Live updates Taliban declares amnesty for government officials as US says evacuations resume at Kabul airport

The Taliban announced a general amnesty for government officials and ordered its fighters to maintain discipline Tuesday, as an uneasy calm settled over the capital, Kabul, and some evacuation flights resumed at the airport.

The Taliban’s moves to assuage fears over its rapid ascent to power came just one day after thousands of Afghans swarmed the airport in Kabul in a desperate bid to flee the country, prompting U.S. forces to suspend operations.

On Tuesday, the United States and other nations said they had restarted military evacuation efforts for allied Afghans and other civilians. Media reports suggested, however, that access to the airport remained difficult for many residents seeking a way out.

Here are some significant developments

U.S. forces reopened Kabul airport for military flights late Monday, and the British foreign secretary said the security situation there had improved. The Pentagon expects roughly 3,500 American troops, including members of the 82nd Airborne, to be on the ground by Tuesday morning.

The U.S. and French ambassadors rejected reports they quit their posts. Erroneous reports had circulated on Twitter that acting U.S. ambassador Ross Wilson and France’s David Martinon had left Afghanistan, leading to denunciations of both men on social media.

President Biden blamed the Taliban’s takeover on the unwillingness of the Afghan military to fight the Islamist militant group and argued that remaining in the country for years longer would not have altered the result.

As tragic and fatal scenes unfolded at the airport, an eerie quiet descended elsewhere in the capital, where many huddled behind closed doors as Taliban militants patrolled the streets.

Biden authorized up to $500 million in aid to support the needs of refugees and others “at risk as a result of the situation in Afghanistan.”

NATO head blames Afghan leaders for political collapseLink copied

The head of the U. S-European NATO alliance blamed the leaders of Afghanistan for the government’s abrupt collapse in the face of the Taliban movement.

Speaking in Brussels, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg described the situation in the country as “extremely serious and unpredictable” and said he was “deeply saddened.”

“Ultimately, the Afghan political leadership failed to stand up to the Taliban and to achieve the peaceful solution that Afghans desperately wanted,” he said. “This failure of Afghan leadership led to the tragedy we are witnessing today.”

He said the military and political collapse in the country was unexpectedly “swift and sudden,” and called for a “clear eyed assessment” of NATO’s own role in training the security forces.

Stoltenberg’s comments came after President Biden himself defended the swift U.S. pullout from the country that precipitated the current collapse, saying that “what we could not provide [the Afghan forces] was the will to fight for their future.”

Stoltenberg added that the alliance was committed to evacuating its Afghan colleagues. Some 800 NATO civilian personnel remain in the country, working on air traffic control, and providing fuel and communications.

Lawmakers urge Biden administration to protect female Afghan leadersLink copied

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are urging the Biden administration to protect female Afghan leaders as the Taliban controls the country and the United States evacuates Americans and those who aided them from Afghanistan.

Biden spoke Monday on the decision to leave Afghanistan after nearly two challenging decades attempting to combat terrorism and build democracy following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Human rights organizations and activists across the political spectrum have expressed concern for the fate of women and girls as the Taliban regains power.

More than 40 senators led by Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), a senior member of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) asked Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to form a humanitarian parole category particularly for women who were activists, journalists, leaders, service women and more.

“We and our staff are receiving regular reports regarding the targeting, threatening, kidnapping, torturing, and assassinations of women for their work defending and promoting democracy, equality, higher education, and human rights,” the letter said. It asked the administration to be mindful of “those women who might fall through the cracks of the U.S. government’s response.”

“We greatly appreciate your efforts to help save the lives of Afghans who have advanced U.S. and Afghan joint interests over the last generation, standing for peace, democracy, and equality,” the lawmakers added. “We are all in agreement that we owe them our unqualified support.”

The lawmakers expressed support for the administration’s efforts to evacuate those applying for humanitarian parole and urged it to expand its processing capacity within U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

“Particularly for women who are currently targets â€" even hunted by Taliban fighters who are going house-to-house with their names â€" the path to protection and safety under the Priority 2 designation is not accessible,” the lawmakers wrote. “While we understand there is little processing capacity at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, for these women to access a third country for processing is almost or completely impossible with all borders crossings now closed or controlled by the Taliban.”

Airport open and flights resuming out of Afghanistan, White House saysLink copied

Kabul’s international airport is open, and flights have resumed to evacuate Americans and others who aided the United States in Afghanistan, a White House official said Tuesday.

More than 700 people, including 150 U.S. citizens, have departed in the last 24 hours, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely discuss the effort to evacuate hundreds of people after the rapid takeover by the Taliban and the collapse of the Afghan government.

Nearly 1,000 troops have been flown in, and the current number on the ground is about 3,500. The U.S. military is sending more on Tuesday and Wednesday. Meanwhile, the State Department has sent messages to some U.S. citizens telling them how to safely assemble at the airport for flights out.

After Afghanistan falls, the blame game beginsLink copied

As quickly as Kabul fell, the finger-pointing commenced.

“While President Joe Biden cowers at Camp David, the Taliban are humiliating America,” Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) wrote in National Review on Monday, amid scenes of desperate Afghans clinging to U.S. military aircraft as they barreled down the runway of the country’s main airport, part of a massive evacuation of American personnel.

“This administration was specifically told Afghan forces would surrender faster than our ability to exit,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) tweeted in response to comments from White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who told ABC News that “when push came to shove, [Afghan soldiers] decided not to step up and fight for their country.”

Rubio’s rejoinder: “What a bunch of crap.”

The recriminations were bipartisan.

While politicians took aim at various scapegoats â€" the military, the intelligence community, the White House, the Afghans â€" current and former officials, experts and veterans of America’s longest war said the past week’s events should have come as no surprise.

With Taliban in control, Afghanistan crisis adds volatility to China’s tense Xinjiang regionLink copied

A year into the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, a Chinese security scholar warned the country’s paramilitary officers about the Taliban’s reach close to home.

More than 400 “separatists” in China’s northwest Xinjiang region had been trained in light and heavy weapons and explosive devices in Taliban training camps, according to a paper by Wang Yaning, a lecturer at the Chinese Armed Police Force Academy, published in the school’s journal in 2002.

“The Taliban provides arms support for Xinjiang separatist forces,” she wrote.

These long-standing concerns are now at the forefront for China, as it adapts to the reality of Taliban rule in Afghanistan. The militants’ stunning rout of the Western-backed government in Kabul is likely to reignite debate in Beijing over its security policy in Xinjiang, a hot-button issue that has drawn sanctions from the United States and Europe.

After Taliban triumph, Biden faces even greater test in preventing extremist resurgence in Afghanistan Link copied

Even before the Taliban’s stunning takeover this week, American military and intelligence officials were racing to devise plans for containing extremist threats emanating from Afghanistan, a task they knew would be more difficult following completion of President Biden’s order to withdraw U.S. forces.

Now, as the militants commandeer Afghanistan’s security and intelligence institutions, the Biden administration faces a far steeper challenge in fulfilling the president’s pledge to prevent al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and other terrorist groups that have operated there from regaining strength and threatening the United States.

Current and former officials said the process for identifying and responding to terrorist plots has been upended as the Pentagon and the CIA â€" instead of planning for operations alongside an allied government and friendly spy agency in Kabul â€" are forced to contemplate an environment abruptly off-limits and under the control of a hostile regime.

Key updatePentagon spokesman pledges U.S. will meet ‘moral and sacred obligations’ to Afghans who provided assistanceLink copied

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby pledged Tuesday that the United States would meet its “moral and sacred obligations” to Afghans who aided the U.S. effort, citing plans for the military to remain on the ground there for a couple more weeks and house up to 22,000 refugees at U.S. bases.

“We plan on being on the ground there in Afghanistan for the next couple of weeks,” Kirby said during an appearance on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “It’s not just about moving out Americans. It is very much about meeting our moral and sacred obligations to those Afghans who helped us over the last 20 years, getting as many of them out as we can.”

During the interview, Kirby also acknowledged that intelligence about reconstitution of terrorist activities based in Afghanistan would “certainly be more difficult to discern going forward.”

But, he said, “it’s not going to be impossible.”

“We have done over-the-horizon counterterrorism operations in other parts of the world,” Kirby said. “We know how to do this. There’s not a scrap of the Earth that the United States military can’t hit.”

He declined to answer directly a question about whether Biden had overruled military leaders in deciding to withdraw U.S. troops.

“The commander in chief is the commander in chief,” Kirby said. “It’s not about overruling his military leaders or his other advisers. He is given options, he is given the pros and cons for each option, and then it is up to the commander in chief to decide. He was advised by the Defense Department. We have a seat at the table. We provided our advice and counsel. The president made his decision, and now we’re in execution mode. That’s the way it works.”

First German military plane lands in Kabul, rescuing just seven peopleLink copied

BERLIN â€" The German military said Tuesday that its first evacuation flight landed at Kabul airport overnight but managed to rescue only seven people.

The plane â€" an Airbus A400 M with the capacity to carry 37 tons of cargo â€" flew out those who had been identified by German authorities for protection “who were at the airport,” the German military said in a tweet. It said it also brought in German forces who could secure the area and get others to the airport.

Coming amid images of desperate Afghans clinging to planes flying out of the airport after the Taliban takeover of Kabul, the small number of evacuees drew criticism online. Twitter users compared it to dramatic images of a packed U.S. military plane carrying hundreds of Afghans, as the hashtag #SiebenMenschen, meaning “seven people,” trended.

But the German Foreign Ministry said the plane could not take passengers from the civilian part of the airport, “as partners responsible for security at the airport did not make it possible.” Germany plans to evacuate thousands of Afghans who have worked alongside its military and other agencies.

“We had a very chaotic, dangerous and complex situation at the airport,” German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer explained in an interview with ARD television, citing crowds at the airfield. “We had very little time; that is why we could only take people who were there.”

She said the “main mission” had been to deploy German soldiers who could help with evacuations. A second plane landed later on Tuesday.

The anguished scenes at the airport are shameful for Western nations, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Tuesday. “We are experiencing a human tragedy for which we share responsibility,” he said.

Afghan government collapse could exacerbate coronavirus crisis, WHO warnsLink copied

The World Health Organization warned Tuesday that the collapse of the Afghan government and shift to Taliban control could lead to a coronavirus surge and a slowdown in the already struggling vaccination campaign.

“As the situation in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate rapidly, WHO is extremely concerned over the unfolding safety and humanitarian needs in the country, including risk of disease outbreaks and rise in covid-19 transmission,” WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told a U.N. briefing.

Jasarevic said the WHO was committed to remaining in Afghanistan but that mobile health teams have been on hold in the capital, Kabul, for the past 24 hours due to the insecurity and the unpredictable situation. Chaos at Kabul airport was also slowing deliveries of medical supplies, he added.

‘No one saw this coming,’ Britain’s top diplomat says of Taliban takeoverLink copied

LONDON â€" British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who was widely criticized last week for vacationing as Afghanistan collapsed, said Tuesday that “no one saw” the Taliban takeover coming and that if authorities had seen it, action would have been taken.

Speaking to Sky News, Raab also attempted to defend his vacation.

“Everyone was caught off guard by the pace and scale of the Taliban takeover,” he told the broadcaster, adding that he had been “engaged” and responsive to the situation â€" despite being on vacation.

“Of course I wouldn’t have gone on holiday if I’d had known that would be the case,” he acknowledged during a grilling from journalist Kay Burley. President Biden was also on vacation at Camp David in Maryland as the situation unfolded.

On Tuesday, Raab confirmed that Britain was considering a “bespoke arrangement” for Afghan refugees, largely aimed at helping and relocating women and girls fleeing persecution.

Raab described Britain as a “big-hearted nation” and said that more details of a new resettlement program would soon be set out by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Home Secretary Priti Patel.

He made the comments a day after activist Malala Yousafzai, who was shot by the Pakistani Taliban as a teenager in 2012, appealed to governments worldwide to support those fleeing Afghanistan.

“Countries need to open their borders to Afghan refugees,” she told the BBC on Monday.

The world’s ‘moral obligation’ to Afghan refugeesLink copied

For more than four decades, Afghanistan generated one of the world’s largest populations of refugees. That was a consequence of almost ceaseless political instability and war â€" conflicts that, indeed, were exacerbated by the intervention of foreign powers. For a brief moment after the 2001 U.S. intervention and the ouster of the Taliban, the dynamic changed. Millions of Afghan refugees returned from neighboring Iran and Pakistan as part of a U.N.-organized repatriation plan. But then the country’s remaking under the watch of the United States got bumpy and the Taliban insurgency led to the steady takeover of large swaths of the country, making recent years some of the bloodiest on record for Afghan civilians.

Now, with the Taliban seemingly back in power in Kabul, a new exodus is building. Western diplomats, representatives of international organizations and even my colleagues in the news media are desperately trying to arrange for visas to evacuate tens of thousands of Afghans who assisted their work in the country and may now be vulnerable to Taliban retaliation.

Russia announces military exercises on Afghan border after Taliban takeoverLink copied

Russia’s military Tuesday announced a month-long military exercise in the mountains of Tajikistan, on Afghanistan’s border, in response to the Taliban’s rapid conquest of the country. Russia’s Central Military District said 1,000 Russian troops would take part in an exercise that involved confronting an invading enemy and deterring airstrikes.

The new exercise comes a week after Russia wrapped up military drills near the Afghan border with 2,500 Russian, Tajik and Uzbek forces. Russia’s largest military base abroad is in Tajikistan. Tajik authorities also announced plans for three days of anti-terrorism exercises this week with forces from China’s Ministry of Public Security.

Russia classifies the Taliban as a terrorist group and is wary about a leakage of Islamist extremism from Afghanistan. But Moscow, which has hosted Taliban officials for talks several times in recent years, said the Taliban appeared to be stabilizing the situation across Afghanistan and in Kabul.

“The Taliban have begun restoring public order and have confirmed security guarantees for local residents and foreign diplomatic missions,” the ministry said in a statement Monday. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov discussed the crisis Monday with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said Tuesday the Taliban takeover showed America’s foreign policy failures and called on Washington to do more to support the region. “Today we’re witnessing a collapse of American foreign policy,” Volodin said. “Despite the ongoing developments, we aren’t hearing statements from the U.S. Department of State as to what assistance they will provide to Afghanistan and the neighboring countries.”

He said it was difficult to think of any country that had benefited from U.S. intervention.

After Taliban takeover, Afghan network keeps female journalists at heart of its coverageLink copied

In the midst of the Taliban takeover of Kabul, the Afghan news network Tolo has kept female journalists front and center in its coverage â€" with one reporter interviewing a Taliban member on Tuesday.

“Our female presenter is interviewing a Taliban media team member live in our studio,” the broadcaster’s head of news, Miraqa Popal, tweeted, sharing footage of a female presenter at the network sitting opposite a Taliban media member.

The Taliban has long relegated women to a more limited role in the public sphere, and its last rule was brutal and repressive. In what may have been an attempt to calm fears, however, the group encouraged women to join its government and declared an “amnesty” across the country, the Associated Press reported.

With the collapse of the previous Afghan government comes widespread fear among women that their lives â€" and the progress made over the last 20 years â€" may change for the worse.

On social media, many reacted with shock and admiration for the presenter, who posed questions to Abdul Haq Hammad, a senior Taliban representative.

“TOLOnews and the Taliban making history again,” Saad Mohseni tweeted. “Unthinkable two decades ago when they were last in charge.”

On Tuesday, Tolo said it had resumed its Tuesday broadcast with female anchors.

Many on social media hailed the network for its decision.

“I do not see fear. I see power,” wrote one user on Twitter. “I see a woman who knows today she speaks for all women. She is to me â€" right now â€" the most beautiful woman in the world.”

“This is the picture of courage, commitment and determination,” tweeted another.

The network also shared footage of female journalist Hasiba Atakpal reporting on the situation in Kabul from the city’s streets â€" a move that many hailed as fearless in the face of uncertainty.

Bush urges Biden to ‘cut the red tape’ for refugeesLink copied

As President Biden fought off blame for the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, former president George W. Bush said his heart was heavy for both Afghans “who have suffered so much” and for U.S. and NATO personnel “who have sacrificed so much.”

Bush, who launched the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan in 2001 in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, urged Biden on Monday to “cut the red tape for refugees,” saying that “the Afghans now at greatest risk are the same ones who have been on the forefront of progress inside their nation.” He recently said the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan was a mistake.

A bipartisan group of senators also pressed the Biden administration Monday to take “swift, robust action” to protect and support Afghan female leaders facing “unparalleled danger” with the return to Taliban rule. In a letter, they cited reports of war crimes â€" including public beatings of women, sexual violence and forced marriage â€" in areas ruled by the Islamist insurgents.

The Taliban’s swift and complete recapture of Afghanistan has left many lamenting the emotional, financial and human toll of the war effort. A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post showed U.S. officials acknowledged that their warfighting strategies were fatally flawed and that Washington wasted enormous sums of money across multiple administrations trying to remake Afghanistan into a modern nation.

Bush on Monday praised U.S. forces, intelligence operatives and diplomats for their 20-year efforts. “You kept America safe from further terrorist attacks, provided two decades of security and opportunity for millions, and made America proud,” he said.

“In times like these, it can be hard to remain optimistic,” Bush said in the statement, jointly issued with his wife, Laura. “Like our country, Afghanistan is also made up of resilient, vibrant people. Nearly 65 percent of the population is under twenty-five years old. The choices they will make for opportunity, education, and liberty will also determine Afghanistan’s future.”

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