The last airlift came hours ahead of President Joe Biden’s Tuesday deadline for shutting down the operation. But while military forces have left, thousands of Americans and Afghans seeking to escape Taliban rule remain in the country, now under threat from ISIS-K - a recognized affiliate of the Islamic State terror group.
The updates for this blog have ended.
KEY MOMENTS
Taliban declares victory over America as forces take over Kabul airport Canada will welcome 5,000 Afghan refugees evacuated by the U. S. U. S. demilitarized equipment left behind at Kabul airport Amnesty International demands accountability for deadly drone strike U. S. will provide humanitarian aid directly to Afghan people
Defense Department Press Secretary John Kirby correct the “erroneous” report, saying that “photos circulating online were animals under the care of the Kabul Small Animal Rescue, not dogs under our care.”
“All efforts are made for those who remain and who would want to leave Afghanistan to benefit from an orderly and safe evacuation procedure, and this is at the heart of the negotiations we are holding within the UN,” Defense Ministry spokesman Herve Grandjean said during a news conference Tuesday.
Grandjean said those who remain in the country either “did not wish to leave Afghanistan, or they wished to do so in the last days of the operation and were not able to be evacuated in time.”
France will do “the maximum” in the coming days and weeks to help them get out of Afghanistan, Grandjean said.
“I’m confident their skills and dedication will continue to advance our consular work and diplomacy as a new chapter begins,” Blinken said in a tweet.
“We have defeated the Americans,” a Taliban soldier said, according to The Associated Press.
Hekmatullah Wasiq, a top Taliban official, told AP that “Afghanistan is finally free.”
“The military and civilian side [of the airport] are with us and in control. Hopefully, we will be announcing our Cabinet,” Wasiq said. “Everything is peaceful. Everything is safe.”
During a press conference Tuesday, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the group will “spare no effort to restore our national unity and to regain our social harmony, steering away from any form of hypocrisy or those who are trying to drive a wedge among our people.”
Mujahid added that since regaining their political independence, the Taliban is in “dire need” to restore the Afghan economy and economic independence, Al- Jazeera reported.
He added that the Taliban seeks “good relations” with the international community and would look to “amicably” resolve any issues.
READ MORE: “Taliban Guard Says They ‘Defeated the Americans’ as U.S. Leaves Kabul”
“It’s essential to keep the airport open, both to enable humanitarian aid to the Afghan people and also to make sure that we can continue to get people out — those who wished to, but were not able to be part of the military evacuation,” he told AFP news agency in an interview.
“We will not forget them,” he added.
Stoltenberg also said NATO allies will maintain diplomatic pressure on the Taliban to ensure remaining Afghans who worked with other countries can leave the country freely.
“We will continue to work with NATO allies, with other countries to help people to leave,” he said. “Taliban has clearly stated that people will be allowed to leave, we will judge Taliban not on what they say, but by what they do.”
“We will use our political, diplomatic, economic leverage to ensure that people are able to leave,” he added. “This is important because the NATO allies have been there for so many years.”
The evacuees were flown from Kabul to an undisclosed location in the Middle East before they arrived in Spain, a U.S. official told The Associated Press.
The first flight to Dulles airport in Virginia will take 350 Afghans on Tuesday, U.S. officials at the base said. Then, people will be relocated to different cities across the U.S., Rear Admiral Benjamin Reynolds, director of maritime headquarters at Rota, told AP.
There are 1,700 Afghans currently being held in Rota.
“We’re pulling out all the stops to help as many Afghans as possible who want to make their home in Canada,” Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino said. “Over the weekend, Canada and its allies received assurances from the Taliban that Afghan citizens with travel authorization from other countries would be safely allowed to leave Afghanistan.”
This resettlement effort is part of Canada’s second phase of operations that focuses on “welcoming Afghan refugees who have been forced to flee Afghanistan to another country,” according to a statement from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.
These refugees are part of Canada’s recently announced a program to accept 20,000 refugees, which include persecuted Afghan minorities, women human rights advocates, LGBTI individuals, and journalists, the statement said.
During the first phase of operations, Canada said it evacuated roughly 3,700 people from Afghanistan, “the majority of whom are refugees who supported Canada’s mission, and will soon begin new lives in this country,” the statement said.
Department of Defense Press Secretary John Kirby told MSNBC’s Morning Joe co-host Willie Geist Tuesday that there could still be hundreds of Americans left in Afghanistan.
“I don’t think there’s an exact figure, Willie,” Kirby said. “We believe we got the vast, vast majority of American citizens out, something to the tune of 6,000 of them. And we think it’s probably in the low hundreds that are still there. And there were also several hundred others that didn’t want to leave.”
READ MORE: “Pentagon Says There’s No ‘Exact Figure’ on Number of Americans Left in Afghanistan”
Hundreds of current and former students who were waiting for clearance at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport were told Sunday that there were no more evacuation flights out of Afghanistan.
“I regret to inform you that the high command at HKIA in the airport has announced there will be no more rescue flights,” the university administration told students in an email, according to The Times.
The email also sparked alarm because the group learned their names and passport information had been shared with the Taliban guarding airport checkpoints. The university’s president, Dr. Ian Bickford, told the newspaper that the university had only given the names to the U.S. military.
“They told us: We have given your names to the Taliban. We are all terrified, there is no evacuation, there is no getting out,” Hosay, a 24-year-old sophomore, added.
READ MORE: “‘Terrified’ American University Students in Kabul Feared U.S. Gave Names to Taliban”
“They can inspect all they want. They can look at them, they can walk around, but they can’t fly them. They can’t operate them. We made sure to demilitarize, to make unusable, all the gear that is at the airport — all the aircraft, all the ground vehicles,” Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby told CNN.
“The only thing that we left operable are a couple of fire trucks and forklifts so that the airport itself can remain more operational going forward,” he said.
Kirby added that the security threat in Afghanistan “remains high.”
“Obviously, we are concerned about the potential for Taliban retribution going forward,” he said. “We certainly are mindful of the threat ISIS-K continues to pose inside Afghanistan.”
“Travel to all areas of Afghanistan is unsafe. The Department of State assesses the risk of kidnapping or violence against U.S. citizens in Afghanistan is high,” the alert said.
The advisory also noted that the U.S. Embassy in Kabul suspended operations on Tuesday, but the U.S. government will “continue to assist U.S. citizens and their families in Afghanistan from Doha, Qatar.”
“Survivors awake today in Afghanistan with the unimaginable pain of having lost their loved ones with no accountability for those who have committed the airstrikes,” executive director Paul O’Brien said in a statement. “The United States has a responsibility to the families of those killed to name the dead, acknowledge its actions, investigate and provide reparations.”
O’Brien said the U.S. has carried out airstrikes for two decades without accountability to the public for how many civilians were killed by U.S. actions.
“It is unconscionable that the Biden administration continues airstrikes in this shroud of secrecy.”
Amnesty International USA is calling for a “credible and transparent investigation” into the airstrike and for the U.S. to follow international law moving forward.
O’Brien also wants the U.S. to “remedy” its actions by providing “compensation, restitution, and rehabilitation” for “decades of civilian casualties as a result of U.S. military operations.”
Going forward, National Security adviser Jake Sullivan said any aid to Afghanistan through the Taliban directly will be depend on the Taliban’s behavior.
“That will be about the Taliban’s actions,” he said. “It will be about whether they follow through on their commitments, their commitments to safe passage for Americans and Afghan allies, their commitment to not allow Afghanistan to be a base from which terrorists can attack the United States or any other country, their commitments with respect to upholding their international obligations.”
“It’s going to be up to them. And we will wait and see by their actions how we end up responding in terms of the economic and development assistance,” Sullivan added.
“We continue our mission to get them out, it’s just that it has shifted from a military mission to a diplomatic mission. And we have considerable leverage over the Taliban to ensure that any remaining American citizen will be able to get out,” Sullivan said during an appearance on “Good Morning America” Tuesday.
He said the 100 people who are left were contacted “repeatedly” during the evacuation operation.
Sullivan also dismissed criticism of Biden’s decision, saying it was made in the best interest of the U.S.
He noted that Biden got “unanimous recommendations” from the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, all of his civilian advisors, all of his commanders on the ground and all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “that the best way to protect our forces and the best way to help those Americans was to transition this mission at the end of the day.”
“Those who are criticizing are not are not the ones who have to sit in the Situation Room and make the hard calls about the threats that we face and the objectives we’re trying to obtain,” Sullivan said.
The arrival in Europe of well over a million migrants that year led to infighting among EU member states over how best to manage the influx, with a new wave of migrants from Afghanistan likely to exacerbate tensions.
The EU is likely to provide funding to house refugees in countries bordering Afghanistan to prevent them from heading for the continent.
He is likely to be quizzed about the chaotic evacuation operation at Kabul’s airport, which has resulted in thousands of Americans and Afghans being left behind and a successful terror attack by ISIS-K.
Wang added that China respects “Afghanistan’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity”, confirming that it would not be “intervening in Afghanistan’s internal affairs” and aims to foster friendly relations with Taliban leaders.
Taliban leaders were flanked by fighters from the group’s elite Badri unit as they walked across the tarmac. “Afghanistan is finally free,” Hekmatullah Wasiq, a top Taliban official, told reporters. “The military and civilian side (of the airport) are with us and in control. Hopefully, we will be announcing our Cabinet. Everything is peaceful. Everything is safe.”
Wasiq also urged people to return to work and reiterated the Taliban pledge offering a general amnesty. “People have to be patient,” he said. “Slowly we will get everything back to normal. It will take time.”
Several Taliban fighters were also wounded, as well as two of their own, Dashti claims.
The Taliban has not yet commented on the incident.
Taliban fighters surround Ahmad Massoud and his men in Panjshir province - the final bastion of resistance in the country.
READ MORE: Anti-Taliban Resistance Seeks Power-Sharing Deal to Limit Sharia Law in Afghanistan
He is shown boarding a C-17 cargo plane in an image released by U.S. Central Command.
The flight is understood to have been boarded and taken off without any issues.
Thousands remain stranded at Kabul’s airport desperately seeking a way out while under constant threat from another bombing by terror group ISIS-K.
Follow Newsweek’s liveblog throughout Tuesday for all the latest.
