The U.S. will increase the number of troops in Kubal and is aiming to carry 5,000 to 9,000 people out of Afghanistan a day, the Pentagon said in a press briefing Tuesday. Countries around the world continue to remove their citizens, diplomats and Afghan staff from Kabul and open their doors to accept Afghan refugees.
Meanwhile, Taliban leaders have granted an “amnesty” to former government workers and are inviting women to join a new administration, which is being negotiated round the clock. The Taliban held its first press conference, promising to pardon Afghans who worked for foreign governments and soldiers who fought for the former Afghan government.
The updates for this liveblog have ended.
KEY DEVELOPMENTS
Taliban says women will have rights, within the limits of Islamic law U. S. military has has “no hostile interactions” with the Taliban NATO Secretary-General blames Afghan government for country’s collapse The International Criminal Court is monitoring reports of human rights abuses in Afghanistan
Chargé d’Affaires Ross Wilson will remain in Afghanistan and “will continue to lead our diplomatic engagement.”
“The Department of State is working around the clock to facilitate the swift, safe evacuation of American citizens, special immigrant visa holders and other vulnerable Afghans,” Price said. “We remain committed to accelerating flights for SIVs and other vulnerable Afghans as quickly as possible.”
Price reiterated the State Department’s message for Americans in Afghanistan to shelter in place until they receive communication from the U.S. Embassy about when to arrive at the Kabul airport. He told Americans not to travel if they feel unsafe.
“I saw firsthand our defensive lay down and the work our forces are doing to efficiently operate the airfield while ensuring the safe movement of civilians and diplomats who are leaving Kabul,” he said in the statement.
He added that the airfield is “secure and now open to civilian air traffic.”
McKenzie met with Taliban leaders over the weekend, where he said he “cautioned them against interference in our evacuation and made it clear to them that any attack would be met with overwhelming force in the defense of our forces.”
According to ABC News, the State Department said those discussions are still ongoing.
“We deeply appreciate Uganda’s generous offer of assistance to host Afghanistan evacuees on a temporary basis,” the State Department spokesperson said. “We have not yet made a final determination of assistance requirements in Uganda.” They said that includes securing key legal protections for these Afghans in a final agreement.
Several other countries, including Qatar, Kuwait, Indonesia, Albania, Kosovo and Afghanistan’s Central Asian neighbors, have also offered to host refugees, according to the spokesperson.
“We have heard generous offers of support from a number of countries for assisting vulnerable Afghans,” the spokesperson said. “We deeply appreciate countries who have offered support with departures for Afghan and U.S. citizens.”
In a statement, Karim Khan said he echoes the views of the United Nationals Security Council over reports of humanitarian law violations by the Taliban, including revenge killings and the persecution of women and girls.
“I call on all parties to the hostilities to fully respect their obligations under international humanitarian law, including by ensuring the protection of civilians,” Khan said.
“We are engaging diplomatically at the same time with allies in regional countries and the United Nations to address the situation in Afghanistan,” he said during a press briefing Tuesday. “We’re in contact with the Taliban to ensure the safe passage of people to the airport.”
He added that the U.S. intends to continue its airlift operations “over the coming days before completing our draw down.”
Sullivan also said that President Joe Biden “is taking responsibility for every decision the United States government took with respect to Afghanistan because as [Biden] said, the buck stops with him.”
He added that the whole national security team, including himself, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the directors of intelligence agencies, “collectively take responsibility for every decision,” even those that don’t “produce perfect outcomes.”
“The priority is to ensure the evacuation — in the best conditions of security — of the European nationals still present in the country, and also of the Afghan citizens who worked with us for more than 20 years, if they want to leave the country,” Borrell said.
Borrell said the EU will make “every possible effort” to ensure the safety of those who have worked with the EU.
“The situation on the ground is very fluid and is becoming certainly more dangerous for the people who have been working and supporting our work,” he said.
“We cannot abandon them,” Borrell added. “We will do – we are doing – everything we can in order to bring them to and offer them shelter in the European Union’s member states.”
A Twitter spokesperson told Newsweek the company will “continue to proactively enforce our rules and review content that may violate Twitter rules, specifically policies against glorification of violence, platform manipulation and spam.”
Twitter has banned former President Trump from using its platform following the Capitol riot on January 8 and has suspended several other conservative leaders, including Representative Majorie Taylor Greene and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.
Representative Doug Lamborn sent a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey expressing concern that Taliban members like Zabihullah Mujahid are allowed on the platform, but not Trump.
He called it “clear” that the Taliban falls under the violent organization category and noted that spokespeople have been promoting messages of a peaceful takeover that runs contrary to media reports of violence against civilians.
READ MORE: “Twitter to Review Taliban Tweets for Violations Amid Backlash Over Trump Ban”
“Canada has no plans to recognize the Taliban as the Government of Afghanistan,” Trudeau told reporters. “They have taken over and replaced a duly elected democratic government by force.”
During a press briefing following a cabinet meeting with Prime Minister Imran Khan, Chaudhry stressed that Pakistan will not make any decision on recognizing the Taliban regime “in isolation” and that the decision will be a “multilateral one” made “in consultation” with regional and international powers.
“The youth who have grown up here, we do not want them to leave,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said. “They are our assets.”
“We want them to serve the homeland,” he added.
He also said there will be amnesty for former Afghan government soldiers who fought against the Taliban.
“We have pardoned everybody for the benefit of stability or peace in Afghanistan,” Mujahid says.
Mujahid said that the Taliban will not knock on doors asking Afghans “who they have been working for.”
“They are going to be safe,” he said. “Nobody is going to be interrogated or chased.”
“We will guarantee all their [women] rights within the limits of Islam,” he said in response to a question from an Al Jazeera correspondent.
“We are going to allow women to work and study within our frameworks,” Mujahid said. “Women are going to be very active within our society, within our framework.”
During an interview with Britain’s Sky News, Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen said the Taliban plans to uphold the Doha peace deal and are “committed to women’s rights to education and work.”
He said girls “can get education from primary to higher education.”
“That means university,” he said. “This is our policy and we are really working on this in all those areas falling to us in Afghanistan.”
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said no will be allowed to use Afghan territory for attacks against any nation.
“I would like to ensure I would like to assure the international community, including the United States, that nobody will be harmed,” he said.
“In Afghanistan, I would like to assure our neighbors, our original countries we are not going to allow our territory to be used against anybody or any country in the world,” Mujahid continued. “So the whole global community should be assured that we are committed to these pleasures that you will not be harmed.”
The Taliban also said it will ensure the safety of embassies, consulates and green zones in Kabul.
“We Afghans must prove that Afghanistan isn’t Vietnam and the Taliban aren’t even remotely like Vietcong,” Amrullah Saleh wrote on Twitter. “Unlike US/NATO we haven’t lost spirit and see enormous opportunities ahead.”
“Join the resistance,” he concluded.
In a tweet Sunday, Saleh said he “will never, ever and under no circumstances bow to Talib terrorists.”
“Our commanders in the operation have had communication with Taliban leaders,” Kirby said.
While Kirby would not provide further details of “how those discussions are progressing,” but said US military leaders are interacting with the Taliban “multiple times a day,” at the airport.
Kirby added that he will “let the results speak for themselves,” referring to the relative stability at the airport and the successful flights in and out of Kabul.
“We have had no hostile interactions, no attack and no threat by the Taliban,” he said. “We remain vigilant. We also have not experienced any additional security incidents at [Hamid Karzai International Airport airport]. We retain the security at HKIA that enables the safe, orderly evacuation of Americans and Afghans.”
Taylor added that the focus of the mission has not changed.
“I want to reinforce that we are focused on the present mission,” he said. “To facilitate the safe evacuation of US citizens, SIV’s [Special Immigrant Visa] and Afghans at risk, to get them out of Afghanistan as quickly and as safely as possible.”
Taylor said there were 2,500 troops on the ground yesterday and by the end of today, there will be more than 4,000 troops on the ground in Kabul.
He said Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport airport (HKIA) is secure and is open for military and limited commercial flight operations.
Taylor said that throughout the night nine C-17 aircraft arrived in Kabul delivering equipment and approximately 1,000 troops. He said that flights out of Kabul “lifted approximately 700 to 800 passengers and we can confirm 165 of these passengers are American citizens, the rest are a mix of SIV [Special Immigrant Visa] applicants and third-country nationals.”
He added that the U.S. is “looking at one aircraft per hour in and out of HKIA. It looks like 5,000 to 9,000 passengers departing per day.”
According to NATO’s senior civilian representative to Afghanistan Stefano Pontecorvo, the runway of the Kabul airport was “open” Tuesday.
“I see airplanes landing and taking off,” Pontecorvo tweeted.
In the video and photo he shared on Twitter, it seems that the tarmac is no longer overrun with crowds of civilians trying to rush onto planes.
“Situation under control,” he tweeted.
Stoltenberg said “the Afghan political leadership failed to stand up” and that “this failure of Afghan leadership led to the tragedy we are witnessing today.”
He also said he was surprised at how quickly Taliban forces took over.
“It was a surprise, the speed of the collapse and how quickly that happened,” he said.
Lavrov also noted “encouraging signals from the Taliban, who are declaring their desire to have a government with the participation of other political forces.”
He added that Russia supports “the beginning of an inclusive national dialogue with the involvement of all political and confessional forces in Afghanistan.”
“Our focus militarily is very squarely on the airport, making sure that we can keep it up and running, that we can maintain security and stability there,” Kirby told ABC’s “Good Morning America” Tueday.
He said that the U.S. military has moved more than 700 people out of Afghanistan in the last 24 hours.
“We plan on being on the ground there in Afghanistan for the next couple of weeks,” he said. “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 out as we can.”
Kirby said the U.S. will continue its efforts to evacuate and rehouse some 30,000 individuals from Afghanistan in the coming weeks.
Instead of trying to force people off the aircraft, “the crew made the decision to go,” a defense official told Defense One.
“Approximately 640 Afghan civilians disembarked the aircraft when it arrived at its destination,” the defense official said.
“The Taliban is sanctioned as a terrorist organization under US law and we have banned them from our services under our Dangerous Organisation policies. This means we remove accounts maintained by or on behalf of the Taliban and prohibit praise, support, and representation of them,” a Facebook spokesperson told the BBC.
Facebook said it has a “dedicated team of Afghanistan experts” who are native Dari and Pashto speakers and “have knowledge of local context” to help identify any emerging issues on Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp.
Facebook said it does not make decisions about the recognition of national governments but instead follows the “authority of the international community”.
“Regardless of who holds power, we will take the appropriate action against accounts and content that breaks our rules,” Facebook stated.
The Embassy released a statement Monday urging Americans in Afghanistan to shelter in place. The embassy asked Americans and their families to fill out Repatriation Assistance Requests and wait to be directly notified by the Embassy when a flight out of the country is available.
Attacks in the early 2010s stayed below 1,000 each year but as political and military tensions grew that number ballooned, resulting in 5,725 deaths in 2019 alone - or 16 every single day.
The botched nature of the withdrawal was able to unify Republicans against the policy, but now the party is stuck over whether it fundamentally supports the decision.
Opponents of a withdrawal have argued the president should have seen the disaster coming - but even those who celebrated the decision to pull out troops have slammed Biden for the way it was done.
Foreign policy has been such a contentious for the party’s leadership that it currently has no single position on it. The debate continues today before a unified position is agreed - if that is possible.
Pictures show an bustling atmosphere as traders and locals packed the city centre - but the situation remains far from normal.
U.N. human rights spokesperson Ruper Colville said:
It is unknown when and where the videos were taken.
The situation has been difficult for many veterans who served in Afghanistan, many of whose criticisms of the withdrawal have gone viral online.
The Duke of Sussex, who served in the British Army for 10 years - including two tours in Afghanistan - posted a message through the Invictus Games Foundation, alongside Chair Lord Allen of Kensington and CEO Dominic Reid.
Discussions appeared to focus on how a new government would respond to rights gained over the last 20 years, as well as bringing non-Taliban leaders into senior positions.
Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen earlier said the new government would be “inclusive” - including women and possibly other parties.
Previous figures, published just days ago, showed the number to be around 350,000, indicating the huge numbers who fled as the Taliban took control of capital city Kabul.
The agency yesterday called on countries to halt the forced return of Afghans to their home nation “in the wake of the rapid deterioration in the security and human rights situation in large parts of the country”.
He said the Taliban will not get any of the money previously earmarked for security.
“I don’t think we will condition the humanitarian relief we provide to ordinary Afghans on what the Taliban does,” he said in an interview.
Raab added that the British government is planning an “open-hearted” and “bespoke” asylum policy for Afghan citizens.
The UK was the third-largest financial supporter of the country for several years until 2021, when it was slashed by almost half following budget cuts, meaning that in reality a boost would only reverse some of the money reduced.
Enamullah Samangani, a member of the Taliban’s cultural commission, tried to play down the possibility of a return to ultraconservative Islamic rules, which included stonings, amputations, and public executions during their rule before the U.S-led invasion that followed the September 11 terror attacks.
“The Islamic Emirate doesn’t want women to be victims,” Samangani said, “they should be in government structure according to Shariah law.”
He added: “The structure of government is not fully clear, but based on experience, there should be a fully Islamic leadership and all sides should join.”
The country’s decision over recognition of a new government could have major implications for relations in the Middle East.
Many countries, which are wholly opposed to the terrorist group’s takeover, are holding crisis meetings to decide what to do next. Others, including China, are moving to forge closer ties.
Follow Newsweek’s liveblog throughout Tuesday for all the latest.
