Taliban leaders said Tuesday they will no longer allow Afghans to leave the country and that they expect the U.S. to complete its full military withdrawal from the Kabul airport by Aug. 31.
The declaration from Taliban spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid at a press conference Tuesday could greatly complicate U.S. evacuation efforts. American military aircraft over the past week have flown out thousands of Afghan translators and others believed to be at risk of reprisal from the Taliban, but the insurgent group — which controls checkpoints outside the airport perimeter — said such evacuations will stop.
It’s unclear to what lengths, if any, the U.S. will go to get those Afghans to the airport.
“We are not in favor of allowing Afghans to leave,” Mr. Mujahid said, according to media reports, adding that those Afghans are needed at home to help rebuild the country.
He added that the Taliban will not agree to an extension of U.S.-led evacuation efforts past President Biden’s self-imposed Aug. 31 deadline.
At the Pentagon, military officials said they’re still planning to meet that Aug. 31 date, despite growing indications that the Biden administration is negotiating behind the scenes with the Taliban for an extension.
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Defense Department spokesperson John Kirby told reporters that the military believes it will be able to get all Americans out of the country by the end of the month — even though no one in the Biden administration seems able to say exactly how many U.S. citizens remain in Afghanistan. That uncertainty is fueling serious doubt across Washington that the current timetable can be met and is putting renewed pressure on the president.
“There’s been no change to the timeline of the mission, which is to have this completed by the end of the month,” Mr. Kirby said. “We remain committed to getting any and all Americans that want to leave, to get them out. … We believe that we have the capability, the ability, to get that done by the end of the month.”
But Mr. Kirby conceded that the Pentagon does not have a “firm, certain, hard number” on how many Americans are still in the country, making it virtually impossible to guarantee that every last citizen will be evacuated. Mr. Kirby said that “not every American who goes to Afghanistan has to tell the government they’re there,” meaning that it’s been difficult for the administration to compile a thorough list.
Taliban leaders said they will allow U.S. personnel to leave through the Aug. 31 date. It’s unclear what they’ll do if American service members stay beyond that point.
On Capitol Hill, lawmakers are growing increasingly angry at both the administration’s timetable for withdrawal and its inability to say how Americans still need to be flown out.
“Damn the deadline. The American people are not going to surrender our fellow citizens to the Taliban. Americans want us to stay until we get our people out, and so do our allies,” Sen. Ben Sasse, Nebraska Republican, said in a statement. “The Biden Administration needs to cut the Stockholm syndrome. There’s absolutely no reason to trust the Taliban — they’re violently blocking Americans and our Afghan partners from reaching the airport. If President Biden accepts the Taliban’s terms he’ll be the one holding the shovel in Afghanistan’s ’graveyard of empires.’ “
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Against that backdrop, the Pentagon says evacuation efforts have ramped up dramatically in recent days.
The Pentagon has evacuated nearly 59,000 people from the country since Aug. 14, officials said Tuesday. Over the last 24 hours, about 12,700 people left on U.S. military aircraft, while another 8,900 left Afghanistan on coalition and civilian planes.
The total of 21,600 evacuees in a one-day period is the highest 24-hour total since the mission began, officials said.
But the Pentagon has been unable to say how many of those are Americans. Mr. Kirby would say only that “several thousand” U.S. citizens have been evacuated.
Meanwhile, military officials say they’ll need “several days” to plan for the withdrawal of all U.S. personnel and equipment from the Kabul airport. That timetable suggests that the White House would need to decide in the next couple of days whether to extend the deadline.
The Biden administration on Tuesday dispatched CIA Director William J. Burns to meet with Taliban leaders, suggesting that the two sides are in discussions about extending America’s evacuation effort at the airport. Taliban leaders, however, have publicly said they will accept no such extension and have even threatened U.S. troops who remain past Aug. 31.
Mr. Kirby said Taliban leaders have taken a similar position in closed-door talks with U.S. military leaders.
“The Taliban have been very clear about what their expectations are as well,” he said.
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.
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