The United States has the capacity to evacuate the approximately 300 U.S. citizens remaining in Afghanistan who want to leave before President Joe Biden’s Tuesday deadline.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. military flew more desperate evacuees out of the Afghan capital on Monday in the waning hours of a final American withdrawal as the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate claimed responsibility for targeting the Kabul airport with rockets. The U.S. military reported no American casualties.
iframe.twitter-tweet { width: 100% !important; } Secretary of State Antony Blinken later vowed that the Taliban would be held to that commitment to permit free movement of those with authorization from those nearly 100 countries: Sullivan said the U.S. does not currently plan to have an ongoing embassy presence after the final U.S. troop withdrawal. But he pledged the U.S. “will make sure there is safe passage for any American citizen, any legal permanent resident,” after Tuesday, as well as for “those Afghans who helped us.” But untold numbers of vulnerable Afghans, fearful of a return to the brutality of pre-2001 Taliban rule, are likely to be left behind.
According to the latest totals, about 114,000 people have been evacuated since Aug. 14, including approximately 2,900 on military and coalition flights during the 24 hours ending at 3 a.m. Sunday.“We didn’t have to be in this rush-rush circumstance with terrorists breathing down our neck,” said Sen. Mitt Romney, the Utah moderate who was the Republican Party’s 2012 presidential nominee.