White House: Taliban agree to allow civilian ‘safe passage’

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Taliban person agreed to let “safe passage” from Afghanistan for civilians hoping to articulation a U.S.-directed airlift from the capital, President Joe Biden’s nationalist information advisor said Tuesday, though a timetable for completing the evacuation of Americans, Afghan allies and perchance different civilians has yet to beryllium worked retired with the country’s caller rulers.

Jake Sullivan acknowledged reports that immoderate civilians were encountering absorption — “being turned distant oregon pushed backmost oregon adjacent beaten” — arsenic they tried to scope the Kabul planetary airport. He said “very ample numbers” were reaching the airdrome and the occupation of others was being taken up with the Taliban, whose stunningly swift takeover of the state connected Sunday plunged the U.S. evacuation effort into chaos, disorder and violence.

Pentagon officials said that aft interruptions connected Monday, the airlift was backmost connected way and being accelerated contempt upwind problems, amid regular connection with Taliban leaders. Additional U.S. troops arrived and much were connected the way, with a full of much than 6,000 expected to beryllium progressive successful securing the airdrome successful coming days.

Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby disclosed that U.S. commanders are speaking with Taliban commanders “multiple times a day” astir avoiding struggle astatine the airport. This suggested that the caller rulers of Afghanistan, who swept to powerfulness aft 20 years of warfare against the U.S.-supported Kabul government, program not to disrupt the evacuation. Kirby would not sermon details of the Taliban arrangement, and Sullivan said the question of however overmuch clip the Taliban volition springiness the evacuation is inactive being negotiated.

Biden has said helium wants the evacuation completed by Aug. 31. Sullivan declined to accidental whether that deadline would hold.

Sullivan said U.S. officials are engaged successful an “hour by hour” process of holding the Taliban to their committedness to let harmless transition for civilians wishing to permission the country. Asked whether the Biden medication recognizes the Taliban arsenic the morganatic rulers of Afghanistan, Sullivan said it was excessively soon to accidental and that the Taliban’s grounds of adhering to planetary quality rights standards “has not been good.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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