Joe Biden has rejected the pleas of domestic and international allies to keep troops in Afghanistan for evacuation efforts beyond the end of the month, citing the growing threat of a terrorist attack.
In a move likely to fuel criticism that America is abandoning Afghan partners to the Taliban, the US president made clear that he is resolved to withdraw forces from Kabul airport by next Tuesday’s deadline.
“We are currently on a pace to finish by August the 31st,” Biden said at the White House on Tuesday. “The sooner we can finish, the better. Each day of operations brings added risk to our troops.”
The president acknowledged that completing the airlift – one of the biggest in history – by 31 August depends on the Taliban continuing to cooperate and allowing access to the airport with no disruption to operations.
Biden also noted that he has asked the Pentagon and the state department for “contingency plans to adjust the timetable should that become necessary”:
In some ways Biden’s decision is the logical outcome once he announced he would adhere to Donald Trump’s original agreement with the Taliban in February 2020. The Taliban have won, and to the victor goes the spoils.
But Biden’s decision has left Boris Johnson with little on which to cling after making such a public pitch for Biden to extend the deadline.
Putting on a brave face, he said afterwards: “The number one condition that we’re insisting upon is safe passage beyond the 31st, beyond this initial phase, for those who want to leave Afghanistan.” But the Taliban have said they do not want more of their fellow citizens to leave the country, have given no promises about a roadmap on safe passages and, anyway, the UN human rights commissioner, Michelle Bachelet, has claimed there are credible reports the Taliban are already breaking their promises on avoiding reprisals. The one certainty is that between now and 31 August there will be more of what the prime minister described as “harrowing scenes” at the airport.
So it leaves open the question whether the west, effectively defeated in battle, can in some way retrieve the peace, and influence the still as yet unformed Taliban government:
In the end it took only seven minutes for Joe Biden to pour salt into the wounds of his fractured relationship with European leaders, telling them firmly on a video call that he would not extend the 31 August deadline for US troops to stay in Kabul, as he had been asked by the French, Italians and most of all the British. The rebuff follows Biden’s earlier decision in July to insist on the August deadline previously set in 2020 by Donald Trump for the withdrawal, a decision the US president relayed to his EU colleagues as a fait accompli.
For Europe the episode has been a rude awakening, and a moment of sober reassessment. Only on 25 March Charles Michel had afforded Biden the chance to address a meeting of the European Council, the first foreign leader given the honour since Barack Obama 11 years earlier. Biden after all had said his foreign policy would only be as strong as his system of alliances, the true shield of the republic, and Europe would be at the heart of that system.
Michel, the European Council president, told Biden: “America is back and we are glad you are back. Together we can show that democracies are best suited to protect citizens, to promote dignity, and to generate prosperity.”
Hi, Helen Sullivan joining you now on an icy almost-spring morning in Sydney.
I’ll be bringing you the latest developments as they happen, including reaction to Biden’s speech.
As always, if you’d like to get in touch or send news you think we may have missed, the best place to reach me is on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
It’s been a lively few hours, although some spent in suspended animation waiting for Joe Biden to speak. He was more than five hours behind schedule in giving remarks at the White House and then his address was a damp squib. And he didn’t take questions.
It’s now 2.30am local time in Kabul and it’s tense. My terrific colleagues in Australia will now take over this live blog from the US team. Helen Sullivan is standing by.
Here are the most recent highlights:
Joe Bidensaid at the White House that: “We are determined to complete this mission.” The mission currently being the US withdrawing completely from Afghanistan by 31 August, confounding key allies who wanted to try to get the deadline extended.
Reports are filtering in that the United States has started to take some of the 6,000 troops it has in Afghanistan out of the country, as it accelerates evacuations. The US president did not take any questions after his White House remarks, and did not mention this point. Moments earlier, the White House press secretary had declined to discuss it at the media briefing.
The European Unionhas announced it’s freezing a billion euros in development aid it has set aside for Afghanistan over the next seven years, as Brussels sought to use its financial leverage to secure assurances over the Taliban’s treatment of women and minority groups.
UK prime minister Boris Johnsonhas asked the Taliban to guarantee safe passage for British evacuations out of Afghanistan. Joe Biden later said that US evacuations depended on cooperation by the Taliban. The G7 nations held an emergency meeting earlier today.
Joe Biden has rejected the pleas of domestic and international allies to keep troops in Afghanistan for evacuation efforts beyond the end of the month, citing the growing threat of a terrorist attack.
Walking away. Joe Biden leaves the room at the White House after addressing the press and public, without taking questions, this afternoon. Photograph: REX/Shutterstock
In a move likely to fuel criticism that America is abandoning Afghan partners to the Taliban, the US president made clear that he is resolved to withdraw forces from Kabul airport by next Tuesday’s deadline, my colleague David Smith writes from Washington.
“We are currently on a pace to finish by August the 31st,” Biden said at the White House on Tuesday. “The sooner we can finish, the better. Each day of operations brings added risk to our troops.”
Biden’s domestic opponents – Republicans in Congress – have criticised his ambition and said this afternoon they though there was “no possible way” the US would be able to evacuate all those connected to the US who needed to come out, by the 31 August deadline.
And Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, said following the G7 meeting earlier: “Several leaders during the G7 meeting expressed concerns about this timing, August 31, and we have also had the opportunity to express our opinion on that.”
A 2020 deal struck by then president Donald Trump and the Taliban initially set a May deadline for US troops to fully withdrawn, after nearly 20 years of war there. Biden extended the deadline to 31 August but failed to anticipate how quickly the Afghan government and army would collapse.
Some US Democrats have also weighed in with doubts.
US Democratic congresswoman Mikie Sherrill, a member of the House armed service committee and former navy helicopter pilot, said after a classified briefing: “Make no mistake, this evacuation is an extremely dangerous mission and it’s set to get more dangerous in the coming days. I requested that the SecDef [the Secretary of Defence] and SecState [the US Secretary of State] encourage the President in the strongest possible terms to reconsider that deadline.”
As foreign governments, aid institutions and companies scramble to evacuate staff from Afghanistan, a crucial question is emerging: should they engage with the ruling Taliban or abandon years of investment in the country and 38 million Afghans?
The Taliban in the past week have pledged peaceful relations with other countries, women’s rights and independent media but some former diplomats and academics said the Islamist militant group, while more media and internet savvy than the Taliban of the 1990s, is just as brutal.
The Taliban barred women from work, girls from school and killed or disfigured dissenters in public, Reuters reports.
The news agency continues:
It also harbored al Qaeda, which plotted the Sept. 11, 2001, hijacked plane attacks on New York and Washington that prompted a U.S.-led invasion.
For foreign aid agencies the situation presents “a paradox,” said Robert Crews, a Stanford University history professor and author of the 2015 book “Afghan Modern: The History of a Global Nation.”
“If you are an aid worker at a state hospital, you are serving a regime whose legitimacy is in the balance,” he said. “But if everybody goes home, will the state collapse?”
Afghanistan’s government budget is 70% to 80% funded by international donors, including the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), said Michael McKinley, who served as ambassador to Afghanistan in 2015 and 2016.
This report from ABC News in the US discusses the heroin trade out of Afghanistan, produced from opium poppies that thrive there, now that the Taliban is in control.
Joe Biden’s address was over very quickly and revealed very little new, especially for an address that was eagerly awaited and was more than five hours later than it had been scheduled.
The US president left the Roosevelt Room in the west wing at the White House, close to the Oval Office, without taking questions from the assembled media.
He said he would now be consulting with US secretary of state Antony Blinken and would have some more information on evacuation numbers and plans tomorrow.
He reiterated what he told the G7 earlier today, that he has asked some of his senior leadership at the State Department and the Pentagon to draw up contingency plans in case the US is not able to complete its evacuation plans by the end of the month.
Evacuations of US citizens and Afghans who worked with the US have been accelerated, especially in the last 12 hours, he said.
The US president has turned to the issue of Afghanistan now. He’s praising allies in the Group of nations (G7), Nato and the European Union for solidarity of approach over Afghanistan – even though the US is strong-arming on its decision to pull out by the end of the month.
“We are currently on pace to finish by August 31. The sooner we can finish the better,” Biden said.
He said the continuing, accelerated, evacuation of Americans and Afghan aides who’ve worked with the US was dependent on the cooperation of the Taliban.
And he said “the longer we stay”, the greater the risk of hostilities from the Taliban and their mutual enemy, an Afghanistan-based branch of Isis, the Islamic State extremists.
Joe Biden has begun speaking at the White House but, surprisingly, he’s kicking off with remarks on his domestic agenda, after the House of Representatives passed some important budget legislation a little earlier.
The US president is expected to turn to the topic of Afghanistan imminently, after firmly telling G7 allies earlier today, at a virtual emergency meeting, that America intends to hold to the deadline of 31 August for pulling US troops out of the country.
The White House press secretary was asked earlier about the comments of former British prime minister Tony Blair at the weekend, where he slammed the “tragic, dangerous, unnecessary” hasty US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Jen Psaki, press sec, had a riposte.
Kevin Liptak(@Kevinliptakcnn)
Asked about Tony Blair’s Afghanistan criticism, Jen Psaki says “The President has been in touch directly with Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is the current leader of the UK.”
Biden may have been expected to have more in common with the former Labour leader than with the current Conservative prime minister, who cosied up to Donald Trump.
Blair published a long essay on his own website. He warned that the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan will see “every jihadist group round the world cheering”, as he said that there was now a moral obligation for western troops to stay until all those eligible are evacuated from Afghanistan.
As we await the repeatedly-delayed US president, it is interesting to wonder what contingency plans are being drawn up in case the 31 August deadline for US withdrawal is not met.
Joe Biden at the White House on Monday, with a portrait of George Washington visible behind him. Photograph: REX/Shutterstock
AFP news agency has a useful summary of where Joe Biden, the rest of the G7 and evacuations are up to right now, on their goals.
Biden told G7 leaders Tuesday the United States was “on pace” to complete its pullout from Afghanistan by August 31 but contingency plans were being drawn up in case the self-imposed deadline could not be met.
The White House said Biden also told Group of Seven leaders in a conference call that completing the US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan by the end of the month depends on “continued coordination” with the Taliban and access for evacuees to Kabul airport.
The United States has evacuated around 58,000 people, including more than 4,000 Americans, from Afghanistan since August 14, the day before the Taliban entered Kabul and took power, according to US officials.
Several thousand other people have been evacuated by allied European nations such as Germany and the United Kingdom.
The Taliban urged skilled Afghans not to flee the country on Tuesday and warned the United States and its NATO allies they would not accept an extension to the evacuation deadline.
A spokesman for the hardline Islamist group told America to stop taking “Afghan experts,” such as engineers and doctors, out of the country.
“This country needs their expertise. They should not be taken to other countries,” Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid told a press conference in the capital.
“They should not encourage the Afghan people to flee Afghanistan.”
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Biden had told G7 leaders the US mission in Kabul “will end based on the achievement of our objectives.”
“He confirmed we are currently on pace to finish by August 31,” Psaki told reporters.
“He also made clear that with each day of operations on the ground, we have added risk to our troops with increasing threats from ISIS-K,” she said, adding that “completion of the mission by August 31 depends on continued coordination with the Taliban, including continued access for evacuees to the airport.”
“The president has asked the Pentagon and the State Department for contingency plans to adjust the timeline should that become necessary,” the White House spokeswoman said.
European nations have said they would not be able to airlift all at-risk Afghans before the August 31 cut-off, and Biden has faced calls from all corners to extend the evacuation window.
– ‘It will not be enough’ –
Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, said the Islamist group opposes an extension. “They have planes, they have the airport, they should get their citizens and contractors out of here,” he said.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki has just finished briefing the media and now we wait for Joe Biden to address the public once again on Afghanistan.
White House press sec Jen Psaki moments ago. Photograph: Yuri Gripas/EPA
If you are in Afghanistan or have knowledge of what is happening there right now, or behind the scenes intel from discussions in Washington on the crisis – or if this blog has missed something vital in Afghanistan news – do tweet me, my handle is @JoannaWalters13.
Reports are filtering in that the United States has started to take some of the 6,000 troops it has in Afghanistan out of the country, as it accelerates evacuations of Americans and selected Afghans and gets closer to the day, 31 August, when it is due to pack up its presence entirely and exit the country.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki has just been briefing the press at the podium in the west wing and would not confirm whether US military are starting to pull out.
Lucas Tomlinson(@LucasFoxNews)
BREAKING: The U.S. military has started withdrawing from Afghanistan reducing troop presence: U.S. officials
An unnamed defence official just told the Washington Post that some troops not critical to the evacuation mission have been removed already.
The US had 2,500 military personnel left in the country until a couple of weeks ago then, as the Taliban quickly surged across the country taking control, the US sent additional troops until the number was meant to be 5,000.
Then that total was increased to 6,000 as Kabul fell to the Taliban on Sunday 15 August, the Afghan president fled, the Afghan military had crumbled and in about 11 days the takeover of the country by the extremist Islamist insurgency force that had been kept at bay for 20 years was complete.
Conflict News(@Conflicts)
BREAKING: The US has reportedly started withdrawing from Kabul Airport tonight.
It’s half past midnight in Kabul (that’s the time, not a metaphor). CNN is also now reporting that US troops are starting to pull out.
Joe Biden(@JoeBiden)
The United States stands by the commitment we’ve made to evacuate people—and this includes vulnerable Afghans, such as women leaders and journalists. pic.twitter.com/kfjfyKmBcM
Countries that have evacuated a total of around 58,700 people so far from Afghanistan over the past 10 days are at full tilt in trying to meet the 31 August deadline agreed earlier with the Taliban for the withdrawal of foreign forces.
“Every foreign force member is working at a war-footing pace to meet the deadline,” a Nato diplomat told Reuters.
Meanwhile the Taliban have warned the US not to take “Afghan experts” such as doctors and engineers out of the country.
“This country needs their expertise. They should not be taken to other countries,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told a press conference in the capital Kabul, AFP reports.
“They should not encourage the Afghan people to flee Afghanistan.”
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