Live updates Biden defends decision to withdraw from Afghanistan after Talibans rapid return to power

President Biden defended his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan in remarks at the White House on Monday afternoon, blaming the Taliban’s takeover on the unwillingness of the Afghan army to fight the militant group and arguing that remaining in the country was not in the U.S. national interest.

“American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves,” Biden said.

Afghans faced scenes of chaos and an uncertain future Monday as their nation grappled with the stunning collapse of its Western-backed government and Taliban fighters again swept to power over the weekend.

As chaotic scenes unfolded at Kabul’s international airport, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin authorized the deployment of a third Army infantry battalion to the airport.

Military flights have been resumed at the airport, which U.S. forces have secured, after a pause Monday. A senior military official, Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor, said that by morning, there could be up to 3,500 troops on the ground.

Here are the significant developments

Chaotic scenes at the airport contrasted with many parts of downtown Kabul, where Monday passed largely peacefully.

French President Emmanuel Macron warned Monday of a potential influx of Afghan migrants into Europe, adding that European Union leaders are in contact to launch an initiative against irregular migration. He also added that France would welcome Afghans who had worked with its forces, as well as human rights activists.

President Biden defended his decision to withdraw from Afghanistan in a speech at the White House on Monday afternoon, though he acknowledged that the Afghan government’s collapse took place more quickly than expected.

U.S. troops at Kabul’s international airport came under fire at least twice, and one American service member may have been wounded, the Pentagon said.

GOP casts aside tensions within the party over Afghanistan to attack Biden’s handling of troop withdrawal Link copied

Republicans who were once sharply divided over President Donald Trump’s plan to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan are now united in their criticism of how President Biden is handling the military’s exit from the country.

Though the GOP was long considered the party of hawkish foreign policy, many Republicans broke with Trump in 2018 when he declared that he would keep his campaign promise to end the war in Afghanistan, a decision that contributed to the resignation of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. But many of Trump’s staunchest supporters in the party supported his stance, and GOP leaders sought to keep the tensions in check.

Now with Trump gone, Republicans are focusing their attacks squarely on how the Democratic president has handled the withdrawal while casting aside their serious foreign policy differences over America’s role in the world to try to sharpen their attacks on the Biden presidency ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

Chaos at Kabul airport: Satellite images capture the scramble to leave AfghanistanLink copied

Satellite photos taken late Monday morning illustrate the developing chaos on the ground at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul shortly before Afghans clung to ascending planes in a desperate attempt to escape Afghanistan.

Maxar Technologies captured images of crowds from the airport’s entrance to its runway at about 10:45 a.m. Soon after, news agencies and social media videos began documenting people climbing onto planes, running next to taxiing aircraft and falling from a U.S. Air Force C-17 military transport vehicle as it took flight. Several people were killed.

Images show lines of vehicles forming a haphazard traffic jam leading up to the airport, and throngs of people on foot rushed inside hoping to evacuate after Taliban insurgents’ abrupt takeover of the city on Sunday. On Monday morning, thousands surged toward the terminal and overwhelmed airport security forces.

The shocking speed of the Taliban’s advance: A visual timelineLink copied

Slowly, slowly, then seemingly all at once. Just four months after President Biden announced he would withdraw the United States from Afghanistan, the Taliban has taken control of Kabul, almost 20 years since the group was ousted from power by NATO forces.

Few anticipated it would happen this fast. While there were warnings of a Taliban resurgence should the U.S. military withdraw, the past week has seen the group make stunning territorial gains, amassing control of the country with the seizure of one provincial capital after another, and then finally Kabul, in a sweeping surge over just nine days. The Afghan army, largely trained by U.S. forces but addled by exhaustion and corruption, was unable to hold the group back and, in many cases, walked away without firing a single shot.

Here’s how the situation unfolded starting with Biden’s announcement in April.

Afghanistan is under Taliban control. Here’s who leads the organization.Link copied

With Afghanistan under Taliban control, the world is watching to see how the group will govern after being out of power since 2001.

The Taliban’s reign from 1996 to 2001 was brutal, punctuated by extreme religious mandates, public executions and severely restricted liberties for women and girls. Few who ruled in 2001 are alive or in power, leaving uncertainty over how the group intends to run the country today.

The Washington Post takes a look at its key figures, including supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada, top political leader Abdul Ghani Baradar and Sirajuddin Haqqani â€" the son of Jalaluddin Haqqani, who founded an offshoot of the Taliban designated a terrorist group by the United States.

Afghans who helped the West are left in limbo as evacuation turns chaoticLink copied

Western nations operating with a skeleton diplomatic presence faced agonizing decisions on Monday as they raced to airlift their own citizens out of the country while also seeking to evacuate many of the tens of thousands of Afghans who helped them during two decades of war.

Much of Afghanistan’s diplomatic life had relocated on Sunday from the blast-wall-surrounded enclave of the Green Zone to Kabul’s international airport. There, ambassadors from Britain, France and the United States, along with others, oversaw the evacuation of citizens from their countries and stamped last-minute visas for eligible Afghans.

But there were also fears of worse to come. It was unclear whether Western governments would be able to continue evacuations at the airport should they lose control of the perimeter to Taliban forces. And as commercial flights at the airport were suspended on Monday, there were accusations that Afghans are a lower priority than diplomats.

“The problem is less issuing visas for desperate Afghans as much as finding space for them on a plane,” said one European official.

Key updateBiden administration still weighing whether to officially recognize Taliban rule Link copiedState Department spokesman Ned Price on Aug. 16 asked all U.S. citizens to shelter and not travel to the airport until they hear otherwise from State officials. (The Washington Post)

State Department spokesman Ned Price said Monday that the United States was still “taking stock” of the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan and would decide whether to recognize its rule only after the militant group demonstrates a willingness to govern inclusively and prohibit terrorists from operating on its soil.

“We are still taking stock of what has transpired over the past 72 hours and the diplomatic and political implications of that,” Price told reporters.

A future Afghan government that “protects the basic rights of its people,” including women and girls, and that “doesn’t harbor terrorists” is a government “that we would be able to work with,” Price said.

During its rule in the ’90s, the Taliban imposed draconian social restrictions on women, mandating burqa coverings and limiting their access to education. Price said scenes of Afghan women seeking to flee Taliban rule were “searing” and “painful.”

When asked how the United States could compel the Taliban to live up to its promises of governing more inclusively, Price said threats to withdraw international aid “is a positive source of leverage.”

“If the Taliban or any government that seeks to have the level of international assistance that was needed to sustain the Afghan government over the past 20 years … their actions will have to match some of [their] words,” he said.

The Washington Post and other major newspapers rush to evacuate their Afghan employeesLink copied

The Washington Post and other major American newspapers have asked President Biden for help in facilitating the departure of their Afghan staffers in the wake of the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan.

Even as they covered the crisis in their own country, local staff who work for The Post, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, along with their families, were at the airport in Kabul on Monday, awaiting transfer out of the country. The group numbered 204 people.

The publishers of the three news organizations requested “support for our colleagues and . . . an unequivocal signal that the government will stand behind the free press.”

Earlier Monday, Washington Post Publisher Fred Ryan sent an email to national security adviser Jake Sullivan on behalf of all three news organizations making an “urgent request” for help in securing passage for the group from the civilian side to the military side of the Kabul airport.

At Pentagon briefing, Afghan journalist tearfully voices concern for women after Taliban takeoverLink copiedDuring the Aug. 16 briefing, Afghan reporter Nazira Karimi expressed concern for the fate of women and girls in her country. (The Washington Post)

A journalist from Afghanistan, her voice full of emotion, said at Monday’s Pentagon press briefing that she is afraid of what the Taliban will do to Afghan women and asked about the whereabouts of President Ashraf Ghani, who she said “should answer to the Afghan people.”

“I’m very upset today, because Afghan women didn’t expect that overnight all the Taliban came,” said the journalist, Nazira Karimi. She was wearing a mask emblazoned with the Afghanistan flag.

“They took off my flag,” she said. “This is my flag. And they put their flag. Everybody is upset, especially women.”

Karimi explained that she had fled from the Taliban “20 years ago” and voiced frustration that, with the collapse of the Afghan government, “now we go back to the first step again.”

“We don’t have any president,” she said. “We don’t have anything. Afghan people, they don’t know what to do.”

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby responded that he and the Defense Department as a whole “understand the anxiety and the fear and the pain that you’re feeling.”

“It’s clear, and it’s evident,” he said, adding: “Nobody here at the Pentagon is happy about the images that we’ve seen coming out in the last few days.”

Scenes of deadly chaos unfold at Kabul airport after Taliban’s returnLink copiedAfghans and foreigners rushed to the Kabul airport on Aug. 16 in hopes of leaving the country as the Taliban declared victory. (John Farrell/The Washington Post)

KABUL â€" The first full day of Taliban rule in Kabul on Monday saw a mad rush by thousands of Afghans on the city’s international airport, in a frantic, last-ditch effort to flee their country.

Hundreds of people ran alongside the wheels of a U.S. military aircraft as it attempted to take off Monday. Others climbed up the sides of the plane as it edged forward, engines roaring.

At least seven people at the airport have been confirmed dead, the Associated Press reported.

“What has happened to us? Have we turned into animals?” said one man at the airport as he watched people elbow and kick on a narrow staircase for a seat on a plane that would take them abroad.

But in many parts of downtown Kabul, Monday passed largely peacefully, a sharp contrast to the airport chaos. Stores were largely shuttered, although a trickle of people were going about their business. Services such as banks and government offices also were closed.

Taliban fighters wove through traffic in pickup trucks bearing the group’s white flag. Some of the fighters set up checkpoints, others posed for photos at the Afghan capital’s most well-known landmarks.

On some streets, it appeared that little had changed. Women were out in colorful, fashionable clothing; portraits of anti-Taliban hero Ahmed Shah Massoud were left undefiled; and Afghan national flags remained in place.

Situation in Afghanistan is ‘bitter, dramatic and terrifying,’ Merkel saysLink copied

BERLIN â€" German Chancellor Angela Merkel lamented the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in a speech on Monday, saying that her thoughts are with families of German military personnel who lost their lives in Afghanistan, who may now feel their loved ones died for nothing.

“This is an extremely bitter development, bitter, dramatic and terrifying,” she said.

More than 150,000 German troops served in Afghanistan over the past 20 years, second in number to the United States. Germany was forced to end its military presence as the United States announced it would pull out of the country.

Merkel voiced sympathy for the friends and relatives of the 59 Germans who were killed during the country’s mission in Afghanistan “when everything seems to have been in vain.”

“We must never forget those people that paid for this with their lives,” she said.

The German government has faced criticism for not acting faster to evacuate its Afghan support staff who worked with its embassy and mission in Afghanistan. Three German military planes were dispatched to try to carry out evacuations on Monday, but the security situation at the airport in Kabul is “very tense,” she said, which has delayed rescue efforts.

The first German evacuation aircraft landed in Kabul several hours after Merkel’s speech, according to German news agency DPA.

Macron says Europe should prepare for possible Afghan migrant influxLink copied

PARIS â€" French President Emmanuel Macron warned in a televised address on Monday that the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan may prompt a migrant influx into Europe, adding that European Union leaders are in contact to launch an initiative against irregular migration.

“Europe cannot shoulder the consequences of the current situation alone,” Macron said. “We must anticipate and protect ourselves against significant irregular migration flows that would endanger those who use them and fuel trafficking of all kinds.”

Macron said he had spoken to German Chancellor Angela Merkel earlier on Monday and added that France would be in touch with other E.U. members to launch an initiative to combat irregular migration and to cooperate with transit and host countries outside the bloc, including Pakistan, Turkey and Iran.

The French leader’s remarks drew criticism from human rights advocates who had hoped that France would provide more support for Afghan refugees.

In his speech, Macron said that France “has done and will continue to do its duty to protect those who are most at risk.”

Several transport planes are expected to airlift French nationals and others out of Kabul. Macron said hundreds of local staffers who worked with the French government had already been transferred to France with their families. But dozens of people who worked with the French military are still in Afghanistan, he said.

Macron also expressed concern over the potential impact of the Taliban takeover on global terrorism groups. Macron said he and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had discussed “joint initiatives” at the U.N. level to prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming “the sanctuary for terrorism that it used to be.”

France withdrew its combat troops from Afghanistan in 2012 amid widespread public skepticism over the mission’s chances of success.

“The challenges that Afghans will face in the coming weeks and months are terrible, immense,” Macron said Monday. But he also defended the French involvement in the country, saying “our fight was just.”

Amid scramble at Kabul airport, Biden outlines plan to safely return Americans to U.S.Link copied

Biden said the United States plans to remove thousands of Americans from Afghanistan in the next few days, following the Taliban’s return to power in the country after years of the U.S. effort to combat the militant group.

The president said removing civilian personnel as well as the civilian personnel of U.S. allies will happen within the next few days.

“Our current military mission will shorten time, limit scope and focus in its objectives to get our people and our allies out as safely, as quickly as possible,” he said in his first response since the Taliban ousted the U.S.-backed Afghan government. “And once we have completed this mission, we will conclude our military withdrawal,” ending America’s longest war.

Biden warned the Taliban that if it attempts to interfere with U.S. efforts to safely evacuate Americans from Afghanistan, there will be severe consequences.

“As we carry out this departure, we have made it clear to the Taliban if they attack our personnel or disrupt our operation, the U.S. … response will be swift and forceful,” he said from the White House. “We defend our people with devastating force if necessary.”

The president spoke of his desire to protect Afghans and highlighted his commitment to the safety of those individuals who worked with the United States over the past years.

“Operation Allies Refugee, which I announced back in July, has already moved, 2,000 Afghans [who] were eligible for special immigration visas and their families to the United States,” he said. “We’re also expanding refugee access to cover other vulnerable Afghans who worked for embassy, U.S. nongovernment agencies or the U.S. nongovernmental organizations and Afghans who otherwise are at great risk.”

Biden blames Afghan government, civilians themselves for slow pace of evacuationsLink copied

Biden on Monday addressed criticism that the United States did not evacuate Afghan civilians more quickly, arguing that blame lies with the Afghan government â€" and some Afghan civilians themselves.

“I know there are concerns about why we did not begin evacuating Afghan civilians sooner,” Biden said in his White House address. “Part of the answer is some of the Afghans did not want to leave earlier, still hopeful for their country. And part of it is because the Afghan government and its supporters discouraged us from organizing a mass exodus to avoid triggering, as they said, a crisis of confidence.”

His remarks were immediately met with pushback from No One Left Behind, an advocacy group for former interpreters.

“We adamantly disagree with the President’s assertion that some SIV recipients wanted to stay in Afghanistan,” James Miervaldis, the organization’s chairman, told CBS News, using the acronym for special immigrant visas.

He added: “The 2009 Afghan Allies Protection Act was one of the first pieces of legislation President Obama signed into law. This is 12 years the US not living up to our ideals.”

Dan Lamothe contributed to this report.

Afghan government’s collapse reinforces that U.S. withdrawal ‘was the right decision,’ Biden saysLink copied

In remarks at the White House Monday afternoon, President Biden acknowledged that the collapse of Afghanistan’s government and security forces took place more rapidly than expected â€" but maintained that withdrawing U.S. troops from the country was the correct decision.

“The truth is, this did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated,” Biden said. “So what’s happened? Afghanistan’s political leaders gave up and fled the country. The Afghan military collapsed, some … without trying to fight. If anything, the developments of the past week reinforced that ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan now was the right decision.”

He added: “American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves.”

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