Afghans seeking refuge from the Taliban’s stunning takeover of their country are finding an uneven reception among their country’s northern neighbors, welcomed in some but turned back from others — or tolerated for only a few hours during refueling stops on the way to Europe or elsewhere. Several Central Asian countries were active participants in the U.S.-led campaign to drive the Taliban from power in Kabul 20 years ago, but aggressive diplomatic efforts by the Taliban in recent years have prompted some of those former Soviet republics to reassess their loyalties. And Russia, with its own political and security interests in the region, is also playing a role. Among the most welcoming to fleeing Afghans is Tajikistan, which is working with U.N. and other agencies to establish camps and other facilities in two provinces bordering Afghanistan to house up to 100,000 refugees.  At the same time, the Tajik government is bracing for an increased threat of terrorism spilling over from Afghanistan. Tajik President Emomali Rahmon has said that “terrorist organizations are strengthening their positions” along the Tajik-Afghan border. FILE – People disembark from a Lufthansa aircraft coming from Tashkent in Uzbekistan that landed at the airport in Frankfurt, Germany, Aug. 18, 2021. On board were about 130 people that were evacuated from Afghanistan.It is a very different story in next-door Uzbekistan, where the government says it has received assurances from the Taliban that Afghans returned to their homeland will not be punished. Already several hundred have been sent back since mid-August. Tashkent also insists that the border is secure and Foreign Ministry spokesperson Yusup Kabuljanov reports that its embassy in Kabul and its consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif are operating normally. Despite its hard line on refugees, Uzbekistan is facilitating evacuation flights bound for other countries. It is allowing the United States, Germany, Russia, Switzerland, Denmark, Poland, Slovakia and Kazakhstan to use its facilities and air space, granting landing and overflight rights while providing logistical services.   “There is a system with foreign partners to transit Uzbekistan as they evacuate their citizens and Afghans,” the ministry said.  Thousands, including Americans and Afghans, have transited Tashkent’s two airport terminals. The average stay is six hours, limited to the transit area. In some cases, Tashkent allows longer stays but evacuees cannot leave the airport. They are provided food, water, and medical care. Kyrgyzstan does not immediately border Afghanistan and so is less concerned about a direct influx of refugees, officials told VOA, but officials there worry that more could arrive if Tajikistan widens its opening. “Kyrgyzstan is party to the U.N. Convention on Refugees, so it has international responsibilities,” said Jipara Mambetova, head of the relevant agency. Officials say Bishkek will extend Afghan student visas and increase assistance to those studying and working in the country. Tajik President Emomali Rahmon, left, Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymuhamedov, 2nd left, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev (center), Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev (2nd right) and Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov attend a regional summit in Avaza, Turkemenistan, Aug. 6, 2021. (Photo courtesy of President.uz)  In Kazakhstan, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has called for ethnic Kazakhs living in Afghanistan to be able to return safely to his country. But, as Afghan citizens, they will be required to go through legal procedures.  Tokayev has also permitted the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) to temporarily relocate its staff to Kazakhstan to remotely coordinate their activities from there. The wary approach of several Central Asian republics stands in contrast to the region’s role in 2001, when Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan hosted American forces during the drive to oust the Taliban and others assisted in other ways. A major incentive at the time was the opportunity to crush extremist groups like the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which had found safe haven in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Much has changed since then, with Washington losing its Uzbek base in 2005 after harshly criticizing human rights abuses, and Kyrgyzstan canceling its partnership in 2014. Meanwhile the Taliban have engaged in active diplomacy, especially with Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.  Still, Washington’s decision to pull its troops out of Afghanistan was greeted with FILE – Russian President Vladimir Putin takes part in a virtual meeting with leaders of the Collective Security Treaty Organization to discuss the situation in Afghanistan, in Moscow, Russia, Aug. 23, 2021.On Monday, regional leaders agreed to integrate counterterrorism measures at a virtual meeting of the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Uzbekistan, although not a member, attended.   According to Russian media reports, the participants “expressed deep concern that [the Islamic State extremist group] maintains a strong presence in Afghanistan,” and President Vladimir Putin urged the participating nations to reject Afghan refugees.  “We don’t want militants coming in pretending to be refugees, or to see a repeat of the 1990s and 2000s,” FILE – Russian servicemen participate in joint military drills involving Russia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, at the Harb-Maidon training ground, located near the Tajik-Afghan border in the Khatlon region of Tajikistan, August 10, 2021.Ethnic affinities are also an issue for several of the Central Asian countries, with millions of Tajiks and Uzbeks especially having lived for generations in northern Afghanistan. In the case of Uzbekistan, it has long sought to maintain cultural and social-economic ties with the Afghan Uzbeks while taking care not to irritate the government in Kabul. Tashkent’s official position on these Uzbeks is no different than toward those elsewhere in Central Asia. Special Representative on Afghanistan Ismatilla Irgashev told VOA earlier this year that “Uzbeks in Afghanistan are citizens of that country, and it is the responsibility of their state to care for them.” Nevertheless, some Uzbek refugees are being permitted to remain in Uzbekistan even as others are sent back to Afghanistan, according to Uzbek scholar Farhod Tolipov. “Previously, Uzbekistan never accepted refugees. But Uzbekistan’s priority is still national security,” he said.   Nazir, who leads an initiative to help Afghan Uzbeks flee the Taliban, wants to see the Uzbek leadership do more. “The Taliban is already removing the Uzbek language from education. What happens to their identity and culture?” he asked. Nazir argues it would be a mistake for the region’s governments to give diplomatic recognition to the Taliban. “Recognizing them will only lead to trouble. Don’t trust them since they can’t keep promises. They are already hurting us by spreading their ideology. We validate them with diplomacy,” he said.   “Other Central Asian states are also oblivious to their psychological impact. Think of what the Taliban does to young minds. They are crushing fellow Uzbeks, but Tashkent treats them as legitimate. The Taliban, brutal as they are, will not remain in power long.”   Navbahor Imamova is a multimedia journalist with VOA’s Uzbek Service.
 
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With Afghanistan in the hands of the Taliban, which had banned young women from formal education, the country’s only girls boarding school is temporarily relocating to Rwanda for a “study abroad” session.Shabana Basij-Rasikh, the co-founding president of the School of Leadership, Afghanistan (SOLA), said in a social media post Tuesday that the private school’s nearly 250 students, faculty, staff and family members had left the capital city of Kabul as of last week. “SOLA is resettling, but our resettlement is not permanent,” she wrote in one of a series of Twitter posts. “A semester abroad is exactly what we’re planning. When circumstances on the ground permit, we hope to return home to Afghanistan.” Basij-Rasikh wrote that they are en route, by way of Qatar, to the central African nation, where they intend to study. The Rwandan Ministry of Education responded to Basij-Rasikh’s tweet, saying that it looked forward to welcoming the SOLA community to Rwanda. The central African nation is one of several countries that the U.S. State Department said had agreed to temporarily host evacuated Afghans. It is not yet known how many Afghans Rwanda will accept. On Friday, Basij-Rasikh posted a video showing her burning students’ records to protect their identities from the Taliban.Nearly 20 years later, as the founder of the only all-girls boarding school in Afghanistan, I’m burning my students’ records not to erase them, but to protect them and their families. 2/6 pic.twitter.com/JErbZCSPuC— Shabana Basij-Rasikh (@sbasijrasikh) August 20, 2021 
In Twitter posts Tuesday, the school official said her heart breaks for her country. “I’ve stood in Kabul, and I’ve seen the fear, and the anger, and the ferocious bravery of the Afghan people. I look at my students, and I see the faces of the millions of Afghan girls, just like them, who remain behind,” Basij-Rasikh wrote. “Those girls cannot leave, and you cannot look away. If there’s one thing I ask of the world, it is this: Do not avert your eyes from Afghanistan. Don’t let your attention wander as the weeks pass. See those girls, and in doing so you will hold those holding power over them to account.”
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With less than a week remaining before it pulls its last troops out of Afghanistan, the United States in the last 24 hours evacuated another 19,000 Americans and Afghans who want to leave their homeland, the Defense Department said Wednesday.Even so, officials said another 10,000 people have crammed into the international airport in Kabul hoping to escape the country controlled by Taliban insurgents.Kabul Evacuations Intensify as G-7 Leaders Fail to Shift US DeadlineUS allies say they cannot operate evacuation flights without US firepower, raising fears that many citizens and eligible Afghans may be left behindA total of 90 U.S. military and international flights flew from Kabul in the last day, one every 39 minutes during some periods. In all, about 88,000 people have been evacuated since the operation began a few weeks ago.The scene at Hamid Karzai International Airport remains tense and chaotic, but Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said it “will not be an American responsibility” to control airport security there after August 31, the date U.S. President Joe Biden set for ending U.S. military operations in Afghanistan. Officials said they know there “are a lot of desperate people who want to leave.”For Some Afghan Women, Evacuation Is a Matter of Life or Death Esin, like other female students, especially those who also worked with Western embassies, missions and NGOs in Kabul, as she did, is desperate to get out of AfghanistanThe Pentagon said that all Afghans who supported U.S. operations over the last two decades and secured visas to enter the U.S. and have reached the airport will be evacuated. That could leave many others behind, unable to reach the airport past Taliban checkpoints.The U.S. military said it plans to continue its evacuation effort from the airport until the Tuesday deadline if needed, but toward the end will prioritize the removal of U.S. troops and military equipment. Kirby said there are currently 5,400 U.S. troops at the Kabul airport.Pentagon officials urged U.S. lawmakers to not travel to Kabul to witness the evacuation after Representatives Seth Moulton, a Democrat, and Peter Meijer, a Republican — both of whom served military tours of duty in the Mideast — made an unannounced trip to the Afghan capital this week to assess the situation.US Congressmen Visit Kabul Airport Amid Evacuation Effort Officials said such trips could be a distraction for military and diplomats“We conducted this visit in secret, speaking about it only after our departure, to minimize the risk and disruption to the people on the ground, and because we were there to gather information, not to grandstand,” the lawmakers said in a joint statement. The lawmakers released their statement after flying out of Kabul on a chartered plane. They said that in their view, after seeing the situation firsthand and speaking to commanders on the ground, “we won’t get everyone out” before Biden’s Tuesday deadline. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a statement Tuesday saying travel to the region by members of the House of Representatives would divert resources from the evacuation operation. “Given the urgency of this situation, the desire of some (lawmakers) to travel to Afghanistan and the surrounding areas is understandable and reflective of the high priority that we place on the lives of those on the ground,” Pelosi said.“However, I write to reiterate that the Departments of Defense and State have requested that (lawmakers) not travel to Afghanistan and the region during this time of danger. Ensuring the safe and timely evacuation of individuals at risk requires the full focus and attention of the U.S. military and diplomatic teams on the ground in Afghanistan.” The Associated Press cited a senior U.S. official saying the Biden administration viewed the visit by Moulton and Meijer as unhelpful, and other officials said it was seen as a distraction to the troops who have been tasked with securing the airport to facilitate evacuation flights. South Korea announced Wednesday it planned to evacuate around 380 people who supported the country’s official activities in Afghanistan. Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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The World Food Program is urgently appealing for $200 million  to purchase and pre-position food for millions of Afghans before the winter snows cut off access roads to them. Sizzling summer temperatures of more than 30 degrees Celsius mask the hardships that lie ahead for the Afghan people during the bitterly cold winter season that soon will be upon them. Summer is the time of year when the World Food Program prepositions food stocks in warehouses and with communities across Afghanistan.  The food is then distributed to needy people before access to them is cut off by the brutal winter snows.WFP deputy regional director Anthea Webb warns of a humanitarian catastrophe this winter without international support for this emergency operation.“With funding levels tight and needs escalating, we risk running out of our core supply—wheat flour—come October,” said Webb. “We only have a few short weeks left to secure the necessary donor funding to get food in place before the mountain passes are blocked by snow.  Any further delay in our preparations could be deadly for the people of Afghanistan.”  
Once the snow sets in, Webb says it is too late to help communities that will be completely cut off from outside assistance. This hunger crisis comes on top of a wider humanitarian and human rights crisis triggered by the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops and the seizure of control of the country by Taliban insurgents.The United Nations reports some 18 million Afghans depend on international aid for survival.  Getting that aid into the country during this turbulent period is becoming increasingly difficult as commercial aircraft are unable to land at Kabul airport.Webb acknowledges the challenges this year are more complex.  She says a severe drought, conflict and the impact of COVID-19 are making it more difficult to make even the most basic preparations for winter.  “We know how to prevent a hunger emergency despite the current challenges,” said Webb. “Over the past tumultuous week, WFP reached 80,000 people across Afghanistan notwithstanding the difficulties. That is in addition to the more than five million people we have already helped since the beginning of the year.”   Webb notes WFP has worked in Afghanistan since 1963 including under the previous Taliban rule.  She says WFP has been able to bring 600 metric tons of food and 16 new trucks into Afghanistan this week alone.  She adds her agency is ready to scale up aid and ensure families have what they need to survive the harsh winter  if it receives the necessary funding.
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U.S. allies say they have no choice but to follow the American timetable and withdraw their troops from Afghanistan by August 31, despite fears that not everyone will get out in time.Several NATO allies are evacuating their citizens from Kabul airport, including eligible Afghans who worked alongside them and who are now desperate to flee. Britain, which holds the rotating presidency of the G-7 group of advanced economies, called an emergency virtual summit of the group Tuesday to discuss the crisis. Many G-7 leaders implored U.S. President Joe Biden to extend the August 31 deadline for the withdrawal of American troops. Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
In this image provided by the US Marine Corps, a Marine guides families during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 23, 2021.The Taliban also said it will not allow any extension of the August 31 deadline. Therefore, U.S. allies say they are left with no choice but to follow that timetable.British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said U.K. forces had already evacuated 9,000 people as of Tuesday. “We will go on right up until the last moment that we can. But you have heard what the president of the United States has had to say, you have heard what the Taliban have said. I think you have got to understand the context in which we’re doing this,” he told reporters after the summit. “We’re confident we can get thousands more out. But the situation at the airport is not getting any better, there are public order issues, it’s harrowing scenes for those who are trying to get out, and it’s tough for our military as well.”Johnson said G-7 leaders had agreed a common future approach. “We’ve got together, the leading Western powers, and agreed not just a joint approach to dealing with the evacuation, but also a road map for the way in which we’re going to engage with the Taliban, as it probably will be a Taliban government in Kabul.” Amid Fear, Criticism, Taliban Want International Recognition of ‘Representative’ RuleCritics cite reports of summary executions and restrictions on women in areas under Taliban controlThe G-7 has set conditions with safe passage for those who want to leave as the number one priority, Johnson told reporters. “Now, some of them will say that they don’t accept that and some of them, I hope, will see the sense of that because the G-7 has very considerable leverage, economic, diplomatic and political.”Several G-7 nations pledged for an increase in humanitarian aid and financial assistance for Afghanistan and its neighbors. In a press conference Tuesday, the European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the bloc has conditionally set aside $1.2 billion for Afghanistan for the coming seven years for development aid.“I and many others stressed that the future development assistance has to be condition-based. It always is condition-based, linked to fundamental values, human rights, of course, women’s rights,” von der Leyen said. “This aid ($1.2 billion) is now frozen. And it is frozen until we have solid guarantees and credible actions on the ground that the conditions are being met.” Can Taliban Turn From Insurgency to Governing?The Taliban may discover that retaking Afghanistan may prove an easier task than ruling itThere are European concerns over the longer-term consequences of the Western withdrawal. Charles Michel, the European Council President, said the EU would not allow another migrant crisis.“We will work with the countries in the region, especially Iran, Pakistan and Central Asia, to address the different needs. International protection will be needed for those facing persecution and for other vulnerable Afghans. And EU member states will contribute to this international effort,” Michel told reporters. “Let’s be clear, let us not allow the creation of a new market for smugglers and human traffickers. And we are determined to keep the migratory flows under control and the EU’s borders protected.”The focus of the U.S. and its allies currently remains on the difficult and dangerous days ahead, as the evacuations continue amid the chaos at Kabul airport. But analysts say the abruptness of the U.S. withdrawal has also tested transatlantic alliances.“In the short term, certainly this will continue to add some of the friction. There are bridges that continually need to be rebuilt in the post-Trump era,” Indiana University’s Bell said. “But I think in the long term this won’t do much to significantly damage our (U.S.) relationship with our with our allies.”Some information for this report came from the Associated Press.
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Here are the latest developments following the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan as of August 25.  * South Korea announced it will evacuate 380 people from Afghanistan. * U.S. President Joe Biden said the evacuation effort at the Kabul airport is on pace to finish by August 31. “The sooner we can finish, the better.  Each day of operations brings added risk to our troops,” he said.  The White House reported late Tuesday that more than 70,000 people have been evacuated since August 14.  Two members of the U.S. House of Representatives flew to Kabul on Tuesday for a previously unannounced visit. Lawmakers Seth Moulton and Peter Meijer said they wanted to examine the situation and pressure Biden to keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan longer. * The Taliban rejected any extension beyond Biden’s deadline for U.S. troops to withdraw from Afghanistan. A spokesman said the United States must stick to the date it set. 
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Two members of Congress flew unannounced into Kabul airport in the middle of the ongoing chaotic evacuation Tuesday, stunning State Department and U.S. military personnel who had to divert resources to provide security and information to the lawmakers, U.S. officials said. Representatives Seth Moulton, a Democrat, and Peter Meijer, a Republican, flew in and out on charter aircraft and were on the ground at the Kabul airport for several hours. That led officials to complain that they could be taking seats that would have otherwise gone to other Americans or Afghans fleeing the country, but the congressmen said in a joint statement that they made sure to leave on a flight with empty seats.  FILE – Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., speaks in Las Vegas, Aug. 3, 2019.”As Members of Congress, we have a duty to provide oversight on the executive branch,'” the two said in their statement. “We conducted this visit in secret, speaking about it only after our departure, to minimize the risk and disruption to the people on the ground, and because we were there to gather information, not to grandstand.” FILE – Peter Meijer, R-Mich., speaks in Grand Rapids, Mich., Oct. 14, 2020.Meijer, an Army veteran, served in Iraq and later did humanitarian aid-related work with a nongovernmental organization in Afghanistan, helping to deliver emergency assistance to aid workers after kidnappings and targeted killings. Moulton served in the Marine Corps in Iraq. Two officials familiar with the flight said that State Department, Defense Department and White House officials were furious about the incident because it was done without coordination with diplomats or military commanders directing the evacuation. The U.S. military found out about the visit as the legislators’ aircraft was inbound to Kabul, according to the officials. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing military operations. One senior U.S. official said the administration saw the lawmakers’ visit as manifestly unhelpful and other officials said the visit was viewed as a distraction for troops and commanders at the airport who are waging a race against time to evacuate thousands of Americans, at-risk Afghans and others as quickly as possible. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a statement Tuesday evening taking note of the desire of some legislators to visit Afghanistan and saying she was writing to “reiterate that the Departments of Defense and State have requested that Members not travel to Afghanistan and the region during this time of danger. Ensuring the safe and timely evacuation of individuals at risk requires the full focus and attention of the U.S. military and diplomatic teams on the ground in Afghanistan.” The Pentagon has repeatedly expressed concerns about security threats in Kabul, including by the Islamic State group. When members of Congress have routinely gone to war zones over the past two decades, their visits are typically long planned and coordinated with officials on the ground in order to ensure their safety. President Joe Biden on Tuesday said he is sticking to his August 31 deadline for completing the risky airlift as people flee Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.  The two congressmen said they went into their visit wanting “to push the president to extend the August 31st deadline. After talking with commanders on the ground and seeing the situation here, it is obvious that because we started the evacuation so late, that no matter what we do, we won’t get everyone out on time, even by September 11.” 
 
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When the Taliban gained control of most of Afghanistan in 1996, they enforced a strict version of Shariah, or Islamic law. Their interpretation of the Islamic system of governance barred women from working and permitted public executions.Now that the Taliban are once again in control of the country, Afghans fear the return of their brutal rule, which the Taliban says is derived from Shariah. In an exclusive interview Wednesday with Reuters, senior Taliban commander Waheedullah Hashimi explained that Afghanistan will not have a democratic system.”We will not discuss what type of political system should we apply in Afghanistan because it is clear. It is Sharia law and that is it,” he told the news agency.Here is a look at the Islamic legal system.  What is Shariah?  In Arabic, Shariah means “a path to water,” or some say, “a path to be followed.”  Shariah is the legal practice derived from the teachings of the Quran, Islam’s holy book, and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, or Sunnah. It serves as an ordained code for fair, moral and righteous living for Muslims and provides guidance on a variety of aspects of life. How is Shariah practiced?  Countries that employ Shariah have varying levels of the practice incorporated into their legal systems. Some nations use Shariah as their national law, but most countries have mixed legal systems that combine traditional Islamic jurisprudence and a constitution.  In its 2004 constitution, elements of Shariah were integrated into Afghanistan’s government. When the Taliban controlled the country from 1996 to 2001, they imposed an extreme version of the law that included brutal punishments such as stonings and dismemberment — actions that were condemned by human rights groups around the world. Like the Christian faith, Islam has multiple sects, such as Sunni and Shi’ite, which divide further into sub-sects. There are differences in how each sect interprets Shariah or Islamic jurisprudence.  Do Muslims support Shariah? Some surveys suggest that support for this style of discipline varies greatly in Muslim countries. Tariq Ramadan, a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford University, has suggested a moratorium on corporal punishment in Islamic nations that follow strict Shariah. How will women be treated now in Afghanistan under the Taliban? In 1996, the Taliban were particularly restrictive toward Afghan women, who were primarily confined to their homes and unable to leave their residences without a male chaperone and were subjected to public beatings if they disobeyed.        The Taliban recently said they would be more moderate with respect to women’s rights. According to the BBC, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid stated that women will be allowed to participate in society if they live according to Shariah, and “we will be happy, and they will be happy.”  
 
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Mohammad Daoud Sultanzoy is the mayor of Kabul, Afghanistan’s sprawling capital city. And while the Taliban have kept him in office, he has a word of caution for the militant group.Sultanzoy said in a Monday interview with VOA’s Afghanistan Service: “If the Taliban don’t pay heed to people’s aspirations, they, too, will be seen” as one of the groups that promoted religious, ethnic and regional interests. “And their reputation will be damaged.”A prominent politician with no ties to the Taliban, Sultanzoy was among a handful of senior officials who were allowed to keep their jobs after Taliban took charge in Kabul on August 15, capping their swift takeover of the country. Most other leaders quit or fled the country.A Taliban fighter stands guard at a checkpoint in the Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood in the city of Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 22, 2021.Sultanzoy said the Taliban had called him the day after entering the capital, a city of nearly 5 million residents, and asked him to continue to do his job.”So I went to work,” he said. “Until I’m told otherwise, I’ll continue to work. This is my country. I don’t work for any individual or group. I serve my city’s residents. I’m from Kabul, and I’ll live in Kabul.”A commercial pilot by training, Sultanzoy served as a member of the Afghan parliament from 2005 to 2010 and unsuccessfully ran for president in 2014. Ashraf Ghani, the winner of the 2014 election, later appointed Sultanzoy as a top adviser before putting him in charge of the capital city in March 2020.Like many other erstwhile Ghani allies, Sultanzoy criticized the former president for fleeing the country without informing members of his own government.”As members of the Cabinet, we should have been informed,” Sultanzoy said. “At least we should have had a meeting.”FILE PHOTO: Afghan President Ashraf Ghani makes an address about the latest developments in the country from exile in United Arab Emirates, in this screen grab obtained from a social media video on Aug. 18, 2021.In an August 18 video message from the United Arab Emirates, where he is now living, Ghani defended his decision, saying he was “forced to leave” Afghanistan to avoid bloodshed.As much of the world fixates on the evacuation of thousands of Americans and Afghans from Kabul, and as Afghanistan still lacks a new national government, city officials have continued to provide basic services, Sultanzoy said.”Just today and yesterday, we started removing (street and sidewalk) barriers,” he said. “Once security is restored, all these barriers should be removed.”Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid looks on as he addresses the first press conference in Kabul on Aug. 17, 2021 following the Taliban stunning takeover of Afghanistan.Speaking at a press conference in Kabul on Tuesday, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the municipality has also resumed trash collection.There are problems, however. Taking advantage of the security vacuum, some city residents have recently started building illegal housing at night, Sultanzoy said.While the Taliban have yet to form a new government, they’ve started hiring new police officers to replace the thousands that quit their jobs after the militants captured the city, he said. And Mujahid said the former head of Kabul’s traffic police force has been reappointed to his post.”Kabul has a city government. This government should be allowed to function,” Sultanzoy said. “That’s why I didn’t quit my job, because if I had quit my job, it would have been very irresponsible. It would have been an act of treason.” 
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Online vacation rental site Airbnb said its host members around the world can sign up to make their properties available for free to 20,000 Afghan refugees fleeing the chaos in their country.Fees will be covered by Airbnb.“The displacement and resettlement of Afghan refugees in the U.S. and elsewhere is one of the biggest humanitarian crises of our time. We feel a responsibility to step up,” Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said on Twitter. “I hope this inspires other business leaders to do the same. There’s no time to waste.”Chesky was not specific about how much the company would spend or how long the housing would be available.Would-be hosts can sign up for the program on Airbnb.org.“If you’re willing to host a refugee family, reach out, and I’ll connect you with the right people here to make it happen!” Chesky wrote Tuesday.According to The Associated Press, Airbnb has offered free housing to 75,000 refugees, health workers, evacuees and other responders since 2012.The United States said it has flown about 48,000 Afghan refugees out of the country, but thousands remain at Kabul airport. It is unclear how many U.S. citizens remain in the country.The Taliban have given the U.S. until Aug. 31 to evacuate U.S. citizens.Some information in this report comes from The Associated Press.
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The European Union and Britain are looking to Turkey to become a hub to process Afghan refugees seeking sanctuary in Europe. Turkey is rejecting the call.The Turkish government is dismissing calls from Europe for it to become a hub to process Afghan refugees. Government spokesman Omer Celik said Monday that with Turkey already hosting nearly five million refugees, mainly from the Syrian civil war, it can take no more.Celik says Turkey does not have a capacity to take in one more refugee. He said Turkey is not a refugee camp nor is it a transit point.Celik’s comments were in response to British media reports Sunday citing defense ministry sources, who said London was looking to countries like Turkey to create processing centers for Afghan refugees.Similar suggestions in the last few days were made by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the president of the European Council, Charles Michel. Those Fleeing Afghanistan Struggle to Survive in TurkeyVOA reporters meet people who say the Taliban are killing government workers and other ‘enemies’ as they take over areas of Afghanistan Under a deal with the EU, Turkey is already hosting nearly four million Syrian refugees from the civil war in exchange for billions of dollars in aid. But analyst Asli Aydintasbas says Turkish public opinion is strongly against any new deal over Afghan refugees.”We have a situation in which Turkey and the EU (are) negotiating these sorts of large sums, as a refugee deal, in which Turkey gets to keep the refugees,” Aydintasbas said. “I think there is across-the-board resentment about Europe sort of using Turkey as a refugee camp on its borders, so to speak. People are upset about this.  But it’s a huge political cost for Turkey. People simply are questioning the government’s refugee policy.”Resentment over refugee presence exploded into violence earlier this month in a suburb of the capital, Ankara, where hundreds of people attacked the homes and shops of Syrian migrants. Ankara is now stepping up efforts to secure its Iranian border, the main transit route for Afghans seeking to enter Turkey. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the construction of a barrier on the frontier would be accelerated.Additional Turkish forces are being deployed on the nearly 300-kilometer-long Iranian border, equipped with the latest surveillance equipment. Hüseyin Ediz Tercanoglu, head of Turkish security on the Iranian border, said Monday the border would be secure against any refugee surge.Tercanoglu said Turkish forces are working in places where smuggling used to be common, adding that the entire area is monitored by 360-degree rotating thermal cameras. If there’s any movement, he said, troops can be dispatched there.Displays of such force are aimed primarily at a Turkish public fatigued by the presence of millions of refugees and Europe to send a message that Turkey will not be the host of another massive influx of refugees.
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The Taliban said Tuesday they hope to win international recognition for their “legitimate representative” rule over Afghanistan, arguing the diplomatic engagement would help promote global security and ease the suffering of Afghans during decades of relentless wars.A senior member of the Islamist group’s Cultural Commission shared the remarks with VOA, saying consultations with all Afghan stakeholders on forming what the Taliban promise will be an “inclusive Islamic government” are ongoing and “an announcement will be made soon.”“We believe the world has a unique opportunity of rapprochement and coming together to tackle the challenges not only facing us but the entire humanity, and these challenges ranging from world security to climate change need the collective efforts of all, and cannot be achieved if we exclude or ignore an entire people,” said Abdul Qahar Balkhi.He spoke a week after the Taliban marched into the Afghan capital, Kabul, seizing control of the 33 of country’s 34 provinces without facing any significant resistance from security forces of the ousted government.A Taliban fighter stands guard at a checkpoint in the Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood in the city of Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 22, 2021.Critics remain skeptical about the Taliban’s recent pledges, citing United Nations reports that talked of the group’s continued links with al-Qaida and other extremist groups.  U.N. officials have also cited reports of “summary executions” and restrictions on women in areas under Taliban control.“We hope to be recognized by world countries as the legitimate representative government of the people of Afghanistan who have gained their right to self-determination from a foreign occupation with the backing and support of entire nation after a prolonged struggle and immense sacrifices despite all odds being stacked against our people,” Balkhi said. He reiterated that his group has “made it unequivocally clear” it will not allow anyone to use Afghan soil to threaten the security of other countries nor will the Taliban allow others to interfere in internal affairs of their country.“Rights of minorities were and will continue all protected,” Balkhi said, attributing criticism of the Taliban’s controversial human rights record and extremist policies during their past government to what he called “vitriolic propaganda” against the group.Taliban to Announce Framework for ‘Inclusive Islamic Government’ Soon US Embassy in Kabul warns Americans not to go to airport without ‘individual instructions,’ citing a possible IS threat at the airport gatesThe Taliban had enforced their own strict interpretation of Islamic law or Sharia when they ruled the country from 1996 to 2001, barring women from leaving homes without a male relative and girls from receiving an education. “It is past time we move forward, look towards the future and not dwell on what may or may not have happened in the past,” Balkhi said. Anti-Taliban Afghan leaders have dismissed the group’s assertions it has softened its policies.Kahlid Noor, the son of ethnic Tajik Afghan commander Atta Muhammad Noor, said the Taliban would not survive as rulers of the country if they don’t ensure respect for human rights and cultures of Afghanistan.”Whatever they are saying now is more of words. We have not seen it in action so we will have to see if they have really changed. I doubt it. I still don’t believe they have changed. What they are doing is more of a promissory than a policy,” Noor told reporters in Pakistan this week.The United States signed an agreement with the Taliban in February 2020 to withdraw troops and those of Western allied nations from the nearly 20 years of war in Afghanistan.But Washington and the rest of the global community has since warned that they will not extend legitimacy to any government in Kabul formed by force. U.S. special envoy for Afghan peace Zalmay Khalilzad, in an interview with VOA just days before the Taliban captured Kabul, had warned that if the Taliban take over the country by force, they will not win international recognition and “they will become a pariah state.”Afghanistan’s immediate neighbors, including Pakistan, China, Iran, and Russia through its Central Asian allied nations, have all been pressing the Taliban to form an inclusive government, where all Afghan ethnicities and religious minorities are adequately represented. These countries have maintained close contacts with the Taliban but they warned that any attempt to govern the conflict-torn South Asian nation exclusively would only prolong the Afghan civil war and threaten the security of neighbors.Beijing, Islamabad, Moscow and Tehran, however, have indicated they may be willing to work with the Taliban provided the fundamentalist group adherents to its pledges. “We hope that Afghanistan will form an open, inclusive, and broadly representative government, adopt moderate and prudent domestic and foreign policies and conform to the aspiration of its people and the common expectation of the international community,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Monday. Wang told a regular news conference that Beijing hopes to see an early end to turbulence and restoration of economic as well as financial order in Afghanistan.“China stands ready to continue to play an active role in promoting peace and reconstruction in Afghanistan and helping the nation to enhance the ability to achieve self-development and improve people’s livelihood,” Wang said. OIC Warns Against Afghanistan Becoming ‘Terror Haven’ Taliban Islamists first ruled Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001The last time it was in power, the Taliban tolerated the presence of the al-Qaida terrorist network, which U.S. officials say plotted the September 2001 attacks on the United States from Afghan sanctuaries at the time. The carnage prompted Washington and its Western allies to invade Afghanistan nearly a month later, ousting the Taliban from power.Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirate were the only three countries at the time that recognized the Taliban’s government in Kabul after the group emerged victories from the then Afghan civil war and established control over most of the country.
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The Taliban may discover that retaking Afghanistan may prove an easier task than ruling it.That will depend, though, on how pragmatic and inclusive the Islamist militants are willing to be, say current and former diplomats, because they will need to compromise to secure buy-in from local power brokers, tribal elders and ethnic-minority leaders to maintain order.Most of the attention now on Afghanistan is focused on the high-stakes and poignant drama playing out at Kabul airport, where thousands of desperate Afghans are seeking to flee the country fearing what Taliban rule will mean for them. But after the final withdrawal of U.S.-led Western forces likely August 31, the date earmarked by President Joe Biden, the Afghans will be left alone and the Taliban will have their second shot at governing the notoriously fractious country, which since 1973 has known little but strife and civil war. “One way or another, the Taliban are likely to find governing Afghanistan to be far more difficult than conquering it,” according to Carter Malkasian, a former senior Pentagon adviser.Writing in Foreign Affairs magazine, Malkasian says the Taliban’s victory doesn’t mean “an end to Afghanistan’s 40 years of war, uncertainty, and trauma.” He adds: “The Taliban face the poverty, internal strife, illicit crops, meddlesome neighbors, and threat of insurrections that are endemic to their country—and have proven the bane of all its rulers.”Challenges aheadThe militants face the challenge of turning from insurgency to governing and will have to set up national governing institutions virtually from scratch. And they will have to revamp a disintegrated bureaucracy to oversee a country comprising at least 14 different ethnic groups with a total population of 38 million.And their opponents say it will be a tall order for the Taliban to maintain control, pointing out that the militant’s movement only has a small fighting force of 75,000 to impose its will. That was a sufficient number to retake the country, except for the Panjshir Valley, thanks to a host of surrender pacts the Taliban struck with others and a stealthy infiltration military strategy that allowed them to seize control of towns and cities, including the Afghan capital Kabul. At the start of the revolutionary year of 1917 in Russia, the Bolsheviks only had 24,000 party members, but that did not stop them seizing power and ruling a much larger Russia until the Soviet hammer and sickle flag was lowered for the final time over the Kremlin in 1991.“We don’t know what to expect,” says Vali Nasr, a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, a research institution in Washington. “First of all, there is a question whether this is the same Taliban,” he said during an online discussion hosted last week by the Asia Society, a global non-profit. Nasr, a former senior advisor to the U.S. State Department on Afghanistan, suspects it might be a different Taliban. “I think there are big differences,” he added. FILE – Taliban fighters patrol in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 19, 2021.He highlighted how the Taliban moved through the country swiftly with few major battles because they engaged politically with others in ways they did not when conquering Afghanistan in the 1990s, which was accompanied by massacres and unrestrained ferocity. That engagement started in earnest more than two years ago, note other Afghanistan country experts, with behind-the-scenes outreach to ethnic minorities by the group led by the Taliban’s network of “shadow” governors.In 1998 after occupying the city of Mazar-e-Sharif Afghanistan’s fourth largest city, the Taliban slaughtered at least 2,000 civilians, most of them ethnic Hazaras, who are Shi’ite Muslims and are considered by the Sunni-favoring Taliban as not true Muslims. The newly installed governor threatened Hazaras with death unless they converted to Sunni Islam and hundreds fled the city along with Shi’ite militiamen under bombardment. A kinder, gentler Taliban?Last week, in a notable difference, the Taliban did not interfere with Afghan Shiites observing Ashura, which is celebrated by all Muslims but for Shiites is a major religious commemoration of the martyrdom of Hussein ibn Ali, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. The killing of Hussein in 680 AD led to the split in Islam between Sunnis and Shias. Several Taliban officials visited an Hazara neighborhood in Kabul to attend the Shiites’ celebration. And last week Taliban leaders held talks with Hazara leaders about how to form an inclusive government to govern Afghanistan.Since arriving in Kabul, the Taliban has been holding meetings with politicians and others, including former President Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah, chairman of Afghanistan’s National Reconciliation Council, a body of notables and elders, over the makeup of a new government.But is this all for show? Some Taliban opponents and country experts believe the Taliban are biding their time until they have consolidated power and are eager to keep foreign aid flowing and to secure the $9.5 billion in Afghanistan reserves currently lodged overseas. The Taliban leadership has dialed down its criticism of the West. “Anti-international rhetoric has been a rallying call in the past, but the Taliban leadership knows its chance of making any success of government depends on international donors. Despite a stunning success in one of the most sophisticated resurgent insurgencies in the world, and morale being high among Taliban fighters and field commanders, Afghanistan’s economic woes are extensive,” notes Chatham House’s Hameed Hakimi in a recent commentary. Ali Nazari, a spokesman for Ahmad Massoud, who is leading a nascent anti-Taliban resistance movement in the Panjshir Valley, believes the political negotiations are a ruse — as are Taliban pledges to allow girls an education and women to work.“The Taliban might be more sophisticated now and slicker in how they present themselves to the world, but they are even more radical than before,” he told VOA. “Their reign of terror hasn’t started. They’re waiting for Americans and Europeans to leave Afghanistan,” he told VOA in a phone call from an undisclosed location. Nazari and other Taliban opponents fear it won’t be long before the Taliban start up tribunals to apportion revolutionary justice and punish those who worked with Western security forces.FILE – Taliban fighters stop a vehicle at a checkpoint in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 22, 2021.Reported abuses  Others point to the mounting allegations of brutality and killings across the country and of Taliban manhunts in Kabul and elsewhere for Afghans who worked alongside Western security forces the past two decades. A Norway-based private intelligence group that provides information to the U.N. said this week it had obtained evidence that the Taliban have rounded up Afghans on a blacklist of people they believe worked in key roles with the previous Afghan administration or with U.S.-led forces.And while Taliban leaders have been formally courting Hazara elders, Amnesty International has reported that Taliban fighters massacred nine ethnic Hazara men after taking control of Afghanistan’s Ghazni province last month.The rights group says the killings took place in early July in the village of Mundarakht, Malistan district. Basing its report on eyewitness accounts, Amnesty says six of the men were shot and three were tortured to death, including one man who was strangled with his own scarf and had his arm muscles sliced off. Amnesty fears the slaughter may represent a tiny fraction of the total death toll inflicted by the Taliban to date, as the group has cut mobile phone service in many places they control, preventing photographs and videos to be shared. “The cold-blooded brutality of these killings is a reminder of the Taliban’s past record, and a horrifying indicator of what Taliban rule may bring,” says Agnes Callamard, the secretary general of Amnesty International. The U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet warned Tuesday that she had received credible reports of severe abuses in areas under Taliban control in Afghanistan, including “summary executions” of civilians and security forces who had laid down their arms and restrictions on women.Whether the reports of killings and manhunts as well as beatings of youngsters who offend Taliban fighters because of how they’re dressed are all signs of the direction of Taliban travel or should be put down as the actions of especially fervent individual fighters or commanders is unclear. Taliban promises of inclusivity and of a softer rule and offers of concession aren’t persuading some observers. “Over time, Taliban leaders will have little reason not to use their military power to consolidate and monopolize control,” reckons former Pentagon adviser Malkasian. And that risks pushback from tribes and minority groups. Some information for this report came from the Associated Press.
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Here are the latest developments following the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan as of August 24.    * British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said every humanitarian and diplomatic tool will be used to “safeguard human rights and the gains made in Afghanistan over the last two decades,” and that the Taliban will be judged on its actions. * Australia reported it evacuated more than 1,600 people from Kabul since last Wednesday.  U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris said United States is “laser-focused” on evacuation effort. “We are extremely grateful to our men and women in uniform and to embassy staff who are on the ground, as we speak, making this historic airlift happen in an incredibly difficult and dangerous environment,” she said Tuesday.  The White House said Monday it is in daily contact with the Taliban “through political and security channels” as the race continues to complete the withdrawal from Afghanistan by President Joe Biden’s August 31 deadline.    * In an interview with Britain’s Sky News, Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen called the August 31 deadline a “red line” and said, “if they extend it, that means they are extending occupation.” 
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Leaders from the G-7 group of nations are set to meet Tuesday to discuss the situation in Afghanistan, with several pushing for U.S. President Joe Biden to keep U.S. troops in the country beyond his August 31 deadline in order to facilitate the ongoing evacuation effort. “I will ask our friends and allies to stand by the Afghan people and step up support for refugees and humanitarian aid,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said ahead of the virtual meeting. With a week to go until Biden’s deadline, tens of thousands of Western citizens and Afghans who supported U.S. efforts have pushed toward Hamid Karzai International Airport hoping to make it through the gates and to the safety of outgoing flights.  However, many Afghans have said it has been difficult, if not impossible, to get past Taliban checkpoints lining the airport’s perimeter. And Taliban officials seem unwilling to give the United States much leeway, calling the upcoming deadline a “red line.”   “We are in talks with the Taliban on a daily basis through political and security channels” concerning “every aspect of what’s happening in Kabul right now,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters at the White House Monday.   Biden is “taking this day by day and will make his determinations as we go,” Sullivan added, defending the White House’s handling of the withdrawal, which has seen most of the U.S.-backed Afghan security forces melt away as the Taliban claimed control of the country.   “We are overperforming in terms of the evacuation numbers,” Sullivan said.      Criticism from U.S. lawmakers, former military officials and even some U.S. allies has poured in since Taliban forces entered the Afghan capital on August 15.   “The situation in Afghanistan is worsening by the day,” Republican Senator Mike Rounds said Monday. “The Biden administration must make the safe evacuation of Americans still stuck in Afghanistan its top priority.” But after a slow start to the evacuation, efforts to get people out of the country have picked up.      U.S. officials said late Monday that in the past 36 hours more than 27,000 people had been airlifted out of Afghanistan, including more than 17,000 on U.S. military flights, more than the number of people who left in the first week.      And some military officials Monday expressed optimism they will be able to sustain the heightened pace of evacuations.   “I assure you that we will not rest until the mission is complete, and we have evacuated Americans who are seeking to be evacuated and as many Afghan partners as humanly possible,” General Stephen Lyons, commander of U.S. Transportation Command, told Pentagon reporters late Monday.      “We are clearly laser focused on clearing the Kabul international airport of every evacuee that can move,” he said. “For me, like all of our veterans who served in Afghanistan, this mission is very personal.”      At a separate briefing earlier in the day, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said despite the surge in evacuation numbers, “We’re not taking anything for granted.”    “There’s a lot of factors that go into being able to reach that output capacity, to include temporary safe havens that you can bring these individuals to as they complete their screening,” he said, noting the goal has been to evacuate between 5,000 and 9,000 people a day.        A growing number of U.S. officials, however, have started warning that despite the increased flow of evacuees out of Afghanistan, more time will be needed.   “I think it’s possible, but I think it’s very unlikely given the number of Americans who still need to be evacuated,” Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff told reporters Monday when asked about the possibility the evacuation would be complete before the end of the month. “We will not stop our efforts to bring out anyone in the categories that I’ve listed (eligible Afghan SIVs, or Special Immigration Visas, and P2 applicants) who want to come out of Afghanistan,” a senior State Department official said Monday, describing August 31 as the deadline only for the “military retrograde out of Afghanistan.”   “Our commitment to at-risk Afghans doesn’t end on August 31,” the official added.   But whether the Taliban will give the United States and its allies more time is questionable.      In an interview with Britain’s Sky News, Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen called the deadline a “red line.”         “If they extend it, that means they are extending occupation,” Shaheen said. “It will create mistrust between us. If they are intent on continuing the occupation, it will provoke a reaction.”         U.S. officials have countered that any additional evacuations could still take place even without a U.S. military footprint in Kabul.      “A government that has some semblance of a relationship with the rest of the world needs a functioning commercial airport,” said State Department spokesman Ned Price. “We are in discussions with the Taliban on this very front.”   Still, the White House Monday left open the possibility that the U.S. military will keep troops at the Kabul airport into September, with officials raising concerns about the “risky and volatile” situation on the ground and the ongoing threats of attacks against U.S. interests by Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate, IS-Khorasan.      Another concern is the number of Americans in Afghanistan who are unable to make it to the airport.      U.S. defense officials have said in recent days that there is no “perfect number.” And Monday, Kirby was vague when asked how many Americans had made it out.         “We’ve been able to evacuate several thousand Americans, and I’d be reticent to get more specific than that,” he told reporters, though he acknowledged that some of the 5,800 U.S. troops have been leaving the airport in Kabul to get U.S. citizens “when we can and where we can.”          “If there’s an incident where somebody is in extremis and we need to get them in small numbers, we can do that, and we have been doing that,” Kirby said in response to a question from VOA.          “On occasion, where there’s a need and there’s a capability to meet that need, our commanders on the ground are doing what they feel they need to do to help Americans reach the airport,” he added later, saying there have been two incidents in which U.S. helicopters have been sent out to get U.S. civilians. NEW: US troops getting Americans to #Kabul airport without helicopters – “We’re just not going to detail all of them bcs the threat environment is so high” per @PentagonPresSecPreviously disclosed rescues involved helicopters…— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) August 23, 2021Further complicating the evacuation efforts are reports that supplies of food and water at the airport have been running low, and that there are concerns about conditions becoming so unsanitary that some Afghans have left the airport.         Security around the airport’s perimeter has also been tested, most recently when an unidentified assailant opened fire on the Afghan forces guarding the gates, killing an Afghan soldier. Firefight Kills Afghan Security Officer Outside Kabul Airport Evacuation efforts continue in Afghan capital following Taliban takeover#Kabul airport shooting: “We cannot rule out who the hostile actor was in this shooting incident…I don’t know when we’ll have more forensics on this” per @PentagonPresSec— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) August 23, 2021If some of the Afghans who worked for the U.S. military during the past 20 years have not been able to leave the country by the end of this month, VOA asked Sullivan what advice he has for them.     “We will continue to get Afghans at risk out of the country even after U.S. military forces have left,” Sullivan replied.            VOA’s Nike Ching and Ken Bredemeier contributed to this report.   
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Turkish women gathered outside the Afghan consulate in Istanbul to show their solidarity with Afghan women and to condemn the Taliban’s treatment of women. VOA’s Umut Colak has filed this report narrated by Bezhan Hamdard.Camera: Umut Colak Produced by: Umut Colak 
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Six years ago, more than 1.2 million migrants from many parts of the world fled to Europe, traveling hundreds or thousands of kilometers to seek a new life in a crisis that has left deep political scars.  Is the continent about to experience another refugee crisis, as millions of Afghans try to escape the Taliban? Several European leaders have voiced such fears in recent days. In a televised address on August 16, French President Emmanuel Macron said “dealing with those fleeing the Taliban would need an organized and fair international effort.”  “Europe alone cannot assume the consequences of the current situation,” he added. Migrants, mainly coming from Afghanistan, walk at a deportation center in Van, Turkey, that borders Iran, Aug. 23, 2021.In Germany, the general secretary of the ruling Christian Democrats told broadcaster n-tv, “For us, it is clear that 2015 must not be repeated. … We won’t be able to solve the Afghanistan question through migration to Germany.”  In 2015, the majority of those entering Europe were fleeing the war in Syria. After crossing into Turkey, they were able to enter Greece, a member of the European Union, either by crossing by boat to the Greek islands or by attempting to breach the land frontier over the Evros River that separates the two countries. The journey then took them through the Balkans and beyond into Western Europe. Afghan migrants attempting a similar journey face many more obstacles. Turkey is building a fence along its frontier with Iran, the main route for Afghan migrants heading to Europe.  Similarly, Greece has also completed the construction of a border fence along its land frontier with Turkey. Many migrants trying to reach the Greek islands from Turkey by boat have found themselves stranded in overcrowded refugee camps. FILE – A policeman patrols alongside a steel wall at Evros River, near the village of Poros, at the Greek -Turkish border, Greece, May 21, 2021.The 2016 migrant deal struck between the European Union and Turkey has also made it much harder for migrants to make the journey. Visiting the border fence Saturday, Greek Citizens’ Protection Minister Michalis Chrisochoidis defended the government’s measures.  “The Afghan crisis is creating new facts in the geopolitical sphere, and at the same time, is creating the possibilities for migrant flows. It is known that we as a European country participate in the institutions of the European Union, and within this framework a series of decisions are made. But we cannot wait passively for the possible impact,” Chrisochoidis told reporters. Helena Hahn, a migration analyst at the Brussels-based European Policy Center, said many Afghans will find it difficult to leave the country in the first place. “Deterrence measures, as well as containment measures by neighboring countries and potentially also the Taliban themselves as they continue to reveal their true agenda, will actually prevent people from leaving the country. Iran, for instance, has repeatedly closed border crossings and has suggested that refugee camps be set up within the country but not allowing people to cross the borders. Turkey has built a wall on its border to Iran and has also increased the capacity of its so-called repatriation centers,” Hahn told VOA. Despite the measures, hundreds of Afghans have managed to reach Turkey in recent weeks. Murtaza Faqiri, a 19-year-old Afghan migrant being held in a migrant detention center in the eastern city of Van, appealed to Europe for help. “I want to say that, to Europe and other countries, to help us. We are Afghan. We are not fighting. We want to have a good life,” Faqiri told The Associated Press. Turkey said it has halted repatriation flights to Afghanistan.  “We have never sent an immigrant to persecution or death, and we will not send them in this process, either,” Ramazan Secilmis, deputy director of Turkey’s Directorate General of Migration Management, told reporters Sunday. “We direct people in need of protection to their registered provinces (in Turkey) by receiving their protection applications. Then, within the framework of the resettlement program, we ensure that they are resettled to countries such as the European Union, America and Canada.” FILE – An Afghan migrant rests while waiting for transport by smugglers after crossing the Iran-Turkish border on August 15, 2021 in Tatvan, on the western shores of Lake Van, eastern Turkey.However, it is unclear how many refugees those countries will accept. Visiting a reception hub for Afghan refugees Sunday close to Madrid, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen urged member states to do more. “I … call on all states who have participated in the Afghanistan missions, Europeans and others, to provide sufficient resettlement quotas and secure pathways so that collectively we can accommodate those in need of protection,” von der Leyen told reporters. So far, most of the evacuees worked alongside Western forces in Afghanistan. Europe can do more, analyst Hahn said. “EU member states can voluntarily increase their resettlement pledges. Traditionally in the past couple of years, Syrians have been a major focus. But we may see that these geographic priorities change.” Meanwhile, Poland has said it will also build a fence along its border with Belarus, which has seen an influx of refugees, including Afghans, in recent weeks. Poland claims they are “economic migrants” and accuses Belarus of waging “hybrid warfare” by directing them toward the border. Human rights groups have accused Poland of violating the Geneva Convention by ignoring the migrants’ claims for asylum. 
 
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In the aftermath of the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, Russia is looking south with a wary eye to see how it can benefit from a situation fraught with opportunity and risk.Although it officially labels the Taliban a terrorist organization, Russia has engaged with their leaders for years, even inviting them to Moscow.As Western nations view the United States and NATO’s exit with concern, worried that women and girls, in particular, will suffer repression under the Islamist group, Moscow has struck a softer tone.“There is no point in panicking,” Russian U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on August 16, a day after the Taliban seized Kabul. He said Moscow’s embassy would continue to operate as normal.“We remain interested in a swift, peaceful settlement and a subsequent stabilization in Afghanistan and its post-conflict recovery,” he added.From left, Suhil Shaheen, Mawlawi Shahabuddin Dilawar and Mohammad Naim, members of a political delegation from the Afghan Taliban’s movement, arrive for a news conference in Moscow, Russia, July 9, 2021.Moscow has its own bad memories of an intervention gone bad in Afghanistan.In 1979, its troops invaded the country to prop up a communist government that was fighting an earlier group of Islamist rebels known as the Mujahedeen. What was supposed to be a quick military operation ended up dragging on for nearly a decade, taking Soviet lives and treasure. Soon after their troops withdrew, the communist regime collapsed.One of Russia’s top concerns today is to prevent the export of Islamist extremists and fighters to its allies in Central Asia.“We would like to underscore that the Russian Federation will interact only with those political forces in Afghanistan that will not be connected to terrorists, first of all ISIL and al-Qaida and their affiliated groups,” Nebenzia said.“From Russia’s standpoint, they don’t have a choice. They can’t stand on the sidelines,” said Mark Simakovsky, nonresident senior fellow at the Washington-based Atlantic Council.The Kremlin wants to protect its security and economic interests in Afghanistan and is pragmatic enough to engage with the Taliban to accomplish that.“They are in charge in Afghanistan,” Olga Oliker, program director for Europe and Central Asia at the International Crisis Group, said of the Taliban. “If you want trade, if you want security assurances toward Central Asia, if you want mineral rights, if you want any of that, this is who you deal with for the time being.”Moscow has also put on a show of force in the Taliban’s neighborhood, staging joint military exercises earlier this month with Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as the Taliban were on the move seizing provinces bordering these Central Asian nations.Russia also hopes to use the U.S. withdrawal to spin its own propaganda narrative to unnerve Washington’s allies in places like Ukraine and among the U.S.-backed opposition in Venezuela.“Right now, the Russian priority is to fill the vacuum with influence and try to cash in on this relationship that they’ve had with the Taliban going back years,” Simakovskysaid. “And to use this Taliban victory to showcase the weakening of U.S. global power and to use that to further undermine U.S. interests around the world.”Ultimately, Moscow hopes to fill the vacuum left by Washington’s departure to boost its own regional influence.
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The United States has accelerated the evacuation of Americans and Afghans from Kabul as the Taliban, who took over the country, warned they consider President Joe Biden’s August 31 deadline for keeping U.S. troops in Afghanistan a “red line” that must be met.Biden said Sunday that more time may be needed past the end of August to fly those who want to leave war-torn Afghanistan to safety in other countries, chiefly Americans and the Afghans who supported them during two decades of fighting against the Taliban.  British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to ask Biden at a Tuesday meeting of the Group of Seven democratic world powers to extend the August 31 deadline for removal of allied forces.But Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen told Sky News in an interview, “If they extend it, that means they are extending occupation. … It will create mistrust between us. If they are intent on continuing the occupation, it will provoke a reaction.”Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 7 MB480p | 11 MB540p | 14 MB720p | 25 MB1080p | 55 MBOriginal | 177 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioBiden Admin Faces Criticism Amid Looming Humanitarian Crisis in AfghanistanBiden said, “Our hope is we will not have to extend,” but that it might be needed to evacuate more people.The pace of the evacuations has quickened. A White House official said U.S. military planes airlifted about 10,400 people out of Kabul in a 24-hour period ending early Monday, the most in any single-day period so far, and coalition aircraft from other countries evacuated another 5,900.But thousands more people wanting to flee Afghanistan remain encamped at the Kabul airport awaiting flights.In all, White House officials said about 37,000 people have been flown out of Afghanistan since the Taliban militants took control of the country after its U.S.-backed government collapsed more than a week ago and President Ashraf Ghani fled to exile in the United Arab Emirates.Biden said no Afghans are being flown directly to the United States without prior security screening at stopovers at U.S. outposts in the Mideast and Europe.The U.S. leader has adamantly defended his stance to remove all the country’s troops to end the longest U.S. war after nearly two decades. But the evacuation by all accounts has been chaotic, with Biden’s fellow Democrats and opposition Republicans alike attacking him and his administration for mishandling it. A CBS poll released Sunday showed that most Americans said the removal of U.S. troops has gone “very badly” or “somewhat badly.” While 63% of Americans say they approve of removing U.S. troops from Afghanistan, only 47% say they approve of Biden’s handling of the removal.”The evacuation of thousands of people from Kabul is going to be hard and painful, no matter when it started, when we began,” Biden said. “It would have been true if we’d started a month ago, or a month from now. There is no way to evacuate this many people without pain and loss of heartbreaking images you see on television.”But he promised the faster pace of evacuations will continue, saying, “We see no reason why this tempo will not be kept up.” Without giving a full explanation, he said U.S. forces have improved access to the Kabul airport for Americans and others seeking to get on flights.”What I’m not going to do is talk about the tactical changes we’re making to make sure we maintain as much security as we can,” he said. “We have constantly — how can I say it — increased rational access to the airport, where more folk can get there more safely. It’s still a dangerous operation, but I don’t want to go into the details of how we’re doing that.””We’ve discussed a lot with the Taliban,” Biden said. “They’ve been cooperative in extending some of the perimeter. Any American who wants to get home, will get home,” he declared.On Sunday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered six U.S. commercial airlines to provide 18 passenger jets to help move evacuees from temporary sites outside of Afghanistan to further destinations to let military aircraft focus on the initial evacuations from Kabul.VOA’s Steve Herman contributed to this report.
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The World Health Organization and UNICEF are calling for the establishment of a humanitarian airbridge to deliver lifesaving assistance to millions of vulnerable people in Afghanistan.  Since the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan, major air operations at Kabul airport have been focused on evacuating internationals and vulnerable Afghans. This operation has gone ahead at the expense of aid deliveries by U.N. agencies.   For example, the World Health Organization reports it was unable to deliver 500 tons of medical supplies this week, including surgical equipment, trauma medicines and treatments for childhood pneumonia because of Kabul airport restrictions.    Spokesman for the U.N. children’s fund, James Elder, tells VOA the WHO shipment also included nutritional food for the treatment of malnourished children.  FILE – Internally displaced Afghan children are seen next to their shelters on the outskirts of Kabul, Feb. 3, 2021. “We fear that you could have as any as a million children under the age of five suffering from severe acute malnutrition this year. That is the most dangerous form.  That is the type of malnutrition that can kill. We need to continually ensure that those supplies are on the ground, and a lot of that does take airlifts. Now, we have a lot of supplies in country, but it is not an exhaustive amount. We need to continually replenish those,”  he said.   That, he explains, is why WHO and UNICEF are calling for the establishment of a humanitarian airbridge. He says this would ensure that lifesaving supplies could come into the country while evacuations were taking place.    Elder notes that conditions in Afghanistan are perilous. He says humanitarian needs remain as critical now as they were before this conflict came to a head. Even before the current crisis, he says, Afghanistan represented the third largest humanitarian operation in the world.   Since no commercial aircraft currently can land in Kabul, he says a humanitarian airbridge would allow aircraft delivering aid to continue to use the airport.  “It just requires authorities on the ground to ensure that humanitarian agencies, the big ones that do these types of things — the World Food Program, UNICEF, and of course, what we are talking here with regard to these medicines of WHO. It is what they do day in, day out, in what we call normal times. And it just needs to continue now, despite what looks like chaotic scenes at that airport,” he said.  The United Nations reports that nearly half of Afghanistan’s population, or 18 million people, among them 10 million children, require lifesaving assistance. This number includes 300,000 people who fled their homes in the last two months while Taliban insurgents were closing in on the country’s former rulers.  
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The Afghanistan flag will be displayed in Tuesday’s opening ceremony of the Paralympics even though the country’s athletes were not able to get to Tokyo to compete.
Andrew Parsons, the president of the International Paralympic Committee, said Monday it will be done as a “sign of solidarity.”
Parsons said a representative of the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees would carry the flag in the National Stadium during the opening ceremony. It’s the same stadium where the opening ceremony of the Olympics took place on July 23.
The two Paralympic athletes from Afghanistan were unable to reach Tokyo after the Taliban took control of the country more than a week ago. They are para-taekwondo athlete Zakia Khudadadi and discus thrower Hossain Rasouli.
Parsons said 162 delegations will be represented in Tokyo, which includes refugee athletes. The IPC has said about 4,400 athletes will compete in the Paralympics. The exact number is to be released on Tuesday.
The Paralympics will close on Sept. 5 and are facing a surge around Tokyo in COVID-19 cases. Cases in the capital have increased from four or five times since the Olympics opened a month ago.
Organizers and the IPC say there is no connection between the Olympics or Paralympics taking place in Tokyo, and the rising cases among the general Tokyo population.
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The Taliban are dispatching hundreds of fighters to the Panjshir Valley, 150 kilometers north of the Afghan capital, Kabul, to try to stamp out an emerging resistance movement led by the son of a warlord who defied them the last time they ruled Afghanistan 20 years ago.The deployment comes hours after forces aligned with Ahmad Massoud’s National Resistance Front, comprising remnants of regular Afghan army units and special forces and local militia fighters, clashed with the Taliban in Andarab — a southern district in Baghlan province.Last week, in the first stirrings of serious resistance, anti-Taliban fighters secured three districts neighboring Andarab, all near the Panjshir Valley, Massoud’s redoubt.  The Taliban on Monday claimed to have recaptured the three districts. FILE – Ahmad Massoud, son of Afghanistan’s slain anti-Soviet resistance hero Ahmad Shah Massoud, waves as he arrives to attend a gathering in Bazarak, Panjshir province, Afghanistan, Sept. 5, 2019.Ahmad Massoud’s father, Ahmad Shah Massoud, nicknamed the “lion of the Panjshir,” blocked Soviet forces in the 1980s and the Taliban in the 1990s from conquering the narrow and almost impenetrable valley It has in effect one main road in and out. His 32-year-old son, who was trained at Britain’s military academy Sandhurst and was taught war studies at King’s College, London, hopes to emulate his father.  FILE – Then-first vice-presidential candidate Amrullah Saleh looks on as he speaks to the media after arriving at the Independent Electoral Commission office in Kabul on Jan. 20, 2019.”Talibs have massed forces near the entrance of Panjshir a day after they got trapped in ambush zones of neighboring Andarab valley & hardly went out in one piece,” tweeted Amrullah Saleh, Afghanistan’s former vice president, who midweek declared himself the country’s caretaker leader after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country. Saleh has thrown in with the National Resistance Front, although his status as president is not recognized by the National Resistance Front, Massoud’s advisers told VOA in a phone call. Ready to fight The Taliban gave Massoud four hours Sunday to surrender the Panjshir Valley, saying they were deploying forces “after local state officials refused to hand it over peacefully.” Ahmad Massoud has been holding negotiations with the Taliban since the Islamist movement seized power in Kabul a week ago, but one of his advisers told VOA that the talks were stalled and appeared unlikely to advance.  
 
“There has been no progress,” Ali Nazari, Massoud’s spokesman said. The talks have mainly been conducted in Pakistan via emissaries, including Ahmad Massoud’s uncle. The Taliban said it will establish a centralized government and will not be holding elections. To end his nascent resistance, Massoud is demanding elections, decentralization of government, with regions and provinces allowed semi-autonomy, and for the Taliban to guarantee civil rights.On Sunday, Massoud told Reuters that he did not want war. “We want to make the Taliban realize that the only way forward is through negotiation,” he said by telephone. He said his fighters are ready to fight. “They want to resist any totalitarian regime,” he said.His spokesman, Nazari, talking from an undisclosed location, told VOA that the resistance movement has sufficient strength to keep the Taliban out of the valley, near the Hindu Kush and home to more than 100,000 people, including Afghanistan’s largest concentration of ethnic Tajiks. He said Massoud had opened negotiations with the Taliban much as his father did in 1995 in the hope that bloodshed could be avoided.  FILE – Men prepare for defense against the Taliban in Panjshir, Afghanistan, Aug. 22, 2021. (Aamaj News Agency via Reuters) 
Last week in an article in The Washington Post, Massoud appealed to the West to back his resistance. “The Taliban is not a problem for the Afghan people alone. Under Taliban control, Afghanistan will without doubt become ground zero of radical Islamist terrorism; plots against democracies will be hatched here once again,” he warned. He added that the military stores and equipment his Front has amassed could be depleted quickly without resupply from outside powers.Massoud has been storing arms and material for the past two years, since the U.S. opened talks with the Taliban. His local militia has been boosted, his aides say, with an influx of a few thousand former Afghan army soldiers, including members of special forces units, and volunteers from other militias from northern and western Afghanistan.FILE – Humvee vehicles from the Afghan Security Forces are pictured in Panjshir province in Afghanistan on Aug. 16, 2021.The Afghan army remnants brought with them half-a-dozen helicopters and other equipment and the National Resistance Front has a dozen or so Soviet-era tanks, anti-Taliban sources say. They also have Russian BM-21 Grad rocket launchers. Nazari told VOA Massoud is fairly confident that he can sustain the resistance until wintertime, when the fighting would decrease, and inclement seasonal weather would halt a Taliban offensive. “The Taliban will be less mobile in winter,” he said. “So, we believe that we can sustain the resistance up to winter. But again, it’s difficult to say. It will come down to the intensity of the fighting,” he added. “If the fighting intensifies in the coming days or weeks, there might be a short window of opportunity for the West to support the National Resistance Front, and that window could shut much sooner than we expect,” he conceded.  Looking to the West 
 
Nazari said Massoud has not asked anything from neighboring countries, including Tajikistan, which helped his father. His focus has been on Western powers.  While  there had been no response yet from the Western governments, U.S. lawmakers have been in contact. Last year, Massoud met in Paris French President Emmanuel Macron, a meeting arranged by the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, a longtime friend of Massoud’s father.Nazari said: “We believe that the Western countries should stay engaged because of the threat of terrorism. Terrorism still exists. International terrorism still exists, and it will strengthen itself and will be stronger compared to 2001. You’ll have an emboldened al-Qaida, you have ISIS [Islamic State]. You have other splinter groups. You have a much powerful Taliban now. So, it’s very important to keep an ally inside Afghanistan. It just doesn’t make sense for the Western world to abandon natural allies, people who could fight terrorism, who can resist the rise of terrorism.”“This all has eerie but perhaps heartening echoes of the situation during Taliban rule before the 9/11 terror attacks,” says Toby Harnden, author of “First Casualty: The Untold Story of the Battle That Began the War in Afghanistan.”“The Panjshir Valley was the CIA’s vital foothold in Afghanistan before 9/11. Its mountain flanks along with Ahmad Shah Massoud fighters, many veterans of the mujahideen war against the Soviet army, made it a redoubt the Taliban could not penetrate,” Harnden added.Without outside support, military experts say it is hard to estimate how long Massoud can keep the Taliban out of the valley, and resupply will be difficult. The Panjshir has no airport and the Taliban in theory now surround the valley “Nobody can answer the question ‘how long?’ Too many variables,” a former CIA officer, who knows the valley well, told VOA. “The Soviets never really got in; and the Taliban the first time around made just a few inroads into Panjshir,” he said. And it is not clear, he added, how quickly the Taliban will be able to mount a major offensive.  FILE – Ahmad Massoud (C) son of late Afghan commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, arrives to attend and address a gathering at the tomb of his late father in Panjshir province on July 5, 2021. 
Massoud’s advisers say they believe the Taliban has a lot of weaknesses. “They are not as a strong military force as we’re seeing them being portrayed in the media,” says Nazari. “They have a shortage of men and are overstretched. They lack popular support. They have 75,000 fighters to control a country of 38 million,” he adds.“A key risk for the Taliban with the resistance in the Panjshir is the unraveling of local surrender pacts the Islamists struck with tribal elders and local warlords,” says another Western intelligence officer who served in Afghanistan. “They paved the way for the Taliban all the way to Kabul,” he adds. Many of those pacts were clinched because tribal elders and others assumed the Taliban would be victorious, and “if the impression gains ground, they can be challenged, then other groups may decide to resist. Remember the Afghan saying: you can hire me, but you can’t buy me,” he adds. 
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Germany’s military reported Monday a firefight erupted outside the north gate at Kabul’s airport, with unknown attackers killing one Afghan security officer dead and wounding three others. The German military said its forces and those from the United States were involved in the battle. The airport has been the site of mass evacuations by Western nations, particularly the United States, since the Taliban’s seizure of the Afghan capital a week ago. Tens of thousands of Afghans have flooded the Kabul airport in hopes of getting a place on one of the evacuation flights, fearing a return to the harsh interpretation of Islamic law practiced when the Taliban controlled the country 20 years ago. The United States has fallen short of evacuating 5,000 to 9,000 people per day and chaotic scenes at and around the airport have prompted criticism of the U.S. effort.U.S. forces assist in Afghanistan evacuation, Aug. 22, 2021.Vice President Kamala Harris, speaking during a visit Monday to Singapore, said there will be plenty of time later to analyze what has taken place, emphasizing that the primary mission is “evacuating people from that region who deserve to be evacuated.” “We are singularly focused on evacuating American citizens, Afghans who worked with us, and Afghans who are vulnerable, including women and children,” Harris said. Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong offered the use of a military plane to help with the evacuation effort. Other countries are sending aircraft, including Japan, which said it was dispatching a military plane on Monday to bring back its citizens from Afghanistan. The Taliban on Sunday blamed the United States for the chaos around Kabul’s airport. The British Ministry of Defense has confirmed the deaths of seven Afghans near the airport on Saturday.    “There is peace and calm all over the country,” Amir Khan Mutaqi, a top Taliban leader asserted, saying, “there is chaos only at Kabul airport.”    “America, with all its power and capabilities, and with their president paying direct attention to the evacuation process, they have failed to bring order to the airport,” Mutaqi said in an audio statement shared with media.  The U.S. and other countries have brought in troops to manage the evacuation effort at the airport.  “Conditions on the ground remain extremely challenging but we are doing everything we can to manage the situation as safely and securely as possible,” the British Defense Ministry said in a statement.     Taliban leaders stressed Afghanistan wants good relations with the U.S. and the global community, but the chaotic evacuation is hurting their goodwill among Afghans. Mutaqi said the crisis has prevented airports across the country from transporting Afghans to and from Kabul, adding to problems facing the war-ravaged nation.  Some information for this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters. 
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The number of people evacuated from Kabul will change from day to day, President Joe Biden said in a televised address Sunday, depending on specific conditions and safety of the day.Earlier Sunday, the White House said the U.S. had evacuated 7,400 people from Kabul in the previous 24 hours and Biden said as many as 11,000 were evacuated in a 36-hour period over the weekend. Tens of thousands more await a ride out of Kabul.In all, the U.S. has evacuated 25,100 people in the last week, a White House official said.“Any American who wants to get home, will get home,” Biden said. “We’re also moving to work our Afghan allies … and other vulnerable Afghans out of the country.”US Evacuates Another 7,400 from Afghanistan  Blinken describes ‘incredibly volatile’ scene at Kabul airport Biden said none of the planes from Kabul were flying straight to the United States. Instead, he said, all flights first land in military bases in a handful of countries where non-U.S. citizens will undergo background checks and security screenings.Since July, the president said about 33,000 people have been evacuated from Kabul, even as American officials confront what Secretary of State Antony Blinken described as an “incredibly volatile situation at the airport” after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan a week ago.Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin activated the use of 18 civilian passenger jets from six U.S. airlines to help ferry Americans and Afghans from safe havens where they were staying after leaving Kabul. It is the third time in the past 30 years the U.S. has invoked use of civilian aircraft to assist the military. Blinken told the “Fox News Sunday” television show that the latest group of evacuees, Americans and Afghans who had assisted them in 20 years of U.S. fighting in Afghanistan, left on 60 flights, with many of them headed to Mideastern countries.Earlier Sunday, Biden discussed the Afghan situation at the White House with Blinken, Austin and other key national security officials, affirming the role played by partner countries in relocating Afghans leaving their homeland.Chaotic scenes at the Kabul airport of many foreign residents, including Americans, trying to flee Afghanistan, as well as Afghans trying to flee after the Taliban takeover of their country, have been broadcast around the world for days now.But White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN’s “State of the Union” show that U.S. forces have “secured the capacity to get large numbers of Americans safe passage through the airport and onto the airfield.” “At the moment, we believe we have sufficient forces on the ground” to control the crowds trying to leave the country, Sullivan said in a separate interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”Economic Crisis Looms for Afghanistan Under Taliban Rule Whether financial hardship gives the U.S. and its allies leverage over the group remains an open questionSullivan said that “every single day” Biden “asks his military commanders, including those at the airport and those at the Pentagon, whether they need additional resources, additional troops. So far, the answer has been ‘no,’ but he will ask again today.”He said that “if in the end, Americans are blocked from getting to the airport, blocked from leaving the country or our operations are disrupted or our evacuations are in some way interfered with, we have explained to (the Taliban) that there will be a swift and forceful response.”Sullivan said the U.S. has “agreements with 26 nations around the world to logistically move Afghans and Americans and third-country nationals out of the country and to air bases throughout neighboring countries and further afield.”While most of the evacuations have occurred at the Kabul airport, the U.S. also deployed three military helicopters to rescue 169 Americans from a hotel.“We will do what is necessary to get Americans out of harm’s way,” Blinken said.He deflected questions about U.S. miscalculations about the swift Taliban takeover of the Afghan government, saying there would be “plenty of time to determine what might have been done differently and what lessons could be learned.”But he acknowledged, “We believed the government was not about to collapse and the (Afghan) military fade away.” In July, Biden said it was “highly unlikely” that the Taliban would abruptly assume control, as it did in a matter of days a week ago.A Biden critic, Republican Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, said the U.S. leader “needs to step up and be a commander in chief” to control the evacuation.He said the U.S. needs to consider retaking the Bagram airfield outside Kabul that it abandoned as U.S. forces ended their operations there. Sasse called leaving Bagram “one of the stupidest blunders,” leaving the Kabul airport as the only major departure point.Defense Secretary Austin echoed Biden, saying the commercial airlines assisting the military would not fly into Kabul but rather be used “for the onward movement of passengers from temporary safe havens and interim staging bases.”  Most likely the U.S. commercial jets will carry Afghans from such Persian Gulf states as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates where many Afghans are awaiting next moves after escaping Kabul.The activation of the aircraft includes four from United Airlines, three each from American Airlines, Atlas Air, Delta Air Lines and Omni Air and two from Hawaiian Airlines.The Defense Department said it “does not anticipate a major impact to commercial flights from this activation.”What We Know: Taliban Takeover of Afghanistan   Latest developments following Taliban’s sweep into Kabul      The Civil Reserve Air Fleet was created in 1952 to assist the U.S. military in emergencies such as what has quickly evolved in Kabul over the last week, where thousands of Americans and Afghans have tried desperately to leave the country.Civilian aircraft were previously used during the first Gulf War in 1990 and 1991 and in Iraq in 2002 and 2003.The Defense Department said the use of the civilian aircraft will allow the U.S. military “to focus on operations in and out of in Kabul.”Some of the Afghan evacuees are expected to move to the United States and others elsewhere in the world.
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