WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden has declared that he is sticking to his August 31 deadline for completing a risky airlift of Americans, endangered Afghans and others seeking to escape Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
The decision defies allied leaders who want to give the evacuation more time and opens Biden to criticism that he caved to Taliban deadline demands.
"Every day we're on the ground is another day that we know ISIS-K is seeking to target the airport and attack both us and allied forces and innocent civilians," Biden said at the White House on Tuesday, referring to the Islamic State group's Afghanistan affiliate, which is known for staging suicide attacks on civilians.
He said the Taliban are cooperating and security is holding despite a number of violent incidents.
"But it's a tenuous situation," he said, adding, "We run a serious risk of it breaking down as time goes on."
The US in recent days has ramped up its airlift amid new reports of rights abuses that fuel concern about the fate of thousands of people who fear retribution from the Taliban and are trying to flee the country.
The Pentagon said 21,600 people had been evacuated in the 24 hours that ended Tuesday morning, and Biden said an additional 12,000 had been flown out in the 12 hours that followed.
Those include flights operated by the US military as well as other charter flights.
Biden said he had asked the Pentagon and State Department for evacuation contingency plans that would adjust the timeline for full withdrawal should that become necessary.
Pentagon officials expressed confidence the airlift, which started on August 14, can get all Americans out by next Tuesday, the deadline Biden had set long before the Taliban completed their takeover.
But unknown thousands of other foreign nationals remain in Afghanistan and are struggling to get out.
The Taliban, who have wrested control of the country back nearly 20 years after being ousted in a US-led invasion after the 9/11 attacks, insist the airlift must end on August 31.
Any decision by Biden to stay longer could reignite a war between the militants and the approximately 5,800 American troops who are executing the airlift at Kabul airport.
In Kabul, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told a news conference the US must stick to its self-imposed deadline, saying "after that we won't let Afghans be taken out" on evacuation flights.
He also said the Taliban would bar Afghans from accessing roads to the airport, while allowing foreigners to pass in order to prevent large crowds from massing.
At the Pentagon, spokesman John Kirby said August 31 leaves enough time to get all Americans out, but he was less specific about completing the evacuation of all at-risk Afghans.
He said about 4,000 American passport holders and their family members had been evacuated from Kabul as of Tuesday.
"We expect that number to grow in coming days," Kirby said.
With the full US withdrawal looming, the Pentagon said several hundred US troops have been withdrawn because they are no longer needed to complete the evacuation mission.
Two members of US Congress flew unannounced into Kabul airport in the middle of the ongoing chaotic evacuation Tuesday, stunning State Department and US military personnel who had to divert resources to provide security and information to the lawmakers, American officials said.
Officials said Rep.
Seth Moulton and Rep.
Peter Meijer flew in on a charter aircraft and were on the ground at the Kabul airport for several hours.
Officials said the two men were flying out of Kabul on another charter aircraft, prompting officials to complain that they were taking seats that could have gone to other Americans or Afghans fleeing the country.
Two officials familiar with the flight said that State Department, Defence 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 US 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.
The Associated Press reached out to the offices of Moulton and Meijer but did not receive any immediate comment.
Moulton served in the Marine Corps.
One senior US 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.
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.
He said a key reason for the deadline is the ongoing IS threat targeting the airport.
The Islamic State group's Afghanistan affiliate is known for staging suicide attacks on civilians.
Kirby said these are headquarters staff, maintenance personnel and others.
"It will have no impact on the mission at hand," he said.
It's unclear how many Americans who want to leave are still in the country, but their status is a hot political topic for Biden.
Some Republicans bristled Tuesday at the US seeming to comply with a Taliban edict.
"We need to have the top priority to tell the Taliban that we're going to get all of our people out, regardless of what timeline was initially set," said Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana.
And Democratic Rep.
Adam Schiff of California, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told reporters Monday that "it was hard for me to imagine" wrapping up the airlifts by the end of the month.
One of the main refugee groups resettling Afghan evacuees in the US said many people, including some American citizens, still were finding it impossible to get past Taliban checkpoints and crushing throngs outside the airport.
"The US cannot pat itself on the back for a job half-done," said Krish O'Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.
Biden decided in April that he was ending the US war, which began in October 2001.
Former President Donald Trump had earlier agreed in negotiations with the Taliban to end the war in May.
However, Biden waited until the Taliban had swept to power this month, following the collapse of the US-backed government and its army, to begin executing an airlift.
Tragic scenes at the airport have transfixed the world.
Afghans poured onto the tarmac last week and some clung to a US military transport plane as it took off, later plunging to their deaths.
At least seven people died that day, and another seven died Sunday in a panicked stampede.
An Afghan solider was killed Monday in a gunfight.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the Group of Seven nations will not recognize a Taliban government unless it guarantees people can leave the country if they wish, both before and after the August deadline.
A day earlier, the director of the US Central Intelligence Agency, William Burns, met with a top Taliban leader in Kabul.
The extraordinary meeting reflected the gravity of the crisis and America's need to coordinate with a Taliban group it has accused of gross human rights abuses.
For now, the US military coordinates all air traffic in and out of the Kabul airport, but the Taliban will take over there after the US pullout.
Meanwhile, a US official said Burns, the CIA director, met with Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, an extraordinary moment for the US spy agency, which for two decades targeted the Taliban in paramilitary operations.
It was not clear what exactly they discussed.
The CIA partnered with Pakistani forces to arrest Baradar in 2010, and he spent eight years in a Pakistani prison before the Trump administration persuaded Pakistan to release him in 2018 ahead of US peace talks with the Taliban.
Mujahid, meanwhile, pushed back on the idea that Afghans need to flee, arguing that the Taliban have brought peace and security to the country.
He said the main problem was the chaos at the airport, and he accused the US of luring away engineers, doctors and other professionals on which the country relies.
Earlier, UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said she had credible reports of "summary executions" of civilians and former security forces who were no longer fighting, the recruitment of child soldiers and restrictions on the rights of women to move around freely and of girls to go to school.
She did not specify the timing or source of her reports.
It has been difficult to determine how widespread abuses might be and whether they contradict the Taliban's public statements or reflect disunity in its ranks.
From 1996 until the 2001 US-led invasion, the Taliban largely confined women to their homes, banned television and music, chopped off the hands of suspected thieves and held public executions.
Britain says it has evacuated 8,600 U.K. citizens and Afghans from Kabul in recent days, 2,000 of them in the last 24 hours.
But Defense Secretary Ben Wallace conceded that "we're not going to get everybody out of the country" before the U.S.-led mission ends on August 31.
Britain and other allies are pressing President Joe Biden to extend the evacuation past the end-of-the-month date agreed with the Taliban.
But Wallace told Sky News it's unlikely Biden will agree.
The government said one of the evacuees on a British plane turned out to be a person on a U.K. no-fly list.
Wallace said the individual was identified on arrival in Britain was investigated and judged "not a person of interest" to security services.
Norwegian Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soereide says the evacuation deadline in Afghanistan should be extended beyond August 31.
"One of a main concern is that the airport will be closed," Eriksen Soereide told Norwegian broadcaster TV2 on Tuesday morning.
"The civilian part is closed now, so we are completely dependent on the US military operation being maintained in order to be able to evacuate."
She spoke as a plane with 157 people who had been evacuated from Afghanistan landed in Oslo.
So far Norway has evacuated 374 people from Afghanistan.
"There is no guarantee that we will be able to help all Norwegian citizens who want assistance this time around," she told Norway's other broadcaster NRK, adding Norway will continue the evacuation as long as the airport in Kabul is open.
In neighbouring Sweden, Foreign Minister Ann Linde said that she too could not guarantee that they can help all those who want to get out.