WASHINGTON (AP) – The US military is considering “creative ways” to bring Americans and others to Kabul airport for an evacuation from Afghanistan amid “acute” security threats, said officials in the Biden administration, and the Pentagon on Sunday ordered six US airlines to help move evacuees from temporary sites outside of Afghanistan.
A week after the Taliban completed their takeover of the country by entering the capital, US officials expressed growing concern over the threat of an evacuation from the Islamic State group. This concern adds to the obstacles to this Taliban mission, as well as to the bureaucratic problems of the US government.
“The threat is real, it is acute, it is persistent and we are focusing with all the tools in our arsenal,” said President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
He told CNN’s “State of the Union” that 3,900 people had been airlifted out of Kabul on US military flights in the past 24 hours. A US defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity to provide details not yet made public, said those people had made 23 flights in total – 14 on C-17 transports and nine on planes cargo ship C-130.
This is an increase from the 1,600 planes flown on US military jets in the past 24 hours, but it is still well below the 5,000 to 9,000 that the military says it has the capacity to transport on a daily basis. Sullivan also said about 3,900 people were airlifted on non-U.S. Military flights in the past 24 hours.
The Biden administration has given no precise estimate of the number of Americans seeking to leave Afghanistan. Some said the total was probably between 10,000 and 15,000. Sullivan said it was “several thousand.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged the desperate situation at the airport.
“We have seen these heartbreaking scenes of people crowded at the doors. People injured, people killed. It’s an incredibly volatile situation and we’re very focused on it, â€he said on CBS’s“ Face the Nation â€.
The British military said on Sunday that seven more people were killed in the relentless crushing of crowds outside Kabul airport. The US military took control of the airport for evacuations a week ago as the capital fell to the Taliban. But Taliban forces controlling the streets around the airport and the crowds of people gathered outside in the hope of escaping made passage difficult and dangerous for foreigners and their Afghan allies.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told ABC’s “This Week” that as Biden’s August 31 deadline approaches to end the evacuation operation, he will recommend whether he should give more time. Tens of thousands of Americans and others have yet to leave the country by air.
The interview aired on Sunday but was taped on Saturday as other U.S. officials raised concerns about security threats at Kabul airport from militants affiliated with the Islamic State. The U.S. Embassy on Saturday issued a security warning telling citizens not to go to the airport without individual instruction from a U.S. government official. Officials declined to provide further details on the ISIS threat, but described it as significant.
In a notice released on Sunday, the State Department urged those seeking to leave Afghanistan as part of an organized private evacuation effort not to travel to Kabul airport “until you have received specific instructions â€from the organizer of the flight at the US Embassy. The notice says others, including U.S. citizens, who have received specific instructions from the embassy to get to the airport should do so.
Austin said the airlift will continue for as long as possible.
“We’re going to do our best to get everyone out, every American citizen who wants to get out,†Austin said in the interview. “And we have – we continue to look at different ways – in creative ways – to reach and contact American citizens and help them get into the airfield.” He later said that included non-Americans who qualified for the evacuation, including Afghans who had applied for special immigrant visas.
Austin noted that the U.S. military on Thursday used helicopters to move 169 Americans to the airport from the grounds of a nearby hotel in the capital. It is the only reported example of US forces going beyond the airport to secure evacuees, who are often stranded by chaos, violence and crowds at the airfield gates.
A central problem in the evacuation operation is the treatment of evacuees once they reach other countries in the region and in Europe. These temporary stations, especially in Qatar, Bahrain and Germany, sometimes reach their maximum capacity.
In an attempt to mitigate this and free up military planes for missions from Kabul, the Pentagon activated the civilian reserve air fleet on Sunday. The Defense Ministry said 18 planes from six commercial airlines would be directed to ferry evacuees from intermediate stations. Airlines will not serve Afghanistan.
According to the Pentagon, the activation involves three planes each from American Airlines, Atlas Air, Delta Air Lines and Omni Air; two from Hawaiian Airlines; and four from United Airlines.
This is the first time that the civilian airline reserve system has been activated since 2003, when it was used for the Iraq war. Commercial airliners will retain their civilian status, but flights will be controlled by the Army’s Air Mobility Command.
Austin said he couldn’t predict how long it will take the United States to complete the evacuation, which began on August 14.
“In terms of what we’re going to be able to accomplish in the future, you can’t – we can’t put a, you know, a specific number on exactly what we’re going to be able to do, but I’m going to just tell you that we are going to try to exceed expectations, do all we can and take care of as many people as possible, for as long as we can, â€he said.
Afghanistan will be the main topic of discussion when Biden and leaders of the Group of Seven industrialized countries meet virtually on Tuesday.
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Associated Press editors Lolita C. Baldor, Ellen Knickmeyer, Hope Yen, Matthew Lee, and Darlene Superville contributed to this report.
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