jward
passin' thru
The National
@ScotNational
The Home Office admitted that callers to its emergency Afghan aid hotline had been redirected to a washing machine repair company
View: https://twitter.com/ScotNational/status/1430625276229087233?s=20
per FOX
breaking
State Dept issues order to not travel to airport
Gates have been closed
people at Gates have been told/made to leave
MR PRICE: Matt.
QUESTION: Thanks. Thanks, Mr. Secretary, for coming down and doing this. On your – two things really briefly. I’ll try to be as brief as possible. Two things. On your numbers of the American citizens, does that include green card holders, LPRs? And if it doesn’t or does —
SECRETARY BLINKEN: No, it does not. Let me clear, it does not.
QUESTION: Oh, it does not. Okay. Is there a way to get the number?
SECRETARY BLINKEN: These are blue passport holders.
QUESTION: Okay. But have LPRs also been contacted?
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Yep.
QUESTION: And what about SIV applicants, people who are eligible?
SECRETARY BLINKEN: We are in contact with —
QUESTION: So we can get numbers for those even if you don’t —
SECRETARY BLINKEN: — all of the different —
QUESTION: And then —
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Go ahead. I’m sorry, Matt.
QUESTION: It’s okay. I don’t expect you to have all of the numbers. But then since this whole thing began there’s been a lot of criticism of the administration over how it handled it, and there’s been a lot of pushback from people within the administration about the hand that you were basically dealt or what you say you were dealt by the previous administration in terms of the deal with the Taliban, in terms of the SIV program, in terms of the broader refugee program. But you guys have been in office for almost eight months. It’s been five months since the President’s decision was made. Is there anything about the shortcomings that have been so readily identified by all sorts of people that you guys are actually willing to take responsibility for yourselves?
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Thanks, Matt. Let me say two things. First, with regard to the numbers and these different categories, as you’ve seen by how I’ve laid out how we get to the numbers of Americans, this is both incredibly complicated and incredibly fluid. Any number I give you right now is likely to be out of date by the time we leave this briefing room. So what we’re doing is very carefully tabulating everything we have, cross-checking it, referencing it, using different databases. We will have numbers for all those different categories in the days ahead and after this initial phase of efforts to bring people out of Afghanistan ends.
And with regard to the second part of your question, about taking responsibility: I take responsibility, I know the President has said he takes responsibility, and I know all of my colleagues across government feel the same way. And I can tell you that there will be plenty of time to look back at the last six or seven months, to look back at the last 20 years, and to look to see what we might have done differently, what we might have done sooner, what we might have done more effectively. But I have to tell you that right now, my entire focus is on the mission at hand. And there’s going to be, as I said, plenty of time to do an accounting of this when we get through that mission.
MR PRICE: Lara.
QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Could you speak today about the future of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, whether it will remain or American diplomats will remain in Kabul after the military withdrawal on the 31st? And also more broadly, we’re already seeing women being repressed in Afghanistan by the Taliban, people being attacked, intimidated, being kept from getting to the airport. I’m wondering if you can give us any concrete examples of steps that the United States is going to take to assure SIV applicants and other high-value – or I’m sorry, high-target, high-risk Afghans, that they’re not going to be forgotten when the United States military leaves.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: With regard to our diplomatic engagement, we’re looking at a series of options, and I’m sure we’ll have more on that in the coming days and weeks, but we’re looking at a variety of options. And as I said earlier, particularly because the effort to bring out of Afghanistan those who want to leave does not end with the military evacuation plan on the 31st, we are very focused on what we need to do to facilitate the further departure of people who wish to leave Afghanistan, and that is primarily going to be a diplomatic effort, a consular effort, an international effort because other countries feel exactly the same way.
And I’m sorry, the second part of your question?
QUESTION: Just if there are any concrete steps —
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Oh, yes, I’m sorry.
QUESTION: — that you can give to people who are very worried right now, understandably, about whether they’re just going to be forgotten, left behind, disappeared once the United States withdraws its military and can no longer protect their safe passage to the airport or their other livelihoods.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: The short answer is no, they will not be forgotten. And as I said, we will use every diplomatic, economic assistance tool at our disposal working hand-in-hand with the international community, first and foremost to ensure that those who want to leave Afghanistan after the 31st are able to do so, as well as to deal with other issues that we need to be focused on, including counterterrorism and humanitarian assistance, and expectations of a future Afghan government.
I mentioned a few moments ago that we got 114 countries around the world to make clear to the Taliban the international expectation that people will continue to be able to leave the country after the military evacuation effort ends. And we certainly have points of incentive and points of leverage with a future Afghan government to help make sure that that happens. But I can tell you again – from my perspective, from the President’s perspective – this effort does not end on August 31st. It will continue for as long as it takes to help get people out of Afghanistan who wish to leave.
QUESTION: What’s your level of confidence today that the Taliban will actually abide by some of these requirements and expectations that the international community has put on it?
SECRETARY BLINKEN: I’m not going to put a percentage on it. I can just tell you again that the Taliban has made their own commitments. They’ve made them publicly. They’ve made them privately. And again, I think they have a very strong self-interest in acting with a modicum of responsibility going forward. But they will make their own determinations.
MR PRICE: Andrea.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Andrea.
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, thank you. But the Taliban right now, focusing on the mission right now, are not living up to their commitments. People are being stopped trying to get into the airport. I’m talking about women, SIVs, others – Afghans, people with papers – and they’re being stopped outside the airport now. There are total bottlenecks which seem to rise to the level of what the President said were the contingency – contingencies if the Taliban is not complying, if the flow can’t continue. We’re loading planes, but some planes are leaving without – and some people are people who have private planes waiting for them with landing rights but can’t get into the airport. As well as beyond the SIVs there are lawyers, there are judges, women lawyers, judges, educators – we’ve told them for 20 years you can live up to your potential, and now they feel abandoned.
And then finally, I’d like to ask you about the local hires. We evacuated our embassy, and there have been cables back that I know you must be familiar with or your teams are of people who feel completely betrayed. And these are thousands of people that we rely on in embassies all – embassies around the world. The message is going forward that we will not be loyal. They were not told about the evacuation. They were not put on those choppers with our American staff. And they were forced – many of them – to find their own way through the Taliban checkpoints and then get turned away at the airport, and some even got turned away once they were inside.
So what is the message to people working for the U.S. Government? Veterans’ groups are angry about the SIVs, and then there are all the millions of Afghan women who have told their daughters and been raised under this promise of a future which the Taliban are already, according to Ambassador Verveer today, is – are denying. There are horrifying examples from provinces and from inside Kabul of people being targeted door to door, people in safe houses being sought out. And all this promise of you will be safe – the Taliban spokesman said stay in your homes because we haven’t told all of our people how to treat women, how to respect women. They also say you can go to school, you can work, as long as you comply with Sharia law, which, under their interpretation, is the most extreme example of the Islamic code that is seen anywhere in the world.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Andrea, a few things. First, of the 82,000-plus people who so far have been evacuated, about 45, 46 percent have been women and children, and we’ve been intensely focused particularly on making sure that we can get women at risk out of harm’s way.
Second, with regard to women and other Afghans at risk going forward, we will use, I will use, every diplomatic, economic, political, and assistance tool at my disposal, working closely with allies and partners who feel very much the same way, to do everything possible to uphold their basic rights. And that’s going to be a relentless focus of our actions going forward.
Locally employed staff – along with American citizens, nothing is more important to me as Secretary of State than to do right by the people who have been working side-by-side with American diplomats in our embassy. And I can tell you, Andrea, that we are relentlessly focused on getting the locally employed staff out of Afghanistan and out of harm’s way. And let me leave it at that for now.
MR PRICE: Rosiland.
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, thank you. I wanted to ask a more fundamental question about the Taliban. Your spokesperson indicated in recent days that de facto the Taliban are in charge in Kabul, but there is no legal recognized government by the United States at this moment. And it kind of begs the question: Why does the United States even have to pay attention to what the Taliban wants? It’s an SDGT; it’s sanctioned by many organizations. It’s already losing access to Afghan government resources because of its past and current behavior. Why should the United States even care what the Taliban wants to be done at the airport or, frankly, anywhere else in the country since they are not, in the U.S.’s eyes, a legally recognized government? Thank you.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Thank you. Thank you. Our focus right now is on getting our citizens and getting other – our partners – Afghan partners, third-country partners who have been working in Afghanistan with us – out of the country and to safety. And for that purpose, first, the Taliban, whether we like it or not, is in control – largely in control of the country, certainly in control of the city of Kabul. And it’s been important to work with them to try to facilitate and ensure the departure of all those who want to leave, and that has actually been something that we’ve been focused on for – from the beginning of this operation, because as a practical matter it advances our interests.
Second, we’ve been engaged with the Taliban for some time diplomatically going back years in efforts, as you know, to try to advance a peaceful settlement of the conflict in Afghanistan. There’s still talks and conversations underway even now between the Taliban and former members of the Afghan government with regard, for example, to a transfer of power and some inclusivity in a future government. And I think it’s in our interest where possible to support those efforts.
Going forward, we will judge our engagement with any Taliban-led government in Afghanistan based on one simple proposition: our interests, and does it help us advance them or not. If engagement with the government can advance the enduring interests we will have in counterterrorism, the enduring interest we’ll have in trying to help the Afghan people who need humanitarian assistance, in the enduring interest we have in seeing that the rights of all Afghans, especially women and girls, are upheld, then we’ll do it.
But fundamentally, the nature of that engagement and the nature of any relationship depends entirely on the actions and conduct of the Taliban. If a future government upholds the basic rights of the Afghan people, if it makes good on its commitments to ensure that Afghanistan cannot be used as a launching pad for terrorist attacks directed against us and our allies and partners, and in the first instance, if it makes good on its commitments to allow people who want to leave Afghanistan to leave, that’s a government we can work with. If it doesn’t, we will make sure that we use every appropriate tool at our disposal to isolate that government, and as I said before, Afghanistan will be a pariah.
MR PRICE: Francesco.
QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. Secretary. What will happen on September 1st? Will the U.S. keep any diplomatic and/or any other kind of presence in Kabul at all, and who will run the airport? Is there any progress in the discussions with the Turks – who announced their withdrawal, their military withdrawal – with the Qataris, and with the Taliban on the airport?
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Thanks. There are very active efforts on the way – underway on the part of regional countries to see whether they can play a role in keeping the airport open once our military mission leaves or, as necessary, reopening it if it closes for some period of time. And that’s happening very actively right now. The Taliban have made clear that they have a strong interest in having a functioning airport. We and the rest of the international community certainly have a strong interest in that, primarily for the purpose of making sure that anyone who wants to leave can leave past the 31st using an airport. And so that’s a very active effort that’s underway as we speak. And again, with regard to our own potential presence going forward after the 31st, we’re looking at a number of options.
MR PRICE: Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Thank you all very much.
https://twitter.com/Rover829
Was this done on purpose?
In the void, law and order began to break down, with reports of armed gangs moving through the streets.
In a hastily arranged in-person meeting, senior U.S. military leaders in Doha — including McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command — spoke with Abdul Ghani Baradar, head of the Taliban’s political wing.
“We have a problem,” Baradar said, according to the U.S. official. “We have two options to deal with it: You [the United States military] take responsibility for securing Kabul or you have to allow us to do it.”
Throughout the day, Biden had remained resolute in his decision to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan. The collapse of the Afghan government hadn’t changed his mind.
McKenzie, aware of those orders, told Baradar that the U.S. mission was only to evacuate American citizens, Afghan allies and others at risk. The United States, he told Baradar, needed the airport to do that.
On the spot, an understanding was reached, according to two other U.S. officials: The United States could have the airport until Aug. 31. But the Taliban would control the city.
— John McCormack (@McCormackJohn) August 29, 2021
The result of this decision by President Biden & Gen. McKenzie is that Khalil Haqqani—an al Qaeda-linked terrorist with a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head—was placed in charge of security of Kabul. pic.twitter.com/4OKP2d5wWg
— John McCormack (@McCormackJohn) August 29, 2021
So, if we had taken control of the city, which we could have done, there would have been no Taliban checkpoints that have made access all but impossible. There would have been no beatings of Americans by the Taliban. No American passports would have been seized. We could have removed our citizens much more easily. Would it still have been chaotic due to the swarms of Afghan civilians trying to flee the Taliban? Probably—but perhaps processing them would have been smoother as well. Instead, we have terrorists handling security like TSA at Hamid Karzai Airport, which was rocked by a suicide bomber last week that killed at least 13 US service members, most of them Marines. The city would have been secured.?@washingtonpost? reports that Taliban offered to stay out of Kabul and let US forces secure the city. We told them we only needed the airport. We could have controlled the airport and Kabul and evacuated everyone but chose not to. The incompetence is stunning. pic.twitter.com/5MbW6K81n3
— Marc Thiessen (@marcthiessen) August 29, 2021