Carrying his rifle down by his side, Major General Chris Donahue, commander of the storied 82nd Airborne Division, became the last U.S. soldier to board the final C-17 transport plane flight out of Afghanistan a minute before midnight on Monday.Taken with a night vision device, the ghostly green and black image of the general striding toward the aircraft waiting on the tarmac at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai Airport was released by the Pentagon hours after the United States ended its 20-year military presence in Afghanistan.As a moment in history, the image of Donahue’s departure could be cast alongside that of a Soviet general, who led an armored column across the Friendship Bridge to Uzbekistan, when the Red Army made its final exit from Afghanistan in 1989.Completing a military operation that with the help of allies succeeded in evacuating 123,000 civilians from Afghanistan, the last plane load of U.S. troops left under cover of the night.Though it is a still image, Donahue appears to be moving briskly, his face expressionless. He is wearing full combat gear, with night vision goggles atop his helmet, and rifle by his side. He had yet to leave Afghanistan behind and reach safety.In contrast, the images of General Boris Gromov, commander of Soviet Union’s 40th Army in Afghanistan, show him walking arm-in-arm with his son on the bridge across the Amu Darya river carrying a bouquet of red and white flowers.The U.S. and Soviet withdrawals from a country that has become known as a graveyard for empires were conducted in very different ways, but at least they avoided the calamitous defeat suffered by Britain in the First Anglo-Afghan war in 1842.The abiding image from that conflict is Elizabeth Thompson’s oil painting “Remnants of an Army” depicting a solitary exhausted rider, military assistant surgeon William Brydon, swaying back in the saddle of an even more exhausted horse in the retreat from Kabul.When Russia’s Red Army left, a pro-Moscow communist government was still in power and its army would fight on for three more years, whereas U.S.-backed Afghan government had already capitulated and Kabul had fallen to the Taliban a little over two weeks before the Aug. 31 deadline for U.S. troops to depart.Making an orderly exit, the last of Gromov’s 50,000 troops still suffered isolated attacks as they drove northwards to the Uzbek border, though they had paid mujahideen groups to secure safe passage along the way.Gromov’s column crossed the Friendship Bridge on Feb. 15, 1989, ending the Soviet Union’s 10-year war in Afghanistan, during which more than 14,450 Soviet military personnel were killed.Asked how he felt about returning to Soviet soil, Gromov is reported to have answered: “Joy, that we carried out our duty and came home. I did not look back.”  
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In the aftermath of the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, Russia is looking south with a wary eye to see how it can benefit from a situation fraught with both opportunity and risk.  VOA U.N. Correspondent Margaret Besheer reports.  
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U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday forcefully defended his decision to end the country’s two-decade war in Afghanistan that leaves Taliban insurgents in power, just as they were in 2001. “We no longer need to fight a war that should have ended long ago,” Biden said in a half-hour address from the White House. “I refuse to open another decade of war in Afghanistan.” He cited the high cost of the conflict to the United States — 2,461 service members killed, another 20,744 injured and $300 million a day in expenditures. But he said it is time to focus on new threats from around the world, whether from other terrorists in Africa and the Middle East, economic threats from China, or cyberattacks from inside Russia. WATCH: War in Afghanistan Is Now OverSorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 6 MB480p | 9 MB540p | 9 MB720p | 17 MB1080p | 41 MBOriginal | 64 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioThe Afghan conflict was initiated in late 2001 by former President George W. Bush, who invaded Afghanistan to overrun training grounds for al-Qaida terrorists who attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001, killing nearly 3,000 people. Biden said that after he took office in January, he faced the decision whether to honor the pact agreed to by former President Donald Trump to pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by last May, a deadline Biden ultimately extended by five months. “The choice was leaving or escalating this war,” Biden said. But he said Afghanistan can be monitored from outside its borders to “make sure it can never again be used” as a base for an attack on the U.S. WATCH: Afghan Security Forces ‘Did Not Hold on as Long as Anyone Expected’Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 4 MB480p | 6 MB540p | 6 MB720p | 11 MB1080p | 26 MBOriginal | 42 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioTwo Republican critics of Biden attacked his performance in ending the Afghan conflict. “President Biden’s unseemly victory lap was detached from reality,” Senator Ben Sasse said. “His callous indifference to the Americans he abandoned behind enemy lines is shameful.” Senator Kevin Cramer declared, “President Biden’s withdrawal was a complete failure. His actions are unfitting for the office he holds and are embarrassing our country on the world stage.” Biden said he takes responsibility for the chaotic, deadly end to the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, in which 13 service members were killed last week in a suicide bomb attack by an ISIS-Khorasan attacker. But Biden vowed again, “To those who wish America harm, we will hunt you down … and make you pay.” WATCH: ‘I was not extending a forever exit’Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 5 MB480p | 8 MB540p | 8 MB720p | 14 MB1080p | 35 MBOriginal | 57 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioThe U.S. says it has already killed an insurgent who planned the bombing. Biden acknowledged that 100 to 200 Americans who wanted to be evacuated from Kabul remain in Afghanistan, but he said 90% of Americans who wanted to leave had been evacuated on military flights over the last 17 days — about 5,500 people in all. He said the U.S. and other countries around the world would insist that the Taliban live up to its promise to allow the remaining Americans to leave if they want, along with Afghans who supported the U.S. war effort. “We’re far from done” in helping others be evacuated from Afghanistan, he said. For weeks, Biden and other members of his administration discussed the possibility of staying longer than his self-imposed August 31 deadline, balancing the challenges and benefits of a massive operation to evacuate more U.S. citizens and Afghan civilians against credible security threats. “It was the unanimous recommendation of the Joint Chiefs and of all of our commanders on the ground to end our airlift mission as planned,” Biden said Monday and reiterated in his White House address. “Their view was that ending our military mission was the best way to protect the lives of our troops and secure the prospects of civilian departures for those who want to leave Afghanistan in the weeks and months ahead.” 
 
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Until a couple of months ago, Zarifa Ghafari, 29, was the young, female reformist mayor of a conservative town outside Kabul, Afghanistan, an emblem of the gains Afghan women have made since the 2001 ouster of the Taliban.Today, Ghafari lives in exile in Germany, having left Kabul on a whirlwind evacuation flight less than two weeks after the Taliban swept back to power on August 15.But she said she has not left Afghanistan for good and remains just as determined as ever to advocate for Afghan women’s rights by creating a solidarity movement.“I hope to raise the unspoken voice of Afghan women throughout the world,” Ghafari said in an interview with VOA’s Afghanistan service.For better or for worse, she said, the Taliban are a “reality on the ground,” and she wants to engage with them.“The Taliban can never govern without the participation of women, who comprise more than half of the population,” she said. “So, I hope we can persuade them to accept the reality on the ground and accept women at their side. If they don’t do this, I can assure you they won’t be able to establish the kind of government they have in mind.”In 2018, Ghafari became the youngest mayor in Afghanistan when then-President Ashraf Ghani put her in charge of Maidan Shahr, a conservative town 46 kilometers southeast of Kabul. Opposition to her appointment was swift and severe.“When she showed up to start work, a male mob appeared, and she was forced to flee,” according to a State Department biography of Ghafari.“Despite death threats, Ms. Ghafari came back, defying her conservative critics and their narrative that a woman is unfit to lead,” the biography said.Her defiance of the Taliban won her international recognition.Zarifa Ghafari of Afghanistan speaks during the annual International Women of Courage (IWOC) Awards ceremony at the State Department in Washington on March 4, 2020.In 2019, the BBC put her on its list of 100 inspiring and influential women from around the world. And in 2020, she was a recipient of the U.S. State Department’s International Women of Courage Award.In June, with the Taliban closing in on her hometown, Ghafari was appointed as a senior official in the Ministry of Defense. While she survived several attempts on her life, her father was not so lucky. A colonel in the Afghan army, he was fatally shot outside his house in Kabul last year.In the interview with VOA’s Afghan service, Ghafari said she had no choice but to leave the country because she didn’t want her seven family members to meet her father’s fate at the hands of the Taliban.Before boarding her flight at the Kabul airport last week, she says she picked up some dirt — a piece of her country — and tied it up in her headscarf.“I’ve brought it with me, and I hope I can return it to my country very soon,” she said. “Leaving (Afghanistan) doesn’t mean I’ve left forever. I’m optimistic that I’ll return to my country very soon. “ 
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With the departure of international troops from Afghanistan, U.N. agencies pledge to remain in the beleaguered country and assist millions of people, many of whom are internally displaced. The Taliban now is in charge of the country but there is no centralized government in place.   U.N. agencies say that is problematic.  However, they note they have been talking with the Taliban and other groups for decades about accessing people in need.Spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Jens Laerke says he believes that experience will allow aid agencies to gain the necessary acceptance to carry out their life-saving operations.  “The armies have left but the U.N. is staying, and we are committed to stay.  And that is what we have said from the beginning, and that is what we are doing.  Just to remind you that we have already delivered humanitarian aid to some eight million people this year alone.  So, I think that is simply a number that demonstrates that we are there to stay.” The United Nations aims to assist 16 million people this year, including 3.5 million people forcibly uprooted from their homes by conflict.  However, it acknowledges that may not be possible as it has received only 39% of its $1.3 billion humanitarian appeal.  FILE – A child receives a measles vaccine at the Indira Gandhi Children Hospital, in Kabul, March 15, 2021. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)Aid agencies say they fear the tragedy that has been unfolding in Afghanistan will no longer be visible now that the airlifts out of Kabul have ended.    U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi warns a far greater humanitarian crisis is just beginning.  He is urging nations to keep their borders open to Afghans fleeing persecution and conflict and who need international protection. 
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European Union ministers will hold an emergency meeting Tuesday to discuss preventing uncontrolled migration from Afghanistan after the Taliban’s seizure of the country, according to a statement drafted for the meeting.EU member states hope to prevent a refugee crisis like the one fueled by Syria’s civil war in 2015. The EU was unprepared for the influx of more than a million refugees and migrants that created splits among members, while also energizing far-right parties, as camps in Greece, Italy and other countries became filled.A wave of migrants from Afghanistan is likely to escalate tensions among EU members. The draft says the member nations likely will fund the housing for refugees in countries bordering Afghanistan to prevent them from coming to Europe.In a letter sent to EU Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson before the meeting, Amnesty International said the 27-nation bloc “must refrain from extremely damaging responses that put emphasis on keeping the EU’s border ‘protected’ and proposing or adopting measures that shift the responsibility for the protection of refugees to third countries.”The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees warns that up to a half-million Afghans could flee their home country by the end of the year. The International Rescue Committee estimates 2.6 million Afghan refugees already are being hosted primarily by Iran and Pakistan.Thousands of others were evacuated before the U.S.-imposed August 31 deadline to  withdraw in a massive airlift conducted by military forces from Western nations.  
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U.S. President Joe Biden is set to address the nation Tuesday following the withdrawal of the last American troops from Afghanistan and the end of a two-decade war that leaves the Taliban in power.Biden said in a brief statement Monday that he would specifically speak about his decision not to extend the U.S. troop presence in Kabul beyond the August 31 deadline he set.For weeks, Biden and other members of his administration discussed the possibility of staying longer, balancing the challenges and benefits of a massive operation to evacuate U.S. citizens and Afghan civilians against credible security threats.“It was the unanimous recommendation of the Joint Chiefs and of all of our commanders on the ground to end our airlift mission as planned,” Biden said. “Their view was that ending our military mission was the best way to protect the lives of our troops and secure the prospects of civilian departures for those who want to leave Afghanistan in the weeks and months ahead.”“The Taliban has made commitments on safe passage and the world will hold them to their commitments,” he added.Biden’s decision to stick to the withdrawal deadline drew criticism from political opponents, and from some allies. The U.S. exit comes days before the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks that prompted the United States to send troops into Afghanistan to go after the al-Qaida terrorists who planned the attacks and the Taliban militants who harbored them.
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The Taliban celebrated Tuesday the departure of U.S.-led foreign forces from Afghanistan as “a lesson for other invader,” but sought good relations with the United States and the rest of the global community.  Speaking to reporters on the tarmac, the Taliban’s main spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, congratulated Afghanistan, saying the departure of U.S.-led forces was a victory “that belongs to us all.”   But he also appeared to offer a hint of how the Taliban would govern.Surrounded on the tarmac by a unit of the group’s elite Badri force, he admonished them to not treat Afghan citizens harshly.“Treat the Afghan population kindly and nicely,” he told them. “The public deserves this.” He also reminded them that they were the “servants” of the population and should not be heavy handed with their fellow countrymen.⁦@Zabehulah_M33⁩ at #Kabulairport Tue morning after the U.S. forces left. He addressed #Taliban’s elite Badri unit, telling them to treat the #Afghan population “kindly” and “nicely” because the public deserves it. “We are their servants,” he said #Afghanistanpic.twitter.com/rj5Ryg5V7g— Ayesha Tanzeem (@atanzeem) August 31, 2021The Taliban have promised to get the airport up and running for commercial flights as soon as possible. However, some of the airport infrastructure was damaged during the first few days of the Taliban takeover of Kabul, when thousands of Afghans, a in panic over the arrival of the militant group, massed around it and many managed to get inside and onto the tarmac.  Several Afghans died as they tried to hang onto the outside of an American C-17 military cargo plane or climb into the space provided for its wheels.The last U.S. troops left Afghanistan before the expiration of an August 31 deadline set by U.S. President Joe Biden.After Nearly 20 Years, Last US Troops Leave Kabul US commander admits ‘we did not get everybody out’ despite largest US airlift in American military history The head of U.S. Central Command General Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie said Monday the last U.S. aircraft took off in Kabul just before midnight local time, a minute ahead of the deadline.The United States and its coalition partners helped more than 123,000 civilians flee Afghanistan, though countless more were left behind.“The Taliban has made commitments on safe passage and the world will hold them to their commitments,” McKenzie said.VOA White House correspondents Patsy Widakuswara and Anita Powell contributed to this report.
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It’s August 31, the deadline imposed by President Joe Biden for U.S. forces to be out of Afghanistan. At least 122,000 people were evacuated by the U.S. military and coalition forces, 5,400 of them Americans. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb has the latest.Produced by: Bakhtiyar Zamanov   
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Kabul airport is without air traffic control services now that the U.S. military has withdrawn from Afghanistan, and U.S. civil aircraft are barred from operating over the country unless given prior authorization, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said on Monday. The FAA said in a statement that “due to both the lack of air traffic services and a functional civil aviation authority in Afghanistan, as well as ongoing security concerns, U.S. civil operators, pilots, and U.S.-registered civil aircraft are prohibited from operating at any altitude over much of Afghanistan.” Earlier this month, the U.S. military said it had assumed air traffic control responsibilities in Kabul to facilitate the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from Afghanistan. The FAA said U.S. civil operators “may continue to use one high-altitude jet route near the far eastern border for overflights. Any U.S. civil aircraft operator that wants to fly into/out of or over Afghanistan must receive prior authorization from the FAA.” On August 18, the FAA said U.S. air carriers and civilian pilots could fly into Kabul to conduct evacuation or relief flights with prior U.S. Defense Department approval. U.S. airlines helped transport thousands of evacuees this month but conducted flights from airports outside Afghanistan. 
 
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U.S. military planes have carried the last U.S. service members and diplomats from Kabul’s airport, ending America’s longest war. Ordinary Americans closely watched the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, as they did the start of the war nearly 20 years ago, in the weeks after the 9/11 attacks. But Americans often tended to forget about the Afghanistan war in between, and it received measurably less oversight from Congress than the Vietnam War did. But its death toll for Afghans and Americans and their NATO allies is in the many tens of thousands. And because the U.S. borrowed most of the money to pay for it, generations of Americans to come will be paying off its cost, in the trillions of dollars. A look at the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, by the numbers, as the last Americans deployed there departed. Much of the data below is from Linda Bilmes of Harvard University’s Kennedy School and from the Brown University Costs of War project. Because the United States between 2003 and 2011 fought the Afghanistan and Iraq wars simultaneously, and many American troops served tours in both wars, some figures as noted cover both post-9/11 U.S. wars. The longest war: Percentage of U.S. population born since the 2001 attacks plotted by al-Qaida leaders sheltering in Afghanistan: roughly 25. The human cost: American service members killed in Afghanistan: 2,461. U.S. contractors, through April: 3,846. Afghan national military and police, through April: 66,000. Other allied service members, including from other NATO member states, through April: 1,144. Afghan civilians, through April: 47,245. Taliban and other opposition fighters, through April: 51,191. Aid workers, through April: 444. Journalists, through April: 72. Afghanistan after nearly 20 years of U.S. occupation:Percentage drop in infant mortality rate since U.S., Afghan and other allied forces overthrew the Taliban government, which had sought to restrict women and girls to the home: about 50. Percentage of Afghan teenage girls able to read today: 37. Percentage of Afghans with access to electricity in 2005: 22. In 2019: 98. Days before the U.S. withdrawal that the Taliban retook control: 15. Oversight by Congress: Date Congress authorized U.S. forces to go after culprits in September 11, 2001, attacks: September 18, 2001. Number of times U.S. lawmakers have voted to declare war in Afghanistan: 0. Number of times lawmakers on Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee addressed costs of Vietnam War during that conflict: 42. Number of times lawmakers in same subcommittee have mentioned costs of Afghanistan and Iraq wars through midsummer 2021: 5. Number of times lawmakers on Senate Finance Committee have mentioned costs of Afghanistan and Iraq wars from September 11, 2001, through midsummer 2021: 1. Paying for war on credit, not in cash: Amount President Harry Truman temporarily raised top tax rates to pay for the Korean War: 92%. Amount President Lyndon Johnson temporarily raised top tax rates to pay for the Vietnam War: 77%. Amount President George W. Bush cut tax rates for the wealthiest, rather than raise them, at outset of Afghanistan and Iraq wars: at least 8%. Estimated amount of direct Afghanistan and Iraq war costs that the United States has financed through debt as of 2020: $2 trillion. Estimated interest costs by 2050: up to $6.5 trillion. The wars end; the costs don’t: Amount Bilmes estimates the United States will pay in health care, disability, burial and other costs for roughly 4 million Afghanistan and Iraq veterans: more than $2 trillion. Period those costs will peak: after 2048. 
 
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The U.N. Security Council told the Taliban on Monday it expects them to allow the safe passage of all Afghans and foreigners who want to leave the country.Of the council’s 15 members, Russia and China abstained on the draft resolution, written by the United States, Britain and France, while all other members supported it.The council noted the Taliban’s August 27 statement that it would not prevent Afghans who want to leave from doing so by land or air. The council said it “expects the Taliban will adhere to these and all other commitments, including regarding the safe, secure and orderly departure from Afghanistan of Afghans and all foreign nationals.”FILE – In this Aug. 16, 2021, file photo, hundreds of people gather near a U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane at the perimeter of the international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan.Chaotic images from the Kabul airport since the Taliban swept into the capital on August 15 show the desperation of many Afghans to flee the country. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the United States has facilitated the evacuation of 122,000 Americans, Afghans and other nationals since late July.“The Security Council expects the Taliban to live up to its commitment to facilitate safe passage for Afghans and foreign nationals who want to leave Afghanistan, whether it’s today, tomorrow or after August 31,” Thomas-Greenfield said.Some Afghans fear reprisals for working with the U.S. and NATO forces as interpreters and in other roles, while women and minorities are terrified of a return to the repression and human rights abuses of the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the Taliban first rose to power in the country.“We cannot airlift an entire country to safety,” the U.S. envoy told reporters after the vote. “This is the moment where diplomacy has to step up.”The Security Council also strongly condemned the “deplorable attacks” Thursday on the airport, which killed scores of Afghans and 13 U.S. military personnel. The blasts were claimed by the so-called Islamic State affiliate Khorasan, also known as ISIS-K.The council demands in its resolution that Afghanistan’s territory “not be used to threaten or attack any country or to shelter or train terrorists, or to plan or to finance terrorist acts.”Both the Taliban and ISIS-K are under sanctions as Security Council-designated terrorist groups.Russia said it abstained because its concerns were not taken into consideration. China expressed “huge doubts” about whether the resolution’s content was balanced.Both Moscow and Beijing have expressed a willingness to work with the Taliban.FILE – Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang speaks during a daily briefing in Beijing, Jan. 29, 2019.“We are ready to continue to develop good, neighborly and cooperative relations with Afghanistan and play a constructive role in the peaceful reconstruction of Afghanistan,” China’s deputy U.N. envoy Geng Shuang said.Council members also reaffirmed the importance of upholding human rights, especially of women, calling for their “full, equal and meaningful participation” in a negotiated political settlement.Several Western diplomats said they had heard the Taliban’s various assurances but would wait to see them put into practice.“The Taliban will be judged by the international community on the basis of their actions on the ground, not their words,” British Ambassador Barbara Woodward said.
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Najia Hashimzada worked with various U.S agencies in Afghanistan for women rights before applying for a Special Immigrant Visa. She says she left Afghanistan because she was on the Taliban’s hit list. She spoke with VOA’s Saqib Ul Islam about the situation in Afghanistan, the SIV process, her life in America and her expectations from the Taliban.   Camera:  Saqib Ul Islam    Produced by: Saqib Ul Islam 
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Afghanistan was already deeply mired in one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises before the Taliban swept into Kabul on August 15. Now aid organizations are scrambling to deal with thousands of newly displaced persons, growing needs, and an uncertain operating environment.“So everything at the moment in terms of how UNICEF works is up in the air,” said Samantha Mort, communications chief in Kabul for the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF).UNICEF, like most other U.N. agencies has been in Afghanistan since the 1960s and is staying and continuing to assist the population, but has relocated some of its international staff temporarily out of the country. Most U.N. Afghan staff have been told to work from home for now, while their agencies – which have dealt with the Taliban for years – figure out if and how they will be affected.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 10 MB480p | 14 MB540p | 19 MB720p | 39 MB1080p | 71 MBOriginal | 88 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioIn Afghanistan, Aid Agencies Adjust to New Environment“We have not yet had a meeting at the central level with the new de facto authority,” Mort explained of UNICEF’s discussions with the Taliban. “We are having dialogue at the regional and local level with local interlocutors. So we do not have a system in place yet.”“I think for many of us and our peer agencies it is important that we have a secure environment to operate,” said Ram Kishan, deputy regional director of Mercy Corps. “We want to have clarity on humanitarian access space.”Conflict, drought and COVID-19 have left up to 20 million people – half of whom are children — in need of humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan.The Taliban have indicated they want the U.N. to stay and continue helping the people.1/2Sher M. Abbas Stanikzai, Deputy Director, PO and his accompanying delegation met with David Beasley, Executive Director of WFP and his delegation in Doha. They discussed humanitarian issues and ongoing situation of Afghanistan including problems emerged as a result of drought— Suhail Shaheen. محمد سهیل شاهین (@suhailshaheen1) August 26, 2021Calls for unfettered accessBut humanitarians are emphatic that their core principles must be respected.“We are neutral, we are independent, and we must have unfettered access,” said Andrew Patterson, the World Food Program’s deputy country director for Afghanistan. “We cannot be controlled in the way we access, or we can’t operate.”With one in three Afghans coping with daily hunger and two million children malnourished, WFP was feeding four million people across the country each month. It is planning to scale that up to nine million by November.Aid agencies are used to working in difficult and dangerous conditions. But with high levels of insecurity and an uncertain political situation, the environment is becoming ever more complex.“Across Afghanistan, supplies are constrained and will need to be replenished,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters last week. “This will continue to be a challenge due to limited funding and, of course, the logistical challenges.”Supplies, funding running outWFP says its food supplies will run out next month, while the World Health Organization (WHO) said Friday their stocks would run out in a matter of days. That catastrophe was averted Monday, when the first of three planned flights carrying 12.5 metric tonnes of medicines and supplies arrived from WHO’s hub in Dubai, aboard a Pakistani-provided flight into Mazar-i-Sharif airport in northern Afghanistan.Kabul airport is a critical lifeline for the landlocked country, but due to the deadly terrorist attack on Thursday and questions about who will run it after the Americans depart, humanitarians are relying on other methods of bringing supplies in, primarily across land through four border crossings from Pakistan and Iran.First WHO Health Supplies Land in Taliban-Held Afghanistan A reliable humanitarian air bridge is urgently required to scale up the collective humanitarian effort, says WHO Bank closures and cash shortages are presenting another difficulty, both for aid agencies and the general population.“Food prices have gone up, the Afghan currency has really devaluated and that has also impacted inflation,” said Kishan of Mercy Corps. “So even those who had some means were not able to buy enough food for their family.”Winter starts setting in around October, and humanitarians are also extremely concerned about the situation of more than a half-million displaced people.“Our real concern is being able to get the food that’s required to our warehouses before access is cut off,” WFP’s Patterson said of the challenges of Afghanistan’s winters. “Otherwise those people are going to go hungry and we won’t be able to get to them.”While the U.N. and many aid agencies are continuing to deliver services, they face severe funding shortfalls – a U.N. appeal for $1.3 billion is only about 40% funded. They worry that donor funding will dry up to a Taliban-led government. They are also concerned that governments may tighten sanctions against the Taliban – which are a U.N. Security Council-designated terrorist group – and that could slow their work down as they seek humanitarian exemptions.“We would like it if development aid stops, please repurpose that funding for humanitarian assistance,” Patterson said. “Not one cent that goes for humanitarian assistance goes to the government, goes to the Taliban, goes to the military, goes to political actors.”He said keeping the aid flowing is the only way humanitarians will be able to stop mass famine from descending on Afghanistan.
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Less than six years ago, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated Afghanistan’s Parliament building in Kabul — a landmark symbol of the fledgling democracy that New Delhi hoped would become a hedge against its rival, Pakistan.But with the dramatic power shift after the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, India faces a strategic setback in a region where it confronts Pakistan and its other rival, China, along tense borders.Analysts say with Pakistan once again in a dominant position in Afghanistan and China seeking to boost its clout in the South Asian region, India could see testing times.“The changing equations in Afghanistan present a challenge for India,” Defense Minister Rajnath Singh said Sunday, addressing the Defense Services Staff Colleges.Key concernsOne of India’s key concerns is that Afghanistan will become a haven for militants from Pakistan and that the Taliban victory will embolden anti-India terror groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, which have been at the forefront of a three-decade-long violent separatist insurgency in Indian Kashmir.“There is no doubt that the Taliban victory in Afghanistan is going to have an inspirational effect on Islamist opposition everywhere, including Kashmir,” said Gautam Mukhopadhaya, the former Indian ambassador to Afghanistan. “India will have to be on guard not only in Kashmir but the rest of India, too, where an Islamist victory in the neighborhood could fire up fringe elements.”For India, the huge gains it made by building “soft power” in Afghanistan in the wake of the 2001 U.S. invasion of the country could be in jeopardy.New Delhi has invested $3 billion in development projects that included schools, roads, dams and hospitals in all of Afghanistan’s 34 districts in the last two decades.Afghans studying in India hold placards and stand outside the U.S. Embassy asking for help, in New Delhi, India, Aug. 28, 2021. The students say they aren’t able to receive funds from Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover of the country.India gave scholarships to thousands of Afghans to study in India and established close links with ousted Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani. India also helped organize trade routes to the landlocked country.“No matter how you slice it, New Delhi has been dealt a strategic blow. Not only will the Taliban be in control, but India’s rivals, Pakistan and China, will be poised to step up their role in Afghanistan,” said Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Wilson Center in Washington. “It’s a pretty major change for India. Once Afghanistan’s closest partner in South Asia, India may well not even have a formal relationship with Kabul.”Analysts say China could step in to fill the gap in providing much-needed economic assistance as it seeks to expand its influence deeper into Central Asia.Meanwhile, India has no option but to wait and watch and keep channels of communication open to the Taliban.Domestic media reports say the country opened a line to the group in June, but New Delhi has been criticized for doing it too late. India has evacuated its embassy in Kabul and is still trying to bring back citizens left behind.Much of India’s hopes on continuing to play a role in Afghanistan will depend on the policies that the Taliban, which have been projecting a moderate public face, put in place, analysts say.The Taliban, long an anti-India group, have made an outreach saying they would like New Delhi to continue its development work in Afghanistan. In a statement on the group’s social media platforms, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, deputy head of the Taliban’s office in Doha, said Sunday the group gives due importance to political, economic and trade ties with India and wants these to continue.Some analysts say such statements show that the “game is far from over.”“There are windows open, and let us see if they can be converted into doors,” South Asia expert Sukh Deo Muni said in New Delhi. “All is certainly not lost. Let us see what kind of Taliban regime emerges. I would not rush to this conclusion that India has lost. It’s a fluid situation.”Indian officials have made no comments, and New Delhi will remain cautious.“It is to be seen if Pakistan tries to prevent such overtures or sabotages them,” Mukhopadhaya pointed out. “Pakistan seems to want to bring in China to reinforce its control over Afghanistan by economic means.”How ties shape up between India and Afghanistan will hinge on the Taliban, experts say.“India can have leverage if the Taliban feels that a relationship with India is something worth pursuing,” according to Kugelman. “The Taliban may conclude it’s better off engaging commercially with countries it’s more comfortable with, like China, Pakistan and Turkey.”Skepticism on whether the Taliban will change runs deep in India, which has bitter memories of the group that in 1999 gave safe passage to Pakistan to the hijackers of an Indian Airlines plane that had landed in Kandahar. New Delhi also remains deeply wary of the Taliban’s close links to Pakistan’s military spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence.“It is hard for a leopard to change its spots. The true nature of the Taliban and its control by Pakistan will show up, especially down the rank and file,” said Mukhopadhaya.But as equations change in South Asia, where Beijing has long been challenging its predominant position, New Delhi has indicated it will continue to firm up strategic alliances with the United States and other countries that have been working together to counter a rising China.“We are changing our strategy, and the formation of Quad underlines this,” Defense Minister Singh said Sunday.The Quad is an informal grouping of India, the United States, Japan and Australia. 
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EU governments must push ahead with a European rapid reaction force to be better prepared for future crises such as in Afghanistan, the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said.In an interview published on Monday, Borrell told Italian paper Il Corriere della Sera the short-notice deployment of U.S. troops to Afghanistan as security deteriorated showed the EU needed to accelerate efforts to build a common defense policy.”We need to draw lessons from this experience … as Europeans we have not been able to send 6,000 soldiers around the Kabul airport to secure the area. The US has been, we haven’t,” he said.Borrell said the 27-member EU should have an “initial entry force” of 5,000 soldiers. “We need to be able to act quickly.”In May, 14 EU countries including Germany and France proposed such a force, possibly with ships and aircraft, to help democratic foreign governments needing urgent help.First discussed in 1999 in connection with the Kosovo war, a joint system of battlegroups of 1,500 personnel each was set up in 2007 to respond to crises, but they have not been used because EU governments disagreed on how and when to deploy them.Borrell said it was time to be flexible, citing agreements made quickly to cope with the financial crisis as an example of how the EU could overcome restrictions in the deployment of military operations laid down in its constitutional treaties.”We can work in many different ways,” he said.Britain, long a reluctant EU member, was instrumental in the creation of the battlegroups in the 2000s but did not approve deployment as domestic opposition grew to anything that might resemble the creation of an EU army. With Britain’s departure from the bloc, the EU executive hopes the idea can be revived.But obstacles remain, including the lack of a common defense culture among the various EU members and differences over which countries should be given priority for deployment.
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Many Afghans harbor a bitter sense of betrayal. Others lament being left behind by Western governments they worked with over the past two decades but say they have little time for recriminations now and are focused on how they can get out of Afghanistan.Some are drawing hope from the Taliban’s promise to Western governments that once the final evacuation flights depart Tuesday, they won’t block Afghans who have legal documents, including passports and visas, from leaving the country on commercial flights when they resume.  But will the Taliban keep its promise? FILE – In this Aug. 20, 2021, file photo, Pakistani army soldier stands guard while Afghan people enter into Pakistan through a border crossing point, in Chaman, Pakistan. Chaman is a key border crossing between Pakistan and Afghanistan. “There’s no safe way for us, whether it is to Pakistan or Iran” says Esin, a 22-year-old student. She is hiding, along with her mother and two sisters. A student, Esin worked as a volunteer for the U.S. government. “Most of the roads are in the hands of the Taliban and under their rule and it will be very dangerous,” she said.As the Afghan evacuation was unfolding, NGOs and Western officials were being inundated by pleas from Afghans to help get them out. An Afghan who provided services for U.S. NGOs wrote last week to the manager of one project: “I am especially worried about the unclear fate of my two young daughters. The Taliban has come to my home several times for questioning, and neighbors have filmed their arrival. At the moment, I am with my family in a secret location in Kabul. But I am not feeling secure and they can reach me anytime. Please, please help me and my family, our life is in your hands.”The manager responded, “I wish I had the authority to do more for you and your family.”The desperate appeals made in hurried phone calls and increasingly frantic emails from thousands of Afghans were harrowing for officials and NGO workers who received them. They scrambled to find them flights, to get them included on evacuation lists or to secure visas for them, aching often with guilt that people who’d worked for them for years were now possibly being left in harm’s way. “We have been burning up the phones, comparing notes, and trying to guide our staff to safety,” an NGO executive told VOA. He asked for his name to be withheld. His NGO managed to evacuate 300 people but has left more than 200 behind. Exploring all options 
  
Like Afghans wanting to flee, some Western NGOs are also exploring overland routes to Pakistan, Iran, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, most of which are officially closed, but all of which are being crossed illegally by Afghans desperate enough to entrust their lives to smugglers.   
“We have not yet seen mass cross-border movement,” says Kathryn Mahoney, the global spokesperson for the UN’s refugee agency, UNCHR. “The large-scale displacement is still inside Afghanistan, where 3.5 million people have been displaced from their homes,” she told VOA. She said the agency’s border monitors have, though, reported several thousand crossing the border into Pakistan. “And we know from the Iranian authorities that several thousands of people have recently arrived from Afghanistan,” Mahoney continued. Afghan activists in Pakistan say they reckon 10,000 Hazara Shia have managed to cross into Pakistan the past ten days. The Hazara faced violent persecution from the Taliban in the 1990s because of their ethnicity and Shi’ite Muslim adherence. Mahoney said the UNCHR has been “intensifying our calls, I would say over the last week, to neighboring countries asking for the borders to be kept open.” She continued: “I think what’s really important to remind everybody is that Iran and Pakistan have been hosting most refugees who left Afghanistan over the past four decades. So they are not new to this. But we can’t take that for granted.” FILE – Children of Afghan refugees play outside tents in Afghan Basti area on the outskirts of Lahore, Pakistan, June 19, 2021.While welcoming the airlifts as “acts of solidarity,” Mahoney says they have “only benefited a very tiny fraction of the millions of Afghans who have been displaced.”Western governments have already started negotiations with some neighboring countries to reopen their borders, including Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, Western officials say.In the meantime, some nonprofits are already assessing overland routes. “We have started a course of action development, to use a military term,” says Adam DeMarco, an American military veteran and spokesperson for Allied Airlift 21, a non-profit that has been helping with the evacuations. “There are some opportunities. And we are using what we have with open-source intelligence to scope out overland routes and to assess the security threats and the danger,” he told VOA in a phone call.DeMarco said routes to Pakistan could be among the most dangerous because either they go through Taliban heartlands or through the Afghan provinces of Konar and Nangahar, strongholds of the Islamic Stated affiliate, which claimed responsibility for last week’s suicide bombing at Kabul airport. “In a lot of the conversations we’re having, we’re not even taking them into consideration, really,” he added.The safest routes inside Afghanistan are likely to be those heading to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, he says, but then if anti-Taliban forces in the North led by Ahmad Massoud do mount an insurgency the “risk is that we might be sending people through the front lines of a civil war.” DeMarco says underground railroad type operations will be unsustainable in the long run unless they are being supported by Western governments and international organizations. The Tajikistan and Uzbekistan borders are currently closed to Afghans. Mohammad Zahir Agbar, Afghanistan’s ambassador in Dushanbe, told VOA he expects the Tajiks will start allowing Afghans to cross, if they get international support to handle the new refugees. “I do believe they are going to open the borders,” he said.   FILE – Border guards are seen at a checkpoint at the Uzbekistan-Afghanistan border in Ayritom, Uzbekistan, Aug. 15, 2021.Uzbekistan seems less inclined to do so and has been deterring Western organizations from setting up to run evacuation operations, according to Jake Simkin, a conflict photographer who left Afghanistan last week.Simkin says crossing the border into Uzbekistan is highly hazardous with Uzbek border guards ready to shoot. He has helped several U.S. nationals and residents enter Uzbekistan, but for Afghans it is almost impossible. “The Uzbeks have their army deployed to stop people,” he told VOA. “There is a wide river and some Afghans made rafts out of plastic bottles and tried to cross,” he says. They did not succeed.
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The White House said Monday operations “continue uninterrupted” at the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, after a rocket attack. Witnesses reported multiple rockets, with a U.S. official telling Reuters they were intercepted by a missile defense system. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement that President Joe Biden had been briefed on the attack and “reconfirmed his order that commanders redouble their efforts to prioritize doing whatever is necessary to protect our forces on the ground.” US Airstrike Hits Attacker Targeting Kabul Airport Earlier, US President Joe Biden warned that another attack on the airport was likely soon The United States is working to complete evacuations from Kabul ahead of a Tuesday deadline, and amid a worsening security situation that included a suicide attack outside the airport Thursday that killed at least 169 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members. The U.S. military is also investigating reports of civilian casualties after it conducted an airstrike Sunday that it said eliminated “an imminent ISIS-K (Islamic State Khorasan) threat to Hamad Karzai International airport.” “We would be deeply saddened by any potential loss of innocent life,” Captain Bill Urban, CENTCOM spokesperson, said in a statement Sunday night.  Urban said the results of the airstrike were still being assessed and that secondary explosions “may have caused additional casualties. It is unclear what may have happened, and we are investigating further.” According to reporting in The New York Times, the drone strike or the secondary explosions killed as many as nine civilians, among them children.   Dina Mohammadi said her extended family resided in the building and that several of them were killed, including children, according to the Associated Press. She was not immediately able to provide the names or ages of the deceased.  Karim, a district representative, said the strike ignited a fire that made it difficult to rescue people. “There was smoke everywhere and I took some children and women out,” he said.  Ahmaduddin, a neighbor, said he had collected the bodies of children after the strike, which set off more explosions inside the house, AP reported.   Airlift winds downThe evacuation has airlifted about 120,00 people out of Kabul since the end of July, according to the White House as of early Sunday morning.    “This is the most dangerous time in an already extraordinarily dangerous mission, these last couple of days,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ABC’s This Week on Sunday.    Republican U.S. Senator Ben Sasse, also on ABC, criticized the Biden administration’s evacuation operations.  “There is clearly no plan. There has been no plan. Their plan has basically been happy talk,” he said.     Blinken said in an interview on CNN that about 300 American citizens are seeking evacuation from Afghanistan.  VOA White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report, which includes information from The Associated Press and Reuters.Carla Babb, Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report.
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The United States conducted an airstrike Sunday against a vehicle that posed a threat to the Kabul airport, and the U.S. Central Command is now looking into reports of civilian casualties.“We are aware of reports of civilian casualties following our strike on a vehicle in Kabul,” Captain Bill Urban, CENTCOM spokesperson, said in a statement Sunday night.The U.S. is investigating and, “We would be deeply saddened by any potential loss of innocent life,” Urban said.Earlier Sunday the military said its forces struck a vehicle, “eliminating an imminent ISIS-K (Islamic State Khorasan) threat to Hamad Karzai International airport.”  US Airstrike Hits Attacker Targeting Kabul Airport Earlier, US President Joe Biden warned that another attack on the airport was likely soon In his statement Sunday night, Urban said the results of the airstrike are still being assessed and that the secondary explosions “may have caused additional casualties. It is unclear what may have happened, and we are investigating further.”According to reporting in The New York Times, the drone strike or the secondary explosions killed as many as nine civilians, among them children. Dina Mohammadi said her extended family resided in the building and that several of them were killed, including children, according to the Associated Press. She was not immediately able to provide the names or ages of the deceased.Karim, a district representative, said the strike ignited a fire that made it difficult to rescue people. “There was smoke everywhere and I took some children and women out,” he said.Ahmaduddin, a neighbor, said he had collected the bodies of children after the strike, which set off more explosions inside the house, AP reported.Airlift winds downThe evacuation has airlifted about 120,00 people out of Kabul since the end of July, according to the White House as of early Sunday morning, and it is facing a Tuesday deadline.“This is the most dangerous time in an already extraordinarily dangerous mission, these last couple of days,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ABC’s This Week on Sunday.  Republican U.S. Senator Ben Sasse, also on ABC, criticized the Biden administration’s evacuation operations.“There is clearly no plan. There has been no plan. Their plan has basically been happy talk,” he said. Blinken said in an interview on CNN that about 300 American citizens are seeking evacuation from Afghanistan.Ongoing threatsPentagon spokesperson John Kirby said at a briefing Saturday that threats against the airport “are still very real, they’re very dynamic, and we are monitoring them literally in real time. And, as I said yesterday, we are taking all the means necessary to make sure we remain focused on that threat stream and doing what we can for force protection.”The security threats have made the evacuation of Americans and some Afghans more difficult.“There doesn’t appear to be any concerted effort to get SIVs (Special Immigrant Visa holders) out at this point,” a State Department official told VOA from the airport. But the department is still trying to evacuate local embassy staff, U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents.US to Host Virtual Meeting of Foreign Ministers on AfghanistanThe United States will host the meeting of ‘key partners,’ the State Department said Sunday 
The U.S. evacuation of Afghans at the airport has wound down significantly, with most of the remaining 100 American civilian government staffers set to leave before midnight, according to a State Department official who spoke with VOA Saturday on the condition of anonymity.The airport terminals are mostly empty, said the official, who expressed mixed feelings about the operation.“I feel the frustration of the failure of the operation overall,” said the official, who described the decision-making process of getting Afghans evacuated as “chaotic” and “subjective.”
 
“But I’m extremely proud of the work of the guys on the ground, just the kind of bare-knuckled diplomacy of getting to know the Afghans, even though some of us didn’t know the language,” the official said. 
VOA White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report, which includes information from The Associated Press and Reuters.Carla Babb, Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report.
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Afghan American Haseeb Kamal had been married only one day when Kabul fell to Taliban control. His terrifying exit from Afghanistan meant leaving his new wife and most of his family behind. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti has his exclusive story for VOA.amera: Mike Burke
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The United States said in a joint statement with dozens of other countries Sunday that the Taliban will allow safe passage out of Afghanistan to all foreign nationals and Afghans with travel documents from another country.“We have received assurances from the Taliban that all foreign nationals and any Afghan citizen with travel authorization from our countries will be allowed to proceed in a safe and orderly manner to points of departure and travel outside the country,” the joint statement read.The statement, that included Britain, Canada and Turkey, said the signatories would continue providing the proper paperwork to Afghans who are designated by foreign nations for relocation.Thousands of people, including journalists, former government officials and civil society activists, have struggled to get on the last flights leaving the Afghan capital’s beleaguered international airport ahead of the deadline for the Western evacuation operation.Taliban Agreement to Let Afghans Leave Is ‘Positive,’ US SaysUS, allies will hold Taliban to their commitment, US envoy for Afghan peace says Domestic and foreign critics, however, remain skeptical about whether the Islamist group will deliver on its pledges.
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The United States conducted an airstrike Sunday against a vehicle that posed a threat to the Kabul airport, following U.S. warnings of an imminent attack in the area. “U.S. military forces conducted a self-defense unmanned over-the-horizon airstrike today on a vehicle in Kabul, eliminating an imminent ISIS-K [Islamic State Khorasan] threat to Hamad Karzai International airport,” said Capt. Bill Urban, CENTCOM spokesperson. “We are confident we successfully hit the target. Significant secondary explosions from the vehicle indicated the presence of a substantial amount of explosive material.” A broken window of a house is seen after US drone strike in Kabul, Aug. 29, 2021.Islamic State Khorasan had claimed responsibility for a suicide attack outside the airport that killed at least 170 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members last Thursday. A U.S. airstrike last Friday killed two members of the terror group. The U.S. Embassy in Kabul had urged U.S. citizens to leave the vicinity of the airport, citing a specific and credible threat. U.S. President Joe Biden Saturday said another attack was likely within the next 24- to 36 hours. Warnings of additional attacks come as the U.S. and its allies wind down an evacuation of their citizens and Afghans fleeing the Taliban. US Embassy in Kabul Issues Threat AlertEarlier Biden warned that another attack on the airport is likely soon“This is the most dangerous time in an already extraordinarily dangerous mission, these last couple of days,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.   Republican U.S. Senator Ben Sasse, also on ABC, criticized the Biden administration’s  evacuation plan. “There is clearly no plan. There has been no plan. Their plan has basically been happy talk,” he said. Sasse also said people have died and people are going to die “because President Biden decided to rely on happy talk instead of reality.” The White House says about 2,900 people were evacuated from Kabul in a 12-hour period that ended at 3 a.m. EDT Sunday. It says that since August 14, the U.S. has evacuated or helped evacuate more than 114,000 people. Blinken said in an interview on CNN that about 300 American citizens are seeking evacuation from Afghanistan. Separately, a U.S. airstrike Friday night against the Islamic State Afghan affiliate group — retaliation for Thursday’s attack — resulted in the deaths of two important members of the group, the U.S. Defense Department said Saturday. U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told Fox News Sunday that President Biden “will stop at nothing” to make the terror group pay for last week’s attack. Biden on Saturday said the airstrike was “not the last” and that the U.S. will “continue to hunt down any person involved in that heinous attack and make them pay.” 
 
Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid reportedly denounced the airstrike, saying it was a “clear attack on Afghan territory,” according to the Reuters news agency. He also reportedly said the Taliban expects to take full control of the airport when U.S. forces complete their pullout from the country, scheduled for Tuesday.  Ongoing threats Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said at a briefing Saturday that threats against the airport “are still very real, they’re very dynamic, and we are monitoring them literally in real time. And, as I said yesterday, we are taking all the means necessary to make sure we remain focused on that threat stream and doing what we can for force protection.”The security threats have made the evacuation of Americans and some Afghans more difficult. “There doesn’t appear to be any concerted effort to get SIVs [Special Immigrant Visa holders] out at this point,” a State Department official told VOA from the airport. But the department is still trying to evacuate local embassy staff, U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents. 
 
The U.S. evacuation of Afghans at the airport has wound down significantly, with most of the remaining 100 American civilian government staffers set to leave before midnight, according to a State Department official who spoke with VOA Saturday on the condition of anonymity. In this image provided by the U.S. Marine Corps, Marines with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit process evacuees as they go through the evacuation control center at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 28, 2021.The airport terminals are mostly empty, said the official, who expressed mixed feelings about the operation. “I feel the frustration of the failure of the operation overall,” said the official, who described the decision-making process of getting Afghans evacuated as “chaotic” and “subjective.” 
 
“But I’m extremely proud of the work of the guys on the ground, just the kind of bare-knuckled diplomacy of getting to know the Afghans, even though some of us didn’t know the language,” the official said.
 VOA White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report, which includes information from the Associated Press and Reuters.   
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The Taliban have widened a security cordon around Kabul airport, at American request, but the move means Afghans heading for the last evacuation flights encounter more checkpoints.  
Moreover, witnesses say the Taliban guards are becoming more aggressive, especially with women, as the clock ticks down to Tuesday, U.S. President Joe Biden’s deadline for the American airlift to end. Taliban fighters stand guard at a checkpoint near the gate of Hamid Karzai international Airport in Kabul, Aug. 28, 2021. 
“They don’t spare women,” a 20-year-old student told VOA in a phone call from Kabul, where she is in hiding, too fearful to make a second attempt to leave the country. “They won’t spare us just because we are women,” said Hamdiya, describing what she, her mother and younger sister endured at multiple Taliban checkpoints. 
 
“One Taliban held a gun to my head,” she said. “We were told we are infidels because we want to go to the United States,” she continued. “I said I wasn’t an infidel and he said he was going to shoot me,” she added. Hamdiya has worked for both the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and for a German nongovernmental organization. 
 
On Thursday she, her mother and sister made it to the airport just as a suicide bomber struck, leaving 13 U.S. service personnel dead and at least 170 Afghans.  “I was running and I accidentally tripped over a head, and it had no body. I can’t get rid of that image” she said.  
 
Her mother was injured in the bombing, which an affiliate of the Islamic State group has claimed as its attack. Hamdiya said she, her mother and sister are all too terrified to make another bid to reach the airport and she has been trying to find any Western assistance to help them navigate the Taliban checkpoints, to no avail. She said women not accompanied by male relatives are encountering special hostility from Taliban gunmen.  
 
“Sometimes I wish I were a man,” she said. “I am failing. It is very painful,” she added. 
 
The final opportunities to leave are likely slipping away from Hamdiya.   
 
The U.S. State Department Saturday urged American citizens and others to leave the vicinity of Kabul’s airport immediately due to fears of another terror attack. Taliban forces sealed the airport off Saturday to most Afghans hoping for evacuation, The Associated Press reported. US Embassy in Kabul Issues Threat AlertEarlier Biden warned that another attack on the airport is likely soonEven before then, other Afghans trying to reach the airport told VOA that Taliban guards often were only allowing a maximum of two members per family to cross checkpoints, now increasingly manned by uniformed Taliban fighters with Humvees and night-vision goggles seized from Afghan security forces. 
 
Afghans who have been at the airport painted a grim picture of Taliban fighters firing rounds into the air.The Taliban claim they have to disperse crowds, but several Afghans told VOA that they believed the episodic shooting was intimidatory and being done just to scare them. The Taliban also Saturday fired canisters of colored smoke around parts of the airport, adding to the confusion and mounting fear, Afghan civilians said.   
 
NATO’s European members have now ended their airlift, with some governments urging Afghans eligible for evacuation now to shelter in place.   Members of the British armed forces 16 Air Assault Brigade arrive at RAF Brize Norton base after being evacuated from Kabul, in Oxfordshire, Britain, Aug. 29, 2021. (Jonathan Brady/Pool via Reuters)Britain ended its evacuation mission Saturday with the final British troops and diplomatic staff arriving at RAF Brize Norton, a British air force base in southeastern England, Sunday morning, drawing to a close Britain’s 20-year deployment in Afghanistan.  
 
The two-week mission to rescue British nationals and Afghan allies was Britain’s largest evacuation mission since World War II. In all, Britain evacuated 15,000 people. In a video posted on Twitter Sunday British Prime Minister Boris Johnson praised the soldiers involved. On the end of military operations in Afghanistan. pic.twitter.com/sOeXjeYtIr— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) August 29, 2021“U.K. troops and officials have worked around the clock to a remorseless deadline in harrowing conditions,” he said.  
 
“They have expended all the patience and care and thought they possess to help people in fear for their lives,” he added, “They’ve seen at firsthand barbaric terrorist attacks on the queues of people they were trying to comfort, as well as on our American friends. They didn’t flinch. They kept calm. They got on with the job.”  
 
Johnson and his ministers, however, are coming under vitriolic criticism for the airlift, with claims that the British government was too slow to get the evacuation mounted in earnest. A former head of the British army, General Richard Dannatt, said the mission should have been started much earlier in the year. “We should have done better, we could have done better. It absolutely behooves us to find out why the government didn’t spark up faster,” he told The Times newspaper.  
 
Hundreds of Afghans have been heading to the country’s land borders but are being charged thousands of dollars by smugglers and drivers, according to Western NGOs.  FILE – In this Aug. 20, 2021, file photo, Pakistani army soldier stands guard while Afghan people enter into Pakistan through a border crossing point, in Chaman, Pakistan.The Tajikistan and Uzbekistan borders are currently officially closed. Making for the frontier with Pakistan is highly risky for Afghans who have worked with NATO forces or Western governments as to get to the border they must travel deep into Taliban heartlands. Moreover, most border smugglers are connected with the militant Islamist movement, say private security advisers exploring overland routes to get Afghans out of the country. Some information for this report came from The Associated Press. 
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A senior Taliban leader confirmed to VOA on condition of anonymity that the group is in the final stages of announcing a new Cabinet that was expected to include all members of its current Rahbari Shura, or leadership council.   Taliban supreme commander Hibatullah Akhundzada is holding the consultations in Kandahar, the city known as the birthplace of the Taliban, along with his deputies Sirajuddin Haqqani, the head of Haqqani network, and Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, son of Taliban founder Mullah Omar and the head of Taliban military commission.   “Currently, the Taliban leadership is consulting with different ethnic groups, political parties and within the Islamic Emirate about forming a government that has to be accepted both inside and outside Afghanistan and to be recognized,” Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, another senior Taliban leader said in a televised address Saturday.   FILE – Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid looks on as he addresses the first press conference in Kabul on Aug. 17, 2021.Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told VOA the process was “near completion.”   “The leadership has assigned deputy chief Sirajuddin Haqqani and the other deputy chief Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob to finalize names for the cabinet,” the senior Taliban leader said. The final approval of the names would come from Akhundzada himself.     He said the Cabinet could have more than 26 members and might include people other than leadership council members. The Rahbari Shura is the most important decision-making body for the Taliban and is headed by Akhundzada himself, who is called Ameer ul Momineen, or leader of the faithful.   While the Taliban claim the government will be inclusive, their spokesman said sharing power was not the group’s priority for now.     “There is no agreement with any political leader to induct him in the government,” Mujahid Said. “I want to make it clear that this is not our focus to share government with others.”   He said the group was seeking opinions of “known faces, ulema, former Mujahideen leaders” on the new system of governance.     The shura held its first formal meeting in Kabul after the takeover of the city in the Presidential Palace on August 21. Haqqani and Yaqoob jointly presided over it. Since then, shura members and other senior officials have been holding informal meetings almost daily.   “The shura has in principle decided that if the United States and other invaders complete their withdrawal by August 31, the Islamic Emirate [the Taliban name for their government] will announce the Cabinet,” the senior leader said.  “The Amir ul Momineen is of the opinion that if a government is announced in the presence of the American forces it will raise many questions.”   FILE – In this undated photo taken at an unknown location, the leader of the Taliban, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, poses for a portrait. (Afghan Islamic Press via AP)He said the shura has also floated the idea that the announcement of the Cabinet should come from Akhundzada himself in a nationally televised address.   “If Amir ul Momineen does not want to appear in public, he could nominate a confidant and senior leader to make the announcement,” he added.   The shura was also of the view that the cabinet should be announced in the first week of September and the name of the new Taliban government should be Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, but that decision required approval from Akhundzada.   The Taliban leader said they intended to keep the national army intact and include their own fighters into the institution. Decisions on the national flag and constitution were to be made by the new cabinet.   In their internal consultations, the Taliban were also discussing the possibility of making either Sirajuddin Haqqani or Mullah Yaqoob the “Raees ul Wazara,” a position equivalent to a prime minister.  During the Taliban’s last government in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, Mullah Mohammad Rabbani, held this post as the head of the ruling shura of ministers.   Shura members are also discussing the possibility that if Haqqani becomes prime minister, Yaqoob could be defense minister, since he currently heads the military commission of Taliban.   Other than the formation of government, the leader said internal discussions were heavily focused on security in the capital, Kabul.   A Taliban fighter stands guard at the site of the Aug. 26 suicide bombing, which killed scores of people including 13 US troops, at Kabul airport on Aug. 27, 2021.Two explosions, at least one of them a suicide bomber, outside Kabul’s airport last week killed at least 170 people including 13 American service members guarding the airport. The Islamic State Khorasan, the regional branch of IS, took responsibility for the attack.   Since the attack the Taliban have increased their security around the airport and set up checkpoints on roads leading to the airport.      Below is a list of members of Taliban’s Rahbari shura, expected to be included in their Cabinet when it is announced.    Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, head of the political office in Qatar’s capital Doha 
Sheikh Abdul Hakeem, head of the Taliban negotiation team in Doha 
Sher Abbas Stanekzai, deputy of the negotiation team in Doha Sadar Ibrahim, former chief of the military commission Abdul Qayyum Zakir, former chief of the military commission Mullah Fazil, former deputy defense minister Abdul Manan Akhund, brother of Taliban founder Mullah Omar Maulvi Noor Muhammad Saqib, former Taliban chief justice Amir Khan Muttaqi, former information minister Abdul Salam Hanafi, member of the Taliban negotiation team in Doha Qari Deen Muhammad, member of the Taliban negotiation team in Doha Lateef Mansoor, member of the Taliban negotiation team in Doha Sheikh Qasim, member of the Taliban negotiation team in Doha   Muhammad Zahid  Ahmadzai, former Taliban diplomat in Pakistan  Maulvi Abdul Kabeer, former governor, Nangarhar province Sheikh Abdul Hakim Sharee, an influential cleric Noorulah Noori, former Guantanamo Bay detainee Abdur Rahman Mullah Gul agha Ameer Haqqani Mullah Mohammad Hasan Sheihkh Sharif Faizullah Khan Taj Mir Hafiz Majeed 
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