Afghanistan live news Taliban say deadline extension for foreign troops is red line

The defence department spokesman, John Kirby, has said the US military has in one case helicoptered US citizens into Kabul airport and has the capability to carry out further extraction operations of US nationals, by air and road.

The announcement followed criticism of defence secretary Lloyd Austin’s statement last week that the US military would not go beyond the airport perimeter, at a time when British special forces had gone out into the city to fetch UK nationals.

Kirby said the US was doing similar things but would not go into details for security reasons.

“We do have the ability to help when we can and where we can to help Americans move towards the gates, and we’re not going to talk about the details of each and every one of those, but we do have those capabilities,” Kirby said.

“You mentioned that the Brits who want to go out - we are doing it as well. We are going out as needed, and helping Americans get into the field.”

A new flight carrying evacuated at-risk Afghans will arrive in the United States later on Monday from Ramstein air base in Germany, according to a senior US state department official.

Reuters reports that the official said the pace of flights from transit hubs temporarily housing those evacuated from Kabul will accelerate.

The official dismissed reports that only Americans were able to get through to Kabul airport and that others were blocked.

A UK-based Afghan woman whose relatives worked with US and Nato forces and international humanitarian organisations has described a frantic effort from afar to try to protect her family amid fears they will be targeted by the Taliban.

“I haven’t slept for a week or so … There are tremendous threats against their lives,” said the woman, whose mother remains in Afghanistan along with seven of her siblings. “I cannot tell you how much I have cried in the last four or five days. Every single day.”

It is an undertaking echoed across the Afghan diaspora and beyond as people scramble to save loved ones amid reports of the Taliban going door-to-door as they search for people who work with the former Afghan government or western countries.

“It’s not just my family. It’s millions of Afghans who are suffering,” said the woman, who worked for the Guardian in the past, and whose name is not being published in order to protect her family.

Leaders of the G7 countries need to coordinate evacuation efforts from Kabul airport and whether they should continue beyond the 31 August deadline set by the United States, the German foreign minister, Heiko Maas, has said.

At their summit on Tuesday, G7 leaders will also discuss how to improve access for evacuees to Kabul airport, Maas told reporters in Berlin, adding Germany had been looking at options for keeping the airport running beyond 31 August for days.

We are talking with the United States, Turkey and other partners with the aim of facilitating a civil operation of Kabul airport to enable the evacuation of people [beyond 31 August].

We will also have to continue to talk with the Taliban about this issue, and that’s what we are doing.

On the question of the 31 August deadline for the evacuation, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the defence secretary was working to that deadline and had not asked the president for it to be extended, but he did not rule it out.

The goal is to get as many people out as fast as possible. And while we’re glad to see the numbers that we got out yesterday, we’re not going to rest on any laurels. The focus is on trying to do this as best we can by the end of the month.

And as the secretary said, if he needs to have additional conversations with the commander in chief about that timeline, he’ll do that. But we’re just not at that point right now.

Dozens of Afghan women and activists working for the Italian charity Pangea were beaten by the Taliban last weekend, Pangea said.

“Some women of Pangea have been beaten by the Taliban,” Pangea said in a statement. “Seeing pictures of their bruises was heart-breaking.”

Pangea, which has helped tens of thousands of Afghan women become self-supporting in the last 20 years, said it is working non-stop to help its Kabul workers and their families to reach the airport.

“They have been difficult days,” the charity added.

The women on the Pangea staff and their families have been trapped in the crowd for hours, without water, and with their very young children in their arms.

Pangea said the children had “witnessed scenes of unprecedented violence and they are very afraid”.

The women had drawn a “P” on their wrist in order to be recognised by the Italian soldiers who are flying out Italian diplomats and the families of their Afghan assistants at risk of Taliban reprisal.

A plane carrying over 200 Afghan refugees who helped Italy’s mission in the country has landed in Rome on Monday, authorities said, as 400 more are expected to arrive during the day.

To date, Rome has evacuated about 2.500 Afghans. Italy’s government said it will “protect the Afghan citizens who helped us in our mission”.

The foreign minister, Luigi Di Maio, stressed the importance of a G7 meeting and added that this would also involve Russia, China and India, who, according to the foreign ministry, “represent a crucial point in the overall strategy”.

The Pentagon spokesman, John Kirby has been talking about the effort to improve access to Kabul airport through discussions with the Taliban, who man the checkpoints on the surrounding roads.

So far, he said, it is going well, and the flow of people into the airport has improved.

It does require constant coordination and deconfliction with the Taliban. And what we have seen is that this coordination as well as deconfliction has worked well in terms of allowing access and flow to continue, as well as reducing the overall size of the crowds just outside the airport.

At the Pentagon, army major general William “Hank” Taylor is giving an update on the situation in Kabul airport.

He said that over the past 24 hours, 16,000 people were flown out on 89 planes - a combination of military transport and commercial charters. The US military alone was responsible for flying out just under 11,000 people.

Earlier, I shared a report that a firefight had broken out near Kabul airport, leaving an Afghan security guard dead and three others injured.

The US military has now confirmed that no American or coalition personnel were hurt. I have updated the earlier post (see 14.47 BST).

The French foreign minister has said France needs more time to complete evacuations from Afghanistan and called on the US to extend its current deadline for withdrawing troops on 31 August.

“We are concerned about the August 31 deadline set by the United States. More time is needed to complete the current operations,” Jean-Yves Le Drian said, according to a French pool reporter accompanying the minister to the United Arab Emirates.

At an emergency G7 meeting on Tuesday, Boris Johnson is expected to request for Joe Biden to extend the deadline in order to allow more evacuation flights to take place.

Britain’s defence secretary, Ben Wallace, has already admitted UK forces won’t be able to maintain a presence at Kabul airport once the US withdraws.

But the Taliban have said they would not extend the deadline for western forces to leave Afghanistan and any extension would be a “clear violation” of the Doha agreement.

From the BBC’s Yalda Hakim who spoke to Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen earlier.

Yalda Hakim (@BBCYaldaHakim)

Taliban spokesperson @suhailshaheen1 tells me they won't extend the deadline for Western forces to leave Afghanistan. He said the 31st August was a red line. Shaheen said an extension would go against the Doha agreement struck between the United States and the Taliban

August 23, 2021

French planes have so far evacuated more than 1,000 Afghans through Abu Dhabi, where Paris has a military base, the ministry said earlier.

Le Drian, who was accompanied by the armed forces minister, Florence Parly, said the main concern remained access to Kabul airport, where crowds have scrambled to flee the country since the Taliban took the capital just over a week ago.

We still need to increase our coordination locally with the United States and our partners there.

“The fall of Kabul will be another missed opportunity to reflect on [the west’s] default setting of retaliate in haste and retreat at leisure,” writes Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik.

You will instead hear a lot in the media about what this says about us, about the fall or “defeat” of the west â€" always the main character in the tragedy that has befallen only others.

There will be more in the fine tradition of oratory in the British parliament that flourishes with the moral purpose of intervention, and you will hear a lot about betrayal of Afghan women.

But you will hear little from those establishments about the reality of a war that, in the end, from Sudan to Iraq to Afghanistan, was about high-profile revenge enacted on low-profile soft targets.

It was not about ending terror, or freeing women, but demonstrating Infinite Reach.

Read Nesrine’s full column on why the west will learn nothing from the fall of Kabul here:

A firefight between unidentified gunmen and US, German and Afghan guards at Kabul airport has left one Afghan guard dead and three wounded, underscoring the fragile security situation around the site, Peter Beaumont and Kate Connolly report.

The fight, which took place at just after 7am Kabul time at the north gate of the airfield, started when former Afghan security forces who are acting as guards exchanged fire with the gunmen. Then German and US forces became involved.

Here is the story:

US Central Command spokesperson, navy captain William Urban, said:

No US or coalition forces were hurt during a brief exchange of gunfire last night outside the north gate of Hamid Karzai International Airport. The incident appeared to begin when an unknown hostile actor fired upon Afghan security forces involved in monitoring access to the gate. The Afghans returned fire, and in keeping with their right of self-defense, so too did US and coalition troops.

One member of the Afghan forces was killed by the hostile actor; several Afghans were wounded during the exchange. The wounded are being treated at an airfield hospital and are reported to be in stable condition.

Our condolences go out to the teammates and loved ones of the fallen Afghan soldier.

The US vice-president Kamala Harris said on Monday that the US must maintain its focus on evacuating Americans and vulnerable Afghans and shouldn’t get distracted by questions over what went wrong in the chaotic US exit from Afghanistan, the Associated Press reports.

Speaking at a news conference in Singapore, Harris repeatedly declined to engage when asked what she felt should have been done differently in the withdrawal.

There’s no question there will be and should be a robust analysis of what has happened, but right now there’s no question that our focus has to be on evacuating American citizens, Afghans who worked with us and vulnerable Afghans, including women and children.

Harris took questions alongside Singapore’s prime minister Lee Hsien Loong after the two met for about two hours to discuss a range of issues.

The news conference was dominated by Afghanistan, after the messy US withdrawal sparked concerns about America’s commitments to its allies globally.

Harris’ visit to Singapore and Vietnam this week is seen as the first real test of the Biden administration’s ability to reassure key allies of its resolve.

Lee offered his country’s support for the US decision to withdraw, however, and said Singapore was “grateful” for the US efforts to combat terrorism in Afghanistan. He also offered the US the use of the Singapore Air Force’s transport aircraft to help with the evacuation, and said the country is now watching what the US does next.

What matters is how the US repositions itself in the Asia Pacific, engages the broader region and continues to fight against terrorism, because that will determine the perceptions of the countries of the US global priorities and of its strategic intentions.

More than 500 tonnes of medical supplies including surgical equipment and severe malnutrition kits due to be delivered to Afghanistan this week are stuck outside the country because of Kabul airport restrictions, the World Health Organization said.

Aid agencies say it is critical that medical and food supplies reach some 300,000 people displaced in Afghanistan over the past two months amid advances by Taliban insurgents that culminated in their capture of Kabul on 15 August.

Nearly 18.5 million people â€" half the population â€" rely on aid, and the humanitarian needs are expected to grow due to drought. But the closure of Kabul airport to commercial flights had held up deliveries, WHO regional emergency director Dr Richard Brennan told Reuters.

While the eyes of the world now are on the people being evacuated and the planes leaving, we need to get supplies in to help those who are left behind.

Brennan said the WHO was calling for empty planes to divert to its warehouse in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to collect the supplies on their way to pick up evacuees from Afghanistan.

The United States has enlisted six commercial airlines to help move Afghan evacuees, however Washington and Nato coalition partners have so far indicated that they cannot bring supplies on incoming evacuation planes due to “operational constraints and security concerns”, Brennan said.

“The US is using these commercial airlines only for evacuation,” he said, adding that the WHO was exploring various options and reaching out to other governments.

“We have been advised to explore options at other airports such as Kandahar, Jalalabad and Bagram air bases. We do not yet have aircraft to fly even to those bases.”

The executive director of the UN children’s agency Unicef, Henrietta Fore, said on Monday around 10 million children across Afghanistan needed humanitarian assistance and that conditions were expected to deteriorate further.

The Pentagon is due to hold a news briefing on Afghanistan at 10.30 EST with press secretary John Kirby and army major general William D Taylor. We will be bringing you updates from that briefing.

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