Army helicopters on Thursday landed at a hotel in Kabul to pick up more than 160 stranded Americans who couldn’t make it to the relative safety of Hamid Karzai International Airport because of the chaos that has erupted there since the fall of the Afghan government.
President Biden alluded to the operation on Friday during a speech at the White House in which he defended his administration’s handling of the evacuation effort. “Any American who wants to get home, we will get you home,” he said while standing in front of Vice President Harris and other members of the cabinet, including Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
Pentagon officials said the Americans were told by representatives of another country to gather at the Baron Hotel, located adjacent to the airport. The information about the wayward Americans was then passed to U.S. commanders at the scene, who ordered a flight of three CH-47 helicopters to pick them up.
“There was an established landing zone there on the hotel premises,” said chief Pentagon spokesman John Kirby. “The (helicopters) flew in, picked up the 169 Americans and flew them right back,” to the airfield.
The original plan was for the Americans to gather themselves at the hotel and walk a short distance to one of the entrances leading to the airfield, known as the Abbey Gate.
“There was a large crowd established outside the Abbey Gate. (It was) a crowd that not everybody had confidence in, in terms of their ability to walk through it,” Mr. Kirby said. “Local commanders on the scene took the initiative and flew these helicopters out there to pick them up.”
It wasn’t clear on Friday whether the Americans were diplomats, intelligence officials, contractors or just civilians who were in the wrong place at the wrong time as Afghanistan fell during the Taliban’s lightning-fast advance.
“They are Americans so they’re all of great value to us,” Mr. Kirby said.
It was apparently the first such incident since the evacuation in Kabul began following the Taliban’s quick takeover of the country.
Pentagon officials said the militant group, which adheres to strict Islamic law, has mostly allowed American citizens and Afghans with proper immigration documentation to make it past their checkpoints and onto the airfield.
“I certainly recognize that there have been multiple cases of Afghans, even some with credentials, being assaulted, beaten and harassed,” Mr. Kirby said. “But by and large, those Afghans who have the proper credentials … are getting through the checkpoint. We have not seen that become a major issue.”
Rep. Mike Waltz, Florida Republican and former Green Beret, said one of his Afghan interpreters was beheaded in 2015 after documents linking him to the U.S.-led war effort were found on him at a Taliban checkpoint.
“Don’t let the Taliban propaganda campaign fool you. They are brutal, extremist thugs that do not deserve international recognition,” Mr. Waltz said in a Twitter message.
While the U.S. military is sticking to its plans of not moving into Kabul to assist U.S. citizens and their Afghan allies get to safety, NATO allies such as France and the United Kingdom have launched missions to rescue their citizens who might be trapped behind Taliban lines. According to British and French media reports, both nations have conducted multiple such operations over the last several days.
On Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told Pentagon reporters that the U.S. military lacked “the capability and the capacity” to mount missions into Kabul to round up Americans and Afghan allies. Since then, the security at the airport is more stable, Pentagon officials said.
Following Mr. Biden’s call that he would order any action necessary to rescue Americans and Afghan partners in distress, the Pentagon appears more flexible about the possibility it might start running its own missions into Kabul.
“The secretary [of defense] is going to want to keep as many options as available open,” Mr. Kirby said. He “is not going to rule anything out or in.”
Like any military mission, a rescue operation would have to go through a planning phase before it could be launched, he said.
“We would examine those options to weigh the benefits versus the risks and then offer up options to the secretary to make a recommendation. Then we would go from there,” Mr. Kirby said. “But I’m not going to talk about potential future operations one way or the other.”
• Mike Glenn can be reached at mglenn@washingtontimes.com.
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