'
The opposition Labour leader, Keir Starmer, has attacked what he sees as the prime minister’s lack of leadership over the crisis, telling a parliamentary debate in London:
The British government was wrong and complacent, the prime minister was wrong and complacent.
He contrasted the prime minister’s response with that of the British ambassador, who stayed behind in Kabul to personally process the paperwork of people trying to flee. Boris Johnson, Starmer says, “went on holiday”. He tells the Commons: “You cannot coordinate an international response from the beach.”
He also called the prime minister “short-sighted, small-minded and a threat to national security”. And he said the current situation in Afghanistan is the “cost of careless leadership”.
Updated
Starmer paid tribute to the British personnel who served in Afghanistan. He told MPs:
Many returned with life-changing injuries and tragically 457 didn’t return at all. We must improve mental health services for our veterans.
Addressing those veterans and their families, especially the families of those who died, the Labour leader said:
Your sacrifice was not in vain, you brought stability, reduced the terrorist threat and enabled progress. We are all proud of what you did.
Your sacrifice deserves better than this and so do the Afghan people. There’s been a major miscalculation of the resilience of the Afghan forces and a staggering complacency from our government about the Taliban threat. The result is that the Taliban are now back in control of Afghanistan.
The gains through 20 years of sacrifice hang precariously. Women and girls fear for their liberty, Afghan civilians are holding on to the undercarriage of Nato aircraft literally clinging to departing hope and we face new threats to our security and an appalling humanitarian crisis.
Updated
Addressing the Commons in London, the opposition Labour leader, Keir Starmer, has responded to the prime minister’s speech, saying it has been a “disastrous week, an unfolding tragedy”. He described some of the conditions in Afghanistan prior to the intervention in 2001.
Since then, a fragile democracy emerged. It was by no means perfect, but no international terrorist attacks have been mounted from Afghanistan in that period, women have gained liberty and won office.
Schools and clinics have been built, and Afghans have allowed themselves to dream of a better future.
Those achievements were born of sacrifice, sacrifice by the Afghan people, who bravely fought alongside their Nato allies, and British sacrifice, over 150,000 UK personnel have served in Afghanistan, including members across this house.
Updated
The UK’s prime minister has concluded his contribution to the parliamentary debate in London by recognising the role of British service personnel in Afghanistan, including those who died and were injured.
Even amid the heart-wrenching scenes we see today, I believe they should be proud of their achievements and we should be deeply proud of them.
Johnson said they had conferred “lasting” benefits on people in Afghanistan as well as providing “vital protection” for two decades and the rest of the world.
They gave their all for our safety and we owe it to them to give our all to prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a breeding ground for terrorism.
No matter how grim the lessons of the past, the future is not yet written.
And at this bleak turning point, we must help the people of Afghanistan to choose the best of all their possible futures, and in the UN, the G7, in Nato, with friends and partners around the world, that is the critical task on which this government is now urgently engaged and will be engaged in the days to come.
Former Afghan president meets Taliban commander
A Taliban commander and senior leader of the Haqqani Network militant group, Anas Haqqani, has met the former Afghan president Hamid Karzai for talks amid efforts by the group to set up a government, Reuters reports, citing a Taliban official.
Karzai was accompanied by the old government’s main peace envoy Abdullah Abdullah in the meeting, said the Taliban official, who declined to be identified. He gave no more details.
The Haqqani Network is an important faction of the Taliban, who captured the capital Kabul on Sunday. The network, based on the border with Pakistan, was accused over recent years of some of the most deadly militant attacks in Afghanistan.
In London, Johnson has been facing questions about the government’s plans to accept 20,000 refugees eventually, but only 5,000 people this year. Labour’s Chris Bryant asks the prime minister:
What are the other 15,000 meant to do; hang around and wait until they’ve been executed?
The prime minister says 5,000 people will be allowed into the country in the near future, additional to the existing annual figure of 5,000. He gives no clue about the plan for the remaining 10,000 people his government plans to allow to settle in the UK.
Johnson later confirmed that the extra 5,000 Afghans who would be granted entry to the UK this year would be additional to existing refugee resettlement efforts from Syria, and not just a “refocusing”, following a question from the Labour MP Yvette Cooper.
Updated
The UK’s prime minister Boris Johnson has ruled out an inquiry into British conduct in the nation, saying most questions had already been looked into. And he told the Commons:
We will be ... doing everything we can to support those who have helped the UK mission in Afghanistan, and investing everything that we can to support the wider area around Afghanistan, and to do everything we can to avert a humanitarian crisis.
MPs in London are reacting with some incredulity as Johnson lauds the progress made in advancing the rights of women in Afghanistan. An opposition MP asks what will be done now to help those vulnerable to possible reprisals by the Taliban.
Updated
A purely procedural point to update my earlier post: For clarity, the UK government accepted an amendment from the Conservative former minister David Davis to extend the time of the parliamentary debate. It will now end at 5pm, rather than the original finish time, 2.30pm.
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Boris Johnson expresses concern for those left behind
The UK’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, opens by expressing his concern for those left behind in Afghanistan women – particularly the women and children – and says the recent history of Afghanistan is seared on the mind of his country after almost 20 years of military involvement there.
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In London, MPs are gathering to debate the crisis in Afghanistan. The session is due to last until 2.30pm BST (1.30pm GMT) and no vote is expected. Video footage of the debate is available at the top of this live blog.
There are some “really important lessons” to be learned about how western nations provide military support for foreign governments following the swift collapse of the Afghan army and its political leadership, the UK’s chief of the defence staff has said. Carter told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
The army that was built was an army that was built on western lines.
I think that when we come to study this and think about the lessons we should learn from how we build the capacity of local and indigenous forces in the future, we do need to think very hard about how you build sustainable militaries – because our logistics systems, our technology and our way of operating may not always be the way in which they are best likely to succeed.
I think there are some really important lessons that we will need to draw in the way that we do this for the future.
Updated
The Taliban have blown up the statue of a Shia militia leader who had fought against them during Afghanistan’s civil war in the 1990s, the Associated Press reports, citing photos circulating on social media. The news agency says:
The statue depicted Abdul Ali Mazari, a militia leader killed by the Taliban in 1996, when the Islamist militants seized power from rival warlords. Mazari was a champion of Afghanistan’s ethnic Hazara minority – Shias who were persecuted under the Sunni Taliban’s earlier rule.
The statue stood in the central Bamyan province, where the Taliban infamously blew up two massive 1,500-year-old statues of Buddha carved into a mountain in 2001, shortly before the US-led invasion that drove them from power. The Taliban claimed the Buddhas violated Islam’s prohibition on idolatry.
Updated
The International Bar Association, the London-based umbrella body which brings together the legal profession around the world, has expressed concern for people working in the justice system in Afghanistan after the Taliban took hold.
Two female judges working for the Afghan supreme court were shot dead in Kabul in January. And the association said it was worried about the fate of the 250 female judges still working in the country; some of whom have tried and sentenced members of the Taliban in the past. The judges, as well as prosecutors and their families have been reported as targets for reprisals. Helena Kennedy QC, said:
Today, there are vibrant networks of radio, television and online media which track the 34 provinces. In a country that previously barred women from education, there are now more than a thousand women journalists. Local media is the second most trusted public institution – behind religious leaders.
Protecting the autonomy of women and a thriving media landscape is vital. Already many media outlets have closed. The remaining media spaces must be protected for the betterment of Afghanistan’s society.
Updated
Afghanistan’s currency reserves are mostly held in foreign accounts and have not been compromised since the Taliban captured Kabul, Reuters reports, citing the head of the central bank.
Da Afghanistan Bank controlled about $9bn (£6.5bn) in reserves, some $7bn of which was held as a mixture of cash, gold US bonds and other paper at the Federal Reserve, Ajmal Ahmaty, the acting governor who has now fled Kabul, said.
In no way were Afghanistan’s international reserves ever compromised. No money was stolen from any reserve account ... I can’t imagine a scenario where Treasury/OFAC would given Taliban access to such funds.
In the UK, Patel has said it will “take time” to get a scheme to resettle vulnerable Afghans up and running.
A senior opposition figure has questioned why the government had insufficient plans in place, claiming ministers knew for more than a year that they would be needed.
Patel told the BBC:
We are working through that right now. This will take time. We can’t do this on our own. We have got to work with our partners - some of them on the ground but some within the region as well. There is a lot of work taking place already.
We also have to work with many of the aid agencies, many of which have also left Afghanistan and are in neighbouring countries. So this is going to take time. This will not be straightforward.
The French foreign affairs minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, has said 25 French nationals and 184 Afghans were evacuated overnight and have just landed in Abu Dhabi.
More than 2,200 diplomats and other civilians have been evacuated on military flights, a Western security official has told Reuters, as efforts gathered pace to get people out after the Taliban seized the capital.
Updated
The UK government must “get serious” on the crisis, the shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy has said. Speaking on BBC Breakfast, she said:
What we haven’t criticised the UK government for is the act of withdrawal. What we’re struggling to understand – and I think most people are – is why we’ve known for 18 months that our time in Afghanistan was coming to an end but none of those basic things like evacuation plans, processing visas for Afghans who helped us, have been put in place.
She added that the lack of organisation had led to “chaotic scenes” at the airport in Kabul and could lead to “appalling consequences” for those who helped the UK trying to flee.
Nandy also said that a “global agreement” is needed to help deal with the growing refugee crisis.
We’ve got to start working with our international partners to see what leverage we can muster in order to stop Afghanistan from once again collapsing into a haven for terrorists.
She urged the prime minister, Boris Johnson, to “use his convening power as the president of the G7” and a “leading member of the UN security number” to draw up global coordination.
The world has to make a commitment that we will rise to scale of challenge.
Updated
Patel has said the British military is doing what it can to help British nationals get to the airport at Kabul. She told BBC Breakfast:
We have been in touch with them making sure that we can bring them into the airport and get them onto the planes.
This is the operational work that is taking place on the ground. That is where our military personnel are working, with others as well, with the US military. There are international teams on the ground doing exactly that.
This is all about the safe facilitation of people, Afghan nationals as well, to get them into the airport. It is hugely challenging.
We cannot kid ourselves about this but we have incredible people on the ground doing everything possible to facilitate that safe passage to get people to Kabul airport and then get them into the airport compound and get them on planes.
The next 24 hours could be “pretty critical” in evacuating people, according to General Sir Nick Carter, the head of the British armed forces.
The chief of the defence staff said the are “a lot of challenges on the ground” and “we hope to get around 1,000 people out today”. Carter, who expected around seven aircraft would be heading to Kabul, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
There are a lot of desperate people trying to get to the airport and, subject to the situation remaining calm, which the Taliban are working hard to achieve alongside us, the system will work, we believe.
At the moment, we are collaborating with the Taliban on the ground, who are providing security. They are making sure that the centre of Kabul is very calm at the moment and so far we have not had reports of people finding it difficult to get to the airport.
Updated
In the UK, the leader of the opposition Liberal Democrats, Sir Ed Davey, has urged the government to drastically increase its uptake on the number of Afghan refugees allowed to seek sanctuary in the UK under the Afghan Citizens’ Resettlement Scheme. He told BBC Breakfast:
My worry is the government only proposing to resettle 5,000 over the next year or so. The Liberal Democrats think it should be 20,000 over the next year.
We know it’s hundreds of thousands of people whose lives are at risk. Britain needs to play a part, with other countries, and we need to play a part urgently.
That’s why the Liberal Democrats have said that, as a bare minimum, we should be taking 20,000 people over the next year. The government’s commitment to 20,000 is over the long term, whatever that is.
So we will be pressing in the House of Commons for the government to do far more, and to work with our neighbours in Europe and elsewhere so there’s a truly international effort.
The home secretary has raised the prospect of 10,000 people being admitted as refugees.
Updated
Patel has suggested that about 2,000 people have been evacuated by the British effort so far. She told the BBC:
We have been getting out approximately 1,000 people, so far, a day. We’re still bringing out British nationals ... and those Afghan nationals who are part of our locally employed scheme.
Patel said the government is expanding its scheme to resettle Afghans who worked with the UK and British forces. She said that double the 5,000 originally announced could be admitted under the programme.
There could be up to 10,000. We are expanding categories of people. We are working with the Ministry of Defence on the ground. We are working with partners on the ground to identify these individuals.
We are working night and day. I am sending in Home Office officials, Border Force officials, to the region to help support this scheme as well.
The UK’s home secretary Priti Patel has defended the government’s scheme to resettle vulnerable Afghans fleeing the Taliban.
Ministers faced criticism that the mission is not moving quickly enough after they said it would take up to 20,000 refugees with up to 5,000 in the first year. Patel has told Sky News:
We have to ensure we have the support structures throughout the United Kingdom. We will be working with local councils throughout the country, the devolved governments as well.
We are working quickly on this. We cannot accommodate 20,000 people all in one go. Currently we are bringing back almost 1,000 people a day. This is an enormous effort. We can’t do this on our own. We have to work together.
Dutch evacuation efforts were unsuccessful on Tuesday night as chaos outside Kabul airport made it impossible to get eligible people on a plane, the Dutch foreign minister Sigrid Kaag has said.
According to Reuters, the Netherlands aims to get up to 1,000 local embassy workers, translators and their families out of the country.
But a military plane operated by the Dutch, together with other northern European countries, left Kabul without any people destined for the Netherlands on board on Tuesday evening, the minister said.
“It’s awful. Many were there at the gates of the airport with their families,” Kaag told Dutch news agency ANP.
US armed forces securing the airport did not allow any Afghans to enter the gates even if they had the right credentials and the plane was only on the ground in Kabul for about half an hour, Kaag added.
I hope the situation will improve on Wednesday. We are trying to get a grip on the situation and to make sure that we get everyone we want to evacuate out.
Updated
Summary
Ben Doherty here, signing off from Sydney.
My early-rising, indefatigable colleague in London, Kevin Rawlinson, is taking carriage of our continuing live coverage. My thanks to all for your company, correspondence, and comments (apologies to those to whom I’ve not had a chance to reply). Be well.
I leave you with a summary of developments:
- Evacuation flights have recommenced from Kabul Airport, after the US military secured the airfield: the US, UK, France, Australia, India, and other countries have launched rescue missions for their citizens and Afghan nationals seeking to flee the country
- The US says the Taliban has promised “safe passage” for people wishing to reach the airport, but there are reports of people being beaten and whipped for trying to break Taliban checkpoints on the road to the airport
- The US Air Force has said it is investigating the circumstances surrounding human remains that were found in the wheel well of one of its C-17s that flew out of Kabul amid the chaos of the Taliban takeover of the Afghan capital
- Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told a press conference in Kabul it would seek no “revenge” against those who had opposed them. “The Islamic Emirate - after the freedom of this nation - is not going to revenge anybody, we do not have any grudges against anybody. We have pardoned anyone, all those who have fought against us.”
- The UN human rights council is to hold a special session next week on the situation in Afghanistan to address “serious human rights concerns” after the Taliban takeover, a United Nations statement said. The Geneva forum will convene on 24 August at the request of Pakistan and nearly 90 other countries supporting the move, it said.
- The Afghan vice-president, Amrullah Saleh, said on Twitter on Tuesday he is in Afghanistan and is the “legitimate caretaker president”. Former president Ashraf Ghani fled the country amid the Taliban advance and his whereabouts remain unknown.
- Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of the Nato military alliance, has blamed the swift collapse of Afghanistan’s armed forces on a failure of leadership in the country. “The Afghan leadership failed to stand up… this failure of Afghan leadership led to the tragedy we are witnessing today.”
- US president Joe Biden and British prime minister Boris Johnson discussed Afghanistan on Tuesday and announced a virtual summit of the G7 leaders on the crisis, the White House said. “They agreed to hold a virtual G7 leaders’ meeting next week to discuss a common strategy and approach,” the White House said in a statement.
Updated
AFP have the dramatic story of India’s midnight evacuation mission from Afghanistan, escorted by the Taliban:
Outside the main iron gate of the Indian embassy in Kabul, a group of Taliban fighters waited - armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
Inside the compound were 150 Indian diplomats and nationals - growing increasingly nervous as they watched news of the Taliban tightening their grip on the capital, which they took a day earlier without a fight.
Their position was a precarious one.
Pakistan has long been the Taliban’s biggest supporter, using the country for so-called strategic depth in never-ending battles - real and diplomatic - with arch-rival India.
India in turn, strongly backed the government that took over when the Taliban were ousted, earning them hatred and enmity from the hardline Islamist group.
But the Taliban fighters outside the Indian embassy weren’t there to extract revenge, but rather to escort them to Kabul airport, where a military aircraft was on standby to evacuate them after New Delhi decided to shut its mission.
As the first of nearly two dozen vehicles drove out of the embassy late on Monday, some of the fighters waved and smiled at the passengers - an AFP correspondent among them.
One guided them towards the street leading out of the city’s green zone and on the main road to the airport.
The embassy’s decision to ask the Taliban to shepherd the Indians out was made when the fighters closed access to the once heavily fortified neighbourhood after capturing Kabul the previous day.
A quarter of the 200 or so people who had gathered at the foreign mission had already been flown out of Afghanistan before the country’s new leaders took full control of the city.
“When we were evacuating the second group... we faced the Taliban, who refused to allow us to exit the green zone,” said an official who left with Monday’s group.
“We then decided to contact the Taliban and ask them to escort our convoy out.”
Two separate pledges of an escort failed to materialise during the day, unnerving the large group bunkered down at the embassy, with one diplomat likening the experience to “house arrest”.
It had been dark for several hours when the cars finally left the compound and embarked on the five-kilometre (three-mile) journey to the airport.
The snail-paced journey took five hours, with passengers passing each minute in constant fear of a potential attack.
Unfamiliar checkpoints had been set up and thousands of people displaced by the war were along the road.
At intervals, the Taliban fighters accompanying the Indian convoy jumped out of their own vehicles and aimed their guns at the crowds, forcing them to step back.
One man who appeared to be commanding the troops fired a few rounds in the air to scare back a large group gathered around one intersection.
The escort departed once the convoy reached the airport, where American soldiers had taken up positions and were coordinating flights.
After a wait of another two hours, the group boarded a C-17 Indian military transport plane that took off at dawn, landing at an air force base in the west Indian state of Gujarat later that morning.
“I’m so happy to be back,” Shirin Pathare, an Air India employee flown out of Kabul, told AFP as he stepped off the aircraft. “India is paradise.”
Another Indian citizen, cradling his two-year-old daughter, recalled the chaos and anxiety of his hasty departure from his office and the city.
“Just hours before I took the flight a group of Taliban visited my workplace,” said the man, declining to give AFP his name.
“They were polite but when they went, they took two of our vehicles.
“I immediately knew it was time for me and my family to leave,” he added.
Over 2,200 diplomats and other civilians have so far been evacuated on military flights out of Kabul, a Western security official in the Afghan capital told Reuters on Wednesday.
There was no clarity yet on when civilian flights will resume from Kabul, the official said.
Over 2,200 people evacuated on Kabul military flights - security official https://t.co/YqzgMsOGeU pic.twitter.com/CidfmHKq8V
— Reuters (@Reuters) August 18, 2021
Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the co-founder and deputy leader of the Taliban, arrived back in Afghanistan on Tuesday night, AFP reports.
He chose to touch down in Afghanistan’s second biggest city Kandahar - the Taliban’s spiritual birthplace and capital during their first time in power.
He arrived from Qatar, where he has spent months leading talks with the United States and then Afghan peace negotiators.
Footage released by pro-Taliban media showed crowds gathering around Baradar at the airport, pumping their fists in the air and chanting in celebration.
Julian Borger writes that Baradar, freed from a Pakistani jail on the request of the US less than three years ago, has emerged as an undisputed victor of the 20-year war.
Taliban promises of “safe passage” to the Kabul airport for Afghans trying to flee the country have been undermined by reports of women and children being beaten and whipped as they try to pass through checkpoints set up by the militants.
With the Taliban in control of Afghanistan’s land border, Kabul airport is the only way out of the country. The US military has secured the airfield itself, after chaotic scenes over the weekend, but the Taliban control the road to the airport and have set up numerous checkpoints in Kabul’s north.
Obaidullah Baheer writes on the fall of Kabul:
It is mind-boggling how fast some world-defining moments happen to us. From entering a meeting to exiting it, my world had changed.
There were people running in panic and the traffic was jammed. You could see armoured vehicles with their security protocols cutting through traffic.
The city had fallen before the Taliban had entered it. There was no police, no armed forces and all government employees were asked to leave their offices.
Agence-France Presse reports on Afghan teens being press-ganged into serving the Taliban in conflict:
Hours after the Taliban overran his hometown in northern Afghanistan last week, 17-year-old Abdullah was forced to ferry rocket-propelled grenades up a nearby hill - an unwilling and terrified insurgent recruit.
Abdullah said he was out on the streets of Kunduz when members of the Taliban stopped him.
The insurgents also snatched another 30 to 40 youths, some of them boys as young as 14, from outside a madrassa (Islamic school), he said.
“They asked us to take up arms and join their ranks,” Abdullah said. “And when our parents came to ask for our release, they threatened them with weapons.”
The Taliban took effective control of the country on Sunday following a lightning offensive - supported in part by press-ganging youths like Abdullah to be used as cannon fodder.
Abdullah said the insurgents strapped a 20-kilogram (44-pound) bag of RPGs onto his back, shoved a box of ammunition into each of his hands and forced him to march.
The ordeal lasted three hours before his family was able to barter his release.
But as they prepared to flee, the insurgents came back for him and others.
“They were beating us. I still have the marks,” he said.
An hour later, he said he was given an assault rifle and pushed into action - ordered to help attack a police garrison.
“I was shaking, I couldn’t hold my gun,” said Abdullah, his face flushed with teenage acne.
The Afghan government forces fought back furiously.
“Three or four boys who were carrying weapons were hit and died when their bags exploded,” Abdullah said.
“One Taliban fighter was killed, another lost a leg and an arm.”
- ‘I was in shock’ -
Abdullah saw his chance to escape when half of the Taliban fighters in his group had been killed or wounded.
He laid down his gun and ran, taking an hour to get home.
“I was in shock,” he said.
His family was in the throes of their own escape, preparing to seek safety in the capital Kabul. They had borrowed money and pawned off their belongings.
“We didn’t take anything with us. We even sold our food,” Abdullah said.
After a 15-hour journey, Abdullah, his parents, his grandfather, and his brothers and sisters reached Kabul.
Since then, they have been sleeping under a tent in a park in a northern suburb where they spoke with AFP.
Their only possessions are what they could carry.
Abdullah said his stomach still hurts from where the Taliban fighters hit him with the butt of their guns as he resisted being press-ganged.
He now dreams of getting out of Afghanistan.
But when he was held hostage by the Taliban, Abdullah said he was mostly terrified for his family.
“I was thinking about my parents,” he said. “I thought: ‘If I am hit and killed... what will happen to them?’”
Australia’s first evacuation mission flew just 26 people out of Afghanistan.
The aircraft was one of these: a C130. It carries 128 people.
So disappointing that only 26 people on board the ADF evacuation flight. Every seat should be filled - Afghanistan is in crisis, military planes are the only ones that are leaving. Security vetting can be done in 3rd countries, so many Afghans at risk. https://t.co/9JCWItLdGy
— Elaine Pearson (@PearsonElaine) August 18, 2021
Updated
Canada plans to resume military flights to Afghanistan to evacuate civilians as the United States regains control of the Kabul airport, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) has confirmed, Reuters reports.
“CAF flights will support ongoing operations and will evacuate as many Afghans, who are at risk due to their close and enduring relationship with Canada, as possible,” a CAF spokesperson said.
US forces had to pause all evacuations after thousands of people desperate to flee Afghanistan thronged Kabul’s airport on Monday, after Taliban fighters streamed into the capital unopposed.
The airport runway and tarmac are now clear of crowds and military flights evacuating diplomats and civilians from Afghanistan started taking off on Tuesday morning, a Western security official at Kabul airport told Reuters.
Chartered flights carrying fleeing Afghans have arrived in Canada from Monday evening and additional flights will be sent starting Tuesday night, according to the statement.
“We are working in close coordination with our US and Allied partners on plans to resume evacuation flights out of Afghanistan as soon as possible,” CAF said.
The White House says the Taliban have promised civilians can travel safely to Kabul airport as the US military steps up its airlift for Americans and Afghans fleeing the Islamist group https://t.co/QgaFmIBkgx pic.twitter.com/eQfLywsMg8
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) August 18, 2021
Child welfare organisation Save the Children has said it is gravely concerned for the safety and wellbeing of children in Afghanistan, including an estimated 75,000 children who have had to flee their homes in the past month.
“Before the current escalation of violence and mass displacement, the humanitarian situation for children in Afghanistan was already dire, not only due to the ongoing conflict but also due to drought and the fallout from COVID-19,” Christopher Nyamandi, Country Director of Save the Children Afghanistan, said.
“Now we’re seeing even more children going hungry, and thousands more children living outside in the open without food or medical care.”
Nyamandi said while at present, Save the Children had had to suspend the majority of its services in Afghanistan because of ongoing instability across the country, it would resume its work as soon as it is safe to do so.
“There has never been a more important time to affirm our dedication to the Afghan people and our commitment to stay and deliver. Save the Children Afghanistan will not abandon our work, staff or the communities we have served since 1976, our commitment remains unchanged.”
Updated
Women, children and religious minorities will be prioritised in a new UK resettlement scheme for 20,000 Afghan refugees, Boris Johnson will announce, acknowledging that those who helped the western coalition over two decades are now most at risk from the Taliban takeover.
But most of the 20,000 are likely to have fled to neighbouring countries such as Pakistan before being resettled in Britain over five years, a Whitehall source said, unless the UK can strike an agreement with the Taliban to let people depart.
Johnson said the UK owed “a debt of gratitude to all those who have worked with us to make Afghanistan a better place over the last 20 years” and “many of them, particularly women, are now in urgent need of our help”.
Plus ça change...
How ironic..read this first paragraph from Ashraf Ghani’s oped (1989) and apply it to August 2021…. pic.twitter.com/EyiMIGjXSh
— Saad Mohseni (@saadmohseni) August 17, 2021
The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, has confirmed an initial Royal Australian Air Force aircraft arrived in Kabul overnight.
Morrison said the initial flight evacuated 26 people: Australian citizens, Afghan nationals with visas, and one foreign official with an international agency.
He told reporters in Canberra:
Last evening, Australia’s operation to commence evacuating Australians and visa holders, Afghan nationals and others from Kabul, commenced.
We were able to get our first flight in last night, enabling us to transfer also in key personnel from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, home affairs and defence to facilitate the evacuation of citizens, residents and visa holders, Afghan nationals, from Kabul.
This was the first of what will be many flights subject to clearance and weather.
The Australian government’s announced on Monday that it was sending about 250 defence force personnel and three RAAF aircraft to the region for a potential evacuation mission.
Morrison also said:
The operation involves everything from establishing contact with those who are in Afghanistan, particularly closer to Kabul, to ensure that they can be in a position to be at the airport in order to be evacuated on the flights as they come into Kabul, to process their embarkation and to get onto those flights.
This is not a simple process. It is very difficult for any Australian to imagine the sense of chaos and uncertainty existing across this country, the breakdown in formal communications, the ability to reach people. And we are doing this directly ourselves.
The statement came from Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), otherwise known as the Pakistani Taliban, congratulating the Afghan Taliban on their “blessed victory”.
For many, Tuesday’s message was an ominous sign of what the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan could mean for Pakistan.
While politicians, clerics, military officers and even the prime minister, Imran Khan, were among those in Pakistan celebrating the establishment of Taliban rule – Khan describing it as Afghanistan breaking “the shackles of slavery” – there are deep concerns that it will embolden powerful Islamic militant organisations operating in Pakistan.
On 1 October 2001, three weeks after the 9/11 attacks and six days before the bombing of Afghanistan began, there was a small protest march in Washington.
The marchers wore badges saying “Don’t Turn Tragedy into War” and “Our Grief Is Not a Cry for War”, and argued that war was not the inevitable response to the terrorist outrage.
The protest was dismissed in the wake of the atrocities committed by al-Qaida. The headline on the New York Times report on the march was “Marchers Oppose Waging War Against Terrorists”.
Twenty years on, in the wake of a stunning defeat for the US and its allies and the return of the Taliban to power, the questions the marchers were asking are being asked again – this time in a spirit of resignation and despair.
Amid the shock of Kabul’s fall, the chaos surrounding evacuation efforts, and the pervasive sense of betrayal, there is widespread fear that the past 20 years, the tens of thousands of lives lost and the $2tn spent, may all have been for naught.
Updated
More on the safety of those Afghans trying to reach Kabul airport through Taliban checkpoints.
The Taliban says it will grant “safe passage” to those looking to flee the country. But the US says: “we’re not taking their word for it”.
The White House said Tuesday the Taliban had promised that civilians could travel safely to the Kabul airport as the US military stepped up its airlift for Americans and Afghans fleeing the Islamist group.
Some 3,200 people have been evacuated by the US military so far, a White House official said, including 1,100 on Tuesday alone - US citizens, permanent residents and their families on 13 flights.
Earlier Tuesday, the White House had said that 11,000 US nationals remain inside the country, including diplomats, contractors and others, most waiting to be evacuated after the Taliban takeover.
Washington wants to complete the exodus before its 31 August withdrawal deadline, and thousands of US soldiers were at the airport as the Pentagon planned to ramp up flights of its huge C-17 transport jets to as many as two dozen a day.
“Now that we have established the flow, we expect those numbers to escalate,” said the White House official who gave the updated evacuation figures Tuesday and who spoke on condition of anonymity.
US officials said they were in contact with Taliban commanders to ensure the flight operations at Hamid Karzai International Airport remained safe from attack and that citizens and Afghans seeking to leave had safe passage.
“We have had no hostile interactions, no attack and no threat by the Taliban,” said Major General Hank Taylor said at the Pentagon.
But state department spokesman Ned Price said Tuesday that the United States could decide to keep its core diplomatic presence, now operating out of the airport after the US embassy was shuttered, after 31 August.
“If it is safe and responsible for us to potentially stay longer, that is something we may be able to look at,” Price said.
He also called on the Taliban to follow through on promises to respect the rights of citizens including women.
Also being airlifted are Afghans granted US refugee visas, mostly for having worked as translators for American and Nato forces, other foreign nationals, and other unspecified “at risk” Afghans.
- Taliban assurances -
Despite some reports that people are being harassed and even beaten as they try to leave, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said “large numbers” had been able to reach the airport.
“The Taliban have informed us they are prepared to provide the safe passage of civilians to the airport, and we intend to hold them to that commitment,” he told reporters.
The US Department of Defense has poured troops into the airport since Saturday to protect the exodus as the Taliban insurgents entered Kabul after a lightning siege across the country and seized power.
Taylor said the number of US troops would rise from 2,500 on Monday to around 4,000 by late Tuesday.
He said the United States aimed to increase its airlift to one plane an hour so that between 5,000 and 9,000 passengers could be carried out per day.
Some other countries, including Germany, the UK, Australia and France, have also been able to pick up their nationals and Afghans qualified to travel to those countries.
The Taliban has publicly declared how they intend to govern Afghanistan, and the group has taken physical control of much of the country, and of its capital. But formal governance inside Afghanistan is still contested.
The first vice-president of Afghanistan, Amrullah Saleh, has said he remains in Afghanistan, and is the legitimate successor to president Ashraf Ghani who fled the country.
He has issued a series of defiant missives online.
Clarity: As per d constitution of Afg, in absence, escape, resignation or death of the President the FVP becomes the caretaker President. I am currently inside my country & am the legitimate care taker President. Am reaching out to all leaders to secure their support & consensus.
— Amrullah Saleh (@AmrullahSaleh2) August 17, 2021
It is futile to argue with @POTUS on Afg now. Let him digest it. We d Afgs must prove tht Afgh isn't Vietnam & the Talibs aren't even remotely like Vietcong. Unlike US/NATO we hvn't lost spirit & see enormous oprtnities ahead. Useless caveats are finished. JOIN THE RESISTANCE.
— Amrullah Saleh (@AmrullahSaleh2) August 17, 2021
This was sent Sunday, the day the Taliban seized control of Kabul. Citing the legacy of former guerrilla leader, defence minister, military commander and anti-Taliban fighter Ahmad Shah Massoud, the ‘Lion of Panjshir’ who was assassinated two days before 9/11. An ethnic Tajik, Saleh was a member of Massoud’s anti-Taliban Northern Alliance and is a former interior affairs minister.
I will never, ever & under no circumstances bow to d Talib terrorists. I will never betray d soul & legacy of my hero Ahmad Shah Masoud, the commander, the legend & the guide. I won't dis-appoint millions who listened to me. I will never be under one ceiling with Taliban. NEVER.
— Amrullah Saleh (@AmrullahSaleh2) August 15, 2021
We are hearing a number of reports of this: Taliban violence on checkpoints on Airport Road. While Kabul Airport has been secured by military force, for many Afghans trying to get out of the country, physically reaching the airport is proving a dangerous impediment.
An Afghan friend in Kabul reports Taliban beating women who tried to get to the airport. Friend fled with his wife and two kids and lost all luggage and money. Now hunkered down and afraid.
— Tom Bowman (@TBowmanNPR) August 17, 2021
*GRAPHIC WARNING* Taliban fighters use gunfire, whips, sticks and sharp objects to maintain crowd control over thousands of Afghans who continue to wait for a way out, on airport road. At least half dozen were wounded while I was there, including a woman and her child. #Kabul pic.twitter.com/a2KzNPx07R
— Marcus Yam 文火 (@yamphoto) August 17, 2021
Our brave female journalists out and about in Kabul this morning @TOLOnews pic.twitter.com/tAC29Y2zIG
— Saad Mohseni (@saadmohseni) August 17, 2021
The International Committee of the Red Cross’s Afghanistan head of delegation, Eloi Fillion, has said there is still significant humanitarian need across the country. He said the ICRC has been in Afghanistan 30 years, and would not be leaving.
No fighting in #Kabul today
— Eloi Fillion (@EFillionICRC) August 16, 2021
If there had been conflict in the city, people’s suffering would have been enormous
However, Afghans have huge humanitarian needs resulting from weeks of heavy fighting in other cities like #Kandahar, #Herat , and #Lashkargah
Director-general of the ICRC, Robert Mardini, has issued a statement saying the ultimate outcome of Afghanistan’s transition was difficult to predict.
The ICRC is relieved to see Kabul avoid what could have been devastating urban warfare, but we remain mindful of the thousands of civilians wounded and displaced in recent fighting in other urban centres. The ICRC is determined to stand by the Afghan people and help men, women and children cope with the unfolding situation.
Updated
Again, to recapitulate:
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid appearing before cameras for the first time in Kabul on Tuesday. He said the group pledged to secure Afghanistan, would seek no revenge, and that “everyone is forgiven”.
Freedom and independence-seeking is a legitimate right of every nation. The Islamic Emirate - after the freedom of this nation - is not going to revenge anybody, we do not have any grudges against anybody.
We know that we have been undergoing very challenging periods and crises, a lot of mistakes were made that were in the advantage of the occupiers.
We want to make sure that Afghanistan is not the field of conflict, the battlefield of conflict, any more.
We have pardoned anyone, all those who have fought against us. We don’t want to repeat any conflict, any war, again, and we want to do away with the factors for conflict.
Therefore, the Islamic Emirate does not have any kind of hostility or animosity with anyone, animosities have come to an end, and we would like to live peacefully. We don’t want any internal enemies and any external enemies.
Many are skeptical about these commitments from the Taliban. At the same time, we are hearing reports of Taliban going door-to-door in Kabul neighbourhoods seeking those who have served the Afghan military or government, or supported foreign forces.
As one seasoned observer of the Taliban told me: “don’t listen to what the Taliban say, watch what they do.”
Updated
The context of the Australian evacuation mission is important. The Australian government has been criticised for moving too slowly to rescue interpreters who worked alongside Australian soldiers, and security guards who protected Australia’s embassy in Kabul. Veterans and others have been warning for months, years even, that they faced Taliban retribution.
The prime minister, Scott Morrison, conceded yesterday that because of Kabul’s fall to the Taliban, Australia would not be able to rescue all of those who had served alongside Australians.
And some moving news:
We are receiving multiple reports that an Australian military evacuation mission has left Afghan airspace, having flown out of Kabul’s Hamid Karzai Airport. Details of the mission are unclear, we are seeking those.
Just to revisit some of those recent developments:
The US Air Force said it is investigating the circumstances surrounding human remains that were found in the wheel well of one of its C-17s that flew out of Kabul amid the chaos of the Taliban takeover of the Afghan capital, Reuters reports.
Images circulated on social media earlier this week of Afghans desperate to leave Kabul rushing toward a C-17 and clinging to its side.
A separate video showed what appeared to be two people falling from a military plane as it flew out of Kabul.
“Faced with a rapidly deteriorating security situation around the aircraft, the C-17 crew decided to depart the airfield as quickly as possible,” the statement said.
It added that the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigation was reviewing information about the aircraft and the “loss of civilian lives – to include video documentation and the source of social media posts”.
Summary
Hello, and welcome to our continuing coverage of the fall of Kabul, and the crisis in Afghanistan. This is Ben Doherty joining you from Sydney.
To begin, a summary of recent developments:
- The US Air Force has said it is investigating the circumstances surrounding human remains that were found in the wheel well of one of its C-17s that flew out of Kabul amid the chaos of the Taliban takeover of the Afghan capital
- Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told a press conference in Kabul it would seek no “revenge” against those who had opposed them. “The Islamic Emirate - after the freedom of this nation - is not going to revenge anybody, we do not have any grudges against anybody. We have pardoned anyone, all those who have fought against us.”
- The UN human rights council is to hold a special session next week on the situation in Afghanistan to address “serious human rights concerns” after the Taliban takeover, a United Nations statement said. The Geneva forum will convene on 24 August at the request of Pakistan and nearly 90 other countries supporting the move, it said.
- The Afghan vice-president, Amrullah Saleh, said on Twitter on Tuesday he is in Afghanistan and is the “legitimate caretaker president”. Former president Ashraf Ghani fled the country amid the Taliban advance and his whereabouts remain unknown.
- Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of the Nato military alliance, has blamed the swift collapse of Afghanistan’s armed forces on a failure of leadership in the country. “The Afghan leadership failed to stand up… this failure of Afghan leadership led to the tragedy we are witnessing today.”
- US president Joe Biden and British prime minister Boris Johnson discussed Afghanistan on Tuesday and announced a virtual summit of the G7 leaders on the crisis, the White House said. “They agreed to hold a virtual G7 leaders’ meeting next week to discuss a common strategy and approach,” the White House said in a statement.
