The president added, “I was not going to extend this forever war, and I was not extending a forever exit.”
“It was time to end this war,” Biden said.
Biden’s comments came after celebratory gunfire from the Taliban echoed across Kabul, capping the militant group’s victory in a 20-year war with the United States. One of the Taliban’s top officials, however, cautioned its fighters to be careful in how they treated the local population and called for international investment and national unity in the country.
“I invite you all to come and invest in Afghanistan,” said Zabihullah Mujahid at a speech at the airport. “Your investments will be in good hands. The country will be stable and safe.” He added that after years of war and invasion, “the people do not have more tolerance” for further violence.
The Taliban’s senior leadership has held multiday talks as the group works to forms a government.
Here’s what to know
After Cruz slams Biden for departure, Castro accuses Republican of not doing enough to help evacuations
After Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) criticized President Biden’s handling of the U.S. departure from Afghanistan, Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.) on Tuesday accused the Republican of not offering enough assistance to Texans who had reached out to his office seeking help to evacuate families from Afghanistan.
“Several callers indicated that they had reached out to Sen. Cruz’s office without a response or — what they felt to be — an earnest effort to help,” Alex Sarabia, a Castro spokesperson, said in a Tuesday statement to The Washington Post. Sarabia added that the congressman’s office had received calls and emails from individuals desperate for help in evacuating families, including American citizens, from Afghanistan in the past two weeks.
A spokesperson with Cruz’s office declined to comment.
Cruz on Monday slammed the president’s decision to depart from Afghanistan and end America’s longest war, while there are still between 100 and 200 Americans in the Taliban-controlled country. CNN correspondent Clarissa Ward reported she had encountered a Texas family of four, who she said had gone to the Kabul airport for two weeks and failed to leave.
“America doesn’t leave Americans behind,” Cruz tweeted, saying it was “horrifying.”
The White House said that officials are still in touch with Americans who have remained in Afghanistan and would be available to assist them if they wanted to leave.
In response, Castro called Cruz’s remarks “interesting.”
“I got several calls to my office from Texas families saying your office wouldn’t help them get families out of Afghanistan so they were calling a Texas congressman instead,” the congressman tweeted.
Biden administration in touch with Americans choosing to remain in Afghanistan for now
The White House said Tuesday that officials are still in touch with Americans who have remained in Afghanistan and would be available to assist them if they wanted to leave.
“We are in touch with a number of these Americans, not everyone, perhaps, but we are in touch,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at the daily news briefing. “We are in touch with as many of them who we can make contact with through a range of means.”
White House aides are getting daily updates on the range of options available to help those remaining in the country depart if they choose to do so.
“Some of that may be over land, over borders, some of that may be through airplanes,” Psaki said. “And so we’re working again with the Qataris and the Turks on that. We’re working to get the civilian side of the airport operational.”
The reasons why some Americans have chosen to remain in the country vary from possessing dual citizenship to wanting to remain with family members who might not be eligible to leave.
Earlier Tuesday, Biden placed the number at 100 to 200 Americans after more than 5,000 were evacuated.
“Most of those who remain are dual citizens, longtime residents, but earlier decided to stay because of their family roots in Afghanistan. The bottom line, 90 percent of Americans in Afghanistan who wanted to leave were able to leave. And for those remaining Americans, there is no deadline. We remain committed to get them out if they want to come out,” the president said in remarks at the White House.
Psaki said there was growing concern among Taliban leaders of a potential brain drain. “If they allow some of these people out, the doctors, the lawyers, the people who have been trained by the Americans over the last 20 years, not to mention people in Afghanistan who could cause trouble for the Taliban if they were able to essentially go into exile and oppose the Taliban government,” she said.
Taliban supporters stage a mock funeral to mark U.S. departure
Celebrating the completion of the U.S. departure from Afghanistan, Taliban supporters gathered Tuesday to hold a mock funeral procession alongside makeshift coffins draped in American flags, Reuters reported.
Tightly packed crowds looked on as some people held up fake caskets wrapped in different flags, including those of the United States, France, Britain and NATO, photos published by Reuters show. Music blasted over loudspeakers, and some held up phones to record the procession in the eastern city of Khost. Others held up firearms, videos of the gathering show.
“August 31 is our formal Freedom Day. On this day, American occupying forces and NATO forces fled the country,” Taliban official Qari Saeed Khosti told local television station Zhman TV, according to Reuters.
The fake funeral was part of celebrations held across the nation to mark the last U.S. troops leaving Afghanistan and the end to the 20-year war in the country. As soon as thelast U.S. service member departed Kabul — sometime before 11:59 p.m. Monday — gunfire rang out in celebration.
“The last American soldier left Kabul airport … and our country gained full independence,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid tweeted. “The sounds of gunfire in Kabul are shots of joy.”
In defense of decision to end war, Biden focuses on global rise of terrorism
President Biden said Tuesday that it was necessary to end the war in Afghanistan to focus on the biggest terrorism threats of today and tomorrow. But he warned the Islamic State that the United States would not end its fight against the terrorism organization’s influence.
The president made the decision to fully pull American troops out of the country after 20 years of fighting, arguing that it was difficult to justify the benefits of continuing to occupy Afghanistan.
“It was time to end this war,” he said. “This is a new world. The terror threat has metastasized across the world, well beyond Afghanistan.”
Biden called the move “the best decision for America” and praised those involved with evacuating more than 120,000 Americans and allies to safety over a relatively brief time.
But the president said the U.S. commitment to tackling terrorism abroad was not over. He spoke about the rapid spread of terrorism in East Africa, the Middle East and other countries requiring more attention than the United States had previously provided.
“The fundamental obligation of a president, in my opinion, is to defend and protect America, not against threats of 2001 but against the threats of 2021 and tomorrow,” he said.
The way the United States combats terrorism in the next decade will require an approach that differs from those employed in years past, the president said, because of how terrorism now manifests itself.
“The threat from terrorism continues in its pernicious and evil nature,” he said. “But it’s changed, expanded to other countries.”
“Our strategy has to change, too,” Biden added. “We will maintain the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan and other countries. We just don’t need to fight a ground war to do it.”
The U.S. soldier whose boots were the last on the ground in Afghanistan
After nearly 20 years of continuous U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, an Army general ascended the ramp of a transport plane sometime before 11:59 p.m. Monday, closing the chapter on U.S. involvement in the country’s longest war.
Army Maj. Gen. Christopher T. Donahue, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, was the last service member with his feet planted on Afghan soil, officials said, before boarding a C-17 transport plane with Ross Wilson, the top diplomat in Kabul until shortly after his departure.
Donahue was photographed in night-vision green — evoking the way Americans fought in Afghan darkness — as he carried an M4. Other aircraft, including drones and fighter jets, flew overhead to protect the last departing flights, Pentagon officials said.
‘I was not extending a forever exit’: Biden defends U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and airlift mission
In remarks at the White House on Tuesday afternoon, President Biden defended his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan and his handling of the evacuation effort, calling the mission to extract more than 120,000 Americans and Afghan allies an “extraordinary success.”
“I was not going to extend this forever war, and I was not extending a forever exit,” Biden said.
The president also defended his decision to set Aug. 31 as the withdrawal date, arguing that it was not an “arbitrary deadline.”
“It was designed to save American lives,” he said.
The president added that about 100 to 200 Americans remain in Afghanistan and that the United States will continue to try to get them out of the country.
Biden has faced criticism, with some Republicans arguing that the United States should have kept a military presence in Afghanistan. In strong terms, Biden rejected that notion, insisting that war takes a toll no matter the level of conflict: He pointed out that 18 veterans die by suicide every day in the United States.
“There’s nothing low-grade or low-risk or low-cost about any war,” Biden said.
The president underscored that his predecessor, Donald Trump, negotiated a deal with the Taliban that included a deadline for U.S. withdrawal. Biden said that he took responsibility for his decision as commander in chief and that his military leaders were in agreement.
“I refuse to continue a war that was no longer in the service of the vital national interest of our people,” Biden said.
Most Americans favor troop withdrawal but criticize Biden’s performance, survey shows
A recent survey showed divided views on U.S. troop withdrawal. A majority (54 percent) of U.S. adults said the decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan was the right one, while 42 percent say it was the wrong decision, a recent Pew Research Center report showed. The survey was conducted between Aug. 23 and 29. The U.S. military pullout was completed Aug. 30.
Sixty-nine percent of respondents said that the United States mostly failed in achieving its goals in Afghanistan. Twenty-seven percent said the nation succeeded.
Respondents also viewed the Biden administration’s handling of the Afghanistan situation critically. Forty-two percent of people rated the job the Biden administration has done handling the Afghanistan situation as “poor.” Twenty-nine percent responded that the administration handled it as “only fair,” 21 percent as “good,” and 6 percent said “excellent.”
The survey noted that partisanship was evident in most attitudes on the U.S.'s handling of Afghanistan. While 7 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents rated the Biden’s administration’s performance on Afghanistan positively, closer to half (43 percent) of Democrats and those who are Democratic-leaning say the administration has done an excellent or good job.
Partisan differences were most stark on withdrawal: Most Democrats (70 percent) say they support the decision to withdraw U.S. forces, while most Republicans (64 percent) say it was the wrong decision.
Pew noted that most of the survey was conducted before the Aug. 26 bombing that killed 13 U.S. service members and around 169 Afghans — though it noted little overall change in attitudes after the attack.
For Biden, ‘forever war’ isn’t over — just entering a new, perilous phase
But for President Biden, the end of the “forever war” is more of an inflection point than an actual conclusion. The departure of forces kicks off a new phase of the United States’ entanglement in Afghanistan that could also prove perilous — and no less challenging.
Biden and his team now have to grapple with deep skepticism over whether the Taliban will keep its promises for a peaceful transition. It pledged not to seek revenge on the Afghans who worked with and aided Americans during the conflict, and to respect the rights of women — at least within the framework of the group’s interpretation of Islamic law. But many foreign policy experts and even Biden allies remain mistrustful of what, exactly, that means.
National security threats remain, such as whether a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan will again become a haven for terrorists eager to attack the United States.
Roughly 1,250 Canadian citizens and their family members left behind in Afghanistan
TORONTO — Canadian officials said Tuesday that roughly 1,250 Canadian citizens and their family members were left behind in Afghanistan — the first such estimate provided to the public — while adding that they would resettle 5,000 Afghans evacuated by the United States.
“We’re pulling out all the stops to help as many Afghans as possible who want to make their home in Canada,” Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino told reporters at a news conference.
Amid pressure from veterans and advocacy groups, Canada last month announced that it would resettle Afghans who aided Canada’s war effort or its diplomats and their families. It estimated that 6,000 people might be eligible for resettlement under the program.
Canadian officials said last week that the country had evacuated about 3,700 people from Kabul before its evacuation mission ended, including about 2,000 Afghans — far short of the number eligible — in an effort that drew criticism from advocates for being haphazard.
Canada insists that its rescue mission is not over and that it is working with allies on other ways to facilitate the evacuation of vulnerable Afghans, though they might need to make their way to third countries first.
Foreign Minister Marc Garneau said he would be speaking to officials from countries neighboring Afghanistan to facilitate the entry of those left behind. He also said that he is pushing the Taliban to allow those with valid travel documents to leave Afghanistan.”
Afghans with travel documents to other countries must be allowed to move safely and freely out of the country without interference,” Garneau said. “Canada and its allies are firm on this point.”
Analysis: No, the Taliban did not seize $83 billion worth of U.S. weapons
“ALL EQUIPMENT should be demanded to be immediately returned to the United States, and that includes every penny of the $85 billion dollars in cost.”
— Former president Donald Trump, in a statement, Aug. 30
We don’t normally pay much attention to claims made by the former president, as he mostly just riffs golden oldies. But this is a new claim. A version of this claim also circulates widely on right-leaning social media — that somehow the Taliban has ended up with $83 billion in U.S. weaponry. (Trump, as usual, rounds the number up.)
The $83 billion number is not invented out of whole cloth. But it reflects all the money spent to train, equip and house the Afghan military and police — so weapons are just a part of that. At this point, no one really knows the value of the equipment that was seized by the Taliban.
What we lost in Afghanistan: Readers share their sacrifices from 20 years of war
Twenty years after the United States launched its longest war, militants are back in control in Afghanistan. The Taliban’s rapid return to power — beamed across television, computer and smartphone screens around the globe — was deeply personal for many who fought in the war, who helped the country rebuild or were forced to flee amid the violence.
Their stories, shared in interviews, illustrate the ongoing, everyday impact of the war in Afghanistan on people spanning continents and communities. The war has left a mark on people who, despite being worlds apart, are bound by the same feeling — an overwhelming sense of personal sacrifice. Here’s what they lost.
Taliban’s shadowy supreme leader presided over three-day leadership meeting in Kandahar
The Taliban’s senior leadership held a three-day meeting this week in Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-largest city and birthplace of the extremist group.
Earlier in the week, reports circulated that Haibatullah was in Kandahar, stirring speculation. The extremist cleric has not been publicly seen in years.
The meetings concerned the “current political, security and social issues of the country,” Mohammad Naeem, spokesman for the Taliban’s political office in Qatar, said Tuesday on Twitter.
He added, “At the end of the meeting, the esteemed leader of the Islamic Emirate [Haibatullah] gave comprehensive instructions to the members of the council and made them all aware of their responsibilities.”
Since Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled Kabul on Aug. 16, it has remained unclear exactly what kind of government the Taliban will preside over.
The group has pledged to make unifying the war-torn country a central aim, but its record of brutal repression and gender-based violence has left many Afghans fearful of its return to power. Others have welcomed the Taliban as an alternative to the U.S. military presence and to the corruption that flourished under the Western-backed government.
An Afghan politician spent her life working for women’s rights. She barely made it out of the country.
Fawzia Koofi spent years fighting for women’s rights in Afghanistan. She survived at least two assassinations attempts and then last year, sat face-to-face with Taliban leaders to negotiate the country’s future.
But the former Afghan legislator, who once hoped to run for president, finally left Kabul Monday night on one of the last evacuation flight, despite the Taliban militants who had put her under house arrest — and who now control her home.
Hours after landing in the gulf nation of Qatar, Koofi said the Afghanistan now felt unsafe but the outspoken Taliban critic pledged she would one day return.
“It was heartbreaking to see how everything collapsed,” she said in a BBC radio interview on Tuesday.
Senate passes measure to expand temporary assistance to Americans returning from Afghanistan
During a minute-long pro forma session Tuesday morning, the Senate unanimously passed a measure that will increase funding available to provide temporary assistance to Americans returning from Afghanistan.
H.R. 5085, the Emergency Repatriation Assistance for Returning Americans Act, was approved by the House last month. It expands the pool of funding for temporary aid to Americans evacuated from Afghanistan, generally for 90 days after their arrival.
The aid may include “money payments, medical care, temporary billeting, transportation and other goods and services necessary for the health or welfare of individuals,” according to the Social Security Act, which the legislation amends.
Vice President Harris was presiding Tuesday morning in her role as president of the Senate when the measure was passed.
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