Live updates We will get you home Biden promises Americans amid effort to speed Afghanistan evacuations

The United States has begun using additional bases for Afghanistan evacuations, U.S. Central Command confirmed Friday, after an air base in Qatar reached capacity, temporarily halting evacuation flights.

Air Force officials said in a tweet on Friday that preparations also were underway to receive evacuees at Ramstein Air Base in Germany in coming days, and defense officials also are expecting to receive evacuees at bases in Virginia, Wisconsin and Texas.

The Biden administration is under pressure to push its Afghanistan evacuation efforts beyond the Kabul airport after European forces crossed Taliban lines and entered the city to rescue civilians. Access to the airport has been heavily restricted by Taliban fighters who have beaten people trying to flee the country.

President Biden said Friday that the United States has evacuated about 13,000 people from Afghanistan since Aug. 14.

“We will get you home. Make no mistake, this evacuation mission is dangerous and involves risks to our armed forces. And it’s being conducted under difficult circumstances. I cannot promise what the final outcome will be,” the president said in remarks at the White House.

Here’s what to know:

Daily mayhem at the airport continued into Friday as thousands of people attempting to board flights faced beatings by Taliban guards, the crush of heaving crowds, and endless dust and heat.

The Taliban is stepping up its hunt for Afghans who once worked for U.S. or NATO forces, warned a confidential threat assessment drafted for the United Nations. The report comes as German broadcaster Deutsche Welle says a relative of one of its journalists was shot dead.

As the Taliban swept into power across Afghanistan, it captured many millions, perhaps billions, of dollars worth of U.S. military equipment that had once belonged to Afghan forces.

After scenes of chaos and violence in Kabul, discussions at an emergency meeting of NATO foreign ministers on Friday turned to a sobering round of soul-searching, according to diplomats involved in the talks.

Biden assured key allies in June that the U.S. security presence would be maintained in Afghanistan as NATO troops withdrew, prompting Britain to believe it could maintain its Kabul embassy, according to a British diplomatic memo seen by Bloomberg.

Taliban websites operating in five languages go dark Link copied

Five Taliban websites that were key to how the militant group delivered its official messages to those inside and outside Afghanistan abruptly went offline Friday, a sign that moves to limit the Taliban’s online reach were gaining traction.

It was not immediately clear who or what took the Taliban sites offline, though all five previously had protection from CloudFlare, a San Francisco-based company that helps websites deliver content and defend against cyberattacks. The company did not respond to a request for comment Friday on whether it was still protecting the Taliban sites, which had versions in Pashto, Dari, Arabic, Urdu and English. All were offline Friday afternoon.

SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors online extremism, said numerous WhatsApp groups used by the Taliban also had been shut down by Friday. WhatsApp, an encrypted chat service used widely in much of the world, is owned by Facebook, which has banned official Taliban accounts from its services.

WhatsApp spokesperson Alison Bonny declined to comment on whether the company had taken new action against the Taliban on Friday, but she reiterated previous Facebook company statements on the subject generally: “We’re obligated to adhere to U.S. sanctions laws. This includes banning accounts that appear to represent themselves as official accounts of the Taliban. We’re seeking more information from relevant U.S. authorities given the evolving situation in Afghanistan.”

International community holds off on recognizing the TalibanLink copied

Countries around the world â€" some more reluctantly than others â€" are accepting a new political reality with the Taliban as the ruling power in Afghanistan, though they’re stopping short of officially recognizing the group’s governance and are placing aid packages on hold.

Some governments have signaled that financial assistance and symbolic acceptance â€" a validation of legitimacy that President Biden has said he’s not sure the Taliban even wants â€" could follow if its leaders show they can respect human rights.

The varying degrees of welcome in the days since the militants swept to power in Kabul has illustrated the sharp divisions between U.S. allies and adversaries â€" a preview of the international tussle as a new and uncertain diplomatic dynamic takes hold in relation to Afghanistan.

Americans rescued by Army helicopter from hotel near Kabul airportLink copied

The U.S. military rescued 169 Americans from a hotel near Kabul airport on Thursday in an expansion of the U.S. military’s operation to evacuate Americans from Afghanistan after the fall of the Kabul government to the Taliban.

The Americans were at the Baron Hotel, which is near the airport, a U.S. official familiar with the situation said. The official said the operation, carried out with Chinook helicopter flights, was the only Defense Department mission of its kind so far.

The operation came after days of European commandos traveling into Kabul to rescue civilians and take them back to the airport for flights home, and as thousands of people have choked streets around the airport in a chaotic and sometimes violent situation. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, asked about the possibility of more U.S. rescue operations, did not rule them out.

The rescue was disclosed by President Biden during remarks at the White House on Friday. He said the Americans “got over the wall and into the airport using military assets,” without mentioning helicopters.

“We’re considering every opportunity and every means by which we could get folks to the airport,” Biden said.

Khalil Haqqani, one of America’s most wanted terrorists, welcomed in KabulLink copied

Khalil al-Rahman Haqqani, sought by the United States for his ties to al-Qaeda terrorist operations, was greeted in Kabul with boisterous cheers, according to reports Friday.

With U.S. troops at the Kabul airport pressed to evacuate people, Haqqani greeted fans at a mosque miles away, out of the grasp of Americans. He’s on the U.S. and United Nations wanted terrorists lists.

Haqqani, a leader of the Haqqani Network, a Taliban-affiliated militant group tasked with security in Kabul, assured the crowd that security was a top priority, the New York Times reported.

“If there is no security, there is no life,” Haqqani said. “We will give security, then we will give economy, trade, education for men and woman. There will be no discrimination.”

At one point, Haqqani told a Times photographer that journalists and women would be safe amid the Taliban takeover.

“We have good intentions,” he said.

Haqqani has fundraised on behalf of the Taliban, according to the United States. His family’s network reportedly aided Osama bin Laden’s escape from Afghanistan, offering al-Qaeda fighters safe haven, training and more. Haqqani is the brother of Jalaluddin Haqqani, who founded the network, and nephew of Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban’s deputy leader.

Americans prepare to welcome thousands of Afghan refugees, even as political rhetoric heats upLink copied

As divisions emerge among some Republicans in Washington over how to handle the refugee crisis in Afghanistan, resettlement groups have been inundated with calls from ordinary Americans seeking to assist the waves of Afghan citizens who have begun arriving in the United States.

Several governors across the political spectrum have joined the effort with offers of aid and messages that refugees are welcome in their states, a sharp contrast to some conservatives who warned that the crisis could spark an “invasion” of unvetted refugees.

Even in Texas, a state divided over immigration policy, advocates say residents have shown strong support for the thousands of refugees expected to land there. A training session scheduled for volunteers Saturday had to be moved online because more than 200 people had signed up â€" despite the state being a coronavirus hot spot.

Key updateAmid Afghan chaos, Vice President Harris heads to Southeast Asia â€" with a stop in VietnamLink copied

Vice President Harris will leave Washington on Friday and head to Southeast Asia for a trip that’s set to include stops in Singapore and Vietnam.

Though the trip was planned well before Kabul fell to the Taliban on Sunday, it will now take place under the shadow of the chaos in the Afghan capital, where U.S. troops continue to stage a tense evacuation at the city’s airport.

Harris will arrive in Singapore on Sunday and head to Hanoi on Tuesday, before returning to the United States two days later.

The tour, first announced in early August, comes amid increasing pressure on U.S. allies in the region from China.

On Aug. 3, Harris deputy national security adviser Phil Gordon told reporters that the trip would be about “strengthening U.S. leadership, expanding security cooperation, deepening economic partnerships, defending the international rules-based order, in particular in the South China Sea, and standing up for our values as we do with all of our friends and partners.”

However, the swift defeat of the Afghan military after President Biden pulled American troops out of the country may undermine that message â€" with the two days in Vietnam, the site of an earlier defeat of a U.S. ally, presenting another complicating factor.

Republicans have bashed the timing of the trip, invoking the 1975 fall of Saigon and the rush to evacuate U.S. diplomats and allies from there as communist troops advanced.

Harris’s trip to Southeast Asia follows a visit in July by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to Singapore, Vietnam and the Philippines. In early August, Secretary of State Antony Blinken attended a series of virtual ministerial meetings with officials from Southeast Asian nations.

“She’ll make clear throughout this trip that we have an enduring commitment to this region,” a senior administration official told reporters Thursday.

NATO warns Taliban against allowing terrorists safe haven in AfghanistanLink copied

NATO said Friday that it has suspended all support to Afghan authorities and warned the Taliban against allowing Afghanistan to again become a safe haven for terrorists.

The alliance’s foreign ministers released a statement after a crisis meeting to discuss the Taliban’s rapid takeover of the country.

NATO troops were involved in combat and noncombat roles in Afghanistan, including a recent mission to train and assist Afghan security forces.

“Under the current circumstances, NATO has suspended all support to the Afghan authorities,” the statement said, adding that the “immediate task” was to safely evacuate citizens and at-risk Afghans who assisted the mission.

“For the last twenty years, we have successfully denied terrorists a safe haven in Afghanistan from which to instigate attacks,” the statement said. “We will not allow any terrorists to threaten us.”

But it remained unclear what type of action NATO members were prepared to take.

At a briefing following the meeting, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that there were “hard questions” member nations would need to ask themselves about the mission in Afghanistan and that he intends to “conduct a thorough assessment of NATO’s engagement” there.

“We were clear-eyed about the risks of withdrawing our troops,” Stoltenberg said. “But the speed of the collapse of the Afghan political and military leadership and armed forces was not anticipated.”

Putin says war in Afghanistan was a failure, warns against increase in terrorismLink copied

MOSCOW â€" Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed concern Friday about the risk of terrorists from Afghanistan infiltrating neighboring countries, including those passing themselves off as refugees.

Putin, making his first public comments about Afghanistan since the Taliban took control of Kabul, said the 20-year United States-led mission was a failure and should serve as a warning to NATO and Western countries not to interfere in the political and social systems of other countries. He was speaking at a joint news conference in Moscow with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Merkel also warned of the risk of terrorism emanating from Afghanistan, noting that the 20-year fight against terrorism in Afghanistan began after al-Qaeda launched the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks from that country.

“The goal was to fight terrorism, so it has definitely had some positive outcomes, but the international community now needs to fight the possible resurgence of terrorism in Afghanistan as well,” she said.

Putin has had numerous phone calls in recent days with the leaders of countries neighboring Afghanistan, while Russia is engaged in month-long military exercises with Tajikistan’s forces, near the border of Afghanistan. Tajikistan has expressed its readiness to accept 100,000 refugees from Afghanistan, but the Taliban controls areas bordering Tajikistan, making it difficult for people to reach the border and cross.

“Of course we cannot say the mission has been successful,” Putin said of the U.S.-led effort. He said it was crucial not to allow Afghanistan to break up. “The Taliban movement currently controls virtually the entire territory of the country, including its capital. These are realities, and we should act based on these very realities, not allowing the Afghan state’s breakup,” he said.

Merkel said the mission had failed in its broader objective of improving the future for Afghanistan’s people.

“We did not want to impose our position on anyone but we could see for ourselves that women and girls in Afghanistan were really happy to finally get the chance to go to school, and now that this chance might be taken away from them, they are disappointed,” she said.

She said it was important to negotiate with the Taliban to secure the evacuations of those who need to leave the country for their own safety.

Key updateServiceman who lifted baby over barbed wire at Kabul airport is U.S. Marine, spokesman saysLink copiedA baby was passed over razor wire into the hands of a U.S. Marine guarding Kabul airport on Thursday as anxious crowds mobbed the perimeter. (Reuters)

The uniformed serviceman shown in a video lifting a baby over a razor-wire barrier outside the Kabul airport is a U.S. Marine with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, a spokesman said Friday.

The unit is there to help secure the airport as the United States and other nations evacuate thousands of Afghans seeking to flee a Taliban takeover.

Footage emerged Thursday of an Afghan man handing his crying infant to what appeared to be a U.S. serviceman as anxious crowds mobbed the airport perimeter in hopes of securing a flight.

In the video, the Marine reaches down and grabs the red-faced baby by the arm, lifting it up and over the barrier as someone else can be heard yelling in English: “Baby! Baby!”

“I can confirm the uniformed service member depicted in the video is a Marine with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit,” Marine Corps spokesman Maj. Jim Stenger said.

“The baby seen in the video was taken to a medical treatment facility on-site and cared for by medical professionals,” Stenger said.

In a second statement, Stenger said the baby was reunited with their father and is safe at the airport.

“This is a true example of the professionalism of the Marines on site, who are making quick decisions in a dynamic situation in support of evacuation operations,” he said.

The images spoke to the sheer chaos and desperation of many Afghans who fear life under the Taliban or believe they will be specifically targeted by the militants for having worked with U.S. or NATO forces.

According to NATO, more than 18,000 people have been evacuated from Afghanistan since Sunday.

Biden pushes back on claim that allies are criticizing the Afghanistan withdrawalLink copied

Biden pushed back on the idea that U.S. allies are criticizing his decision to withdraw from Afghanistan after nearly two decades of attempting to build a democracy in the country, which is now under the control of the Taliban.

When asked Friday about criticism from global partners who questioned the wisdom of Biden’s decision, the president said he was not aware of those critiques and in fact claimed to have support from allies.

“I have seen no question of our credibility from our allies around the world,” he told reporters. “I’ve spoken with our NATO allies. We spoke with NATO allies, the secretary of state, our national security advisers have been in contact with his counterparts throughout the world and our allies.”

“The fact of the matter is, I have not seen that,” Biden said. “Matter of fact, the exact opposite. I’ve got the exact opposite thing. … We’re actually committing to what we said we would do.”

U.S. allies have complained that they were not fully consulted on the policy decision that could put their own national security interests at risk. They claim that this is not in alignment with Biden’s promises to recommit to global engagement after the Trump administration.

“Whatever happened to ‘America is back?’ ” Tobias Ellwood, chair of the Defense Committee in the British Parliament, previously told The Post, using the language Biden had chosen to express his interest in rebuilding alliances with countries who felt neglected under the previous administration.

“People are bewildered that after two decades of this big, high-tech power intervening, they are withdrawing and effectively handing the country back to the people we went in to defeat,” he added. “This is the irony. How can you say America is back when we’re being defeated by an insurgency armed with no more than [rocket-propelled grenades], land mines and AK-47s?”

Biden vows to evacuate every American who wants to leave, acknowledges risks of missionLink copied

As he delivered remarks from the East Room of the White House, Biden vowed that the U.S. military would evacuate any American who wants to be evacuated but acknowledged the risks involved.

“Let me be clear,” he said. “Any American [who] wants to come home, we will get you home.”

Biden said his administration has been in “constant contact” with the Taliban, working “to ensure civilians have safe passage to the airport.”

“We made clear to the Taliban that any attack, any attack on our forces or disruption of our operations … will be met with swift and forceful response,” Biden said.

He acknowledged that the evacuation mission is “dangerous and involves risks to our armed forces.”

“It’s being conducted under difficult circumstances,” he said. “I cannot promise what the final outcome will be or … that it will be without risk of loss. But as commander in chief, I can assure you that I will mobilize every resource necessary.”

Biden says 13,000 people have been evacuated from Afghanistan by U.S. military since Aug. 14 Link copied

In remarks at the White House on Friday afternoon, President Biden said 18,000 people have been evacuated from Afghanistan by the U.S. military since July, including 13,000 who have been airlifted since Aug. 14.

The figures include “American citizens, third-country civilians, Afghan allies and vulnerable Afghans,” Biden said.

The United States, Biden added, has made “significant progress” since Monday and has now “secured the airport” in Kabul, allowing the resumption of civilian and nongovernmental organization charter flights as well as military flights.

“We paused flights in Kabul a few hours this morning to make sure we can process the arriving evacuees at the transit points,” Biden added. “But our commander in Kabul has already given the order for outbound flights to resume. Even with the pause, we moved out 5,700 evacuees yesterday.”

Afghan teenage soccer player died falling from U.S. transportLink copied

An Afghan soccer player from the national youth team plummeted to his death after trying to flee Kabul earlier this week by clinging to a U.S. military plane taking off from the airport.

Thousands of people ran out to the tarmac desperate for a flight out of Afghanistan after Taliban militants took control of the capital in the wake of the U.S. military withdrawal.

Harrowing images showed hundreds of people running alongside a U.S. plane that was moving along the runway. Viral videos appeared to show two people falling from a departing U.S. Air Force C-17 on Monday.

The country’s sport authority identified Zaki Anwari as one of the people who fell from a plane. The national news agency also reported his death.

Human remains were also found in the wheel well of a C-17 plane that departed Kabul airport on Monday, according to three people familiar with the issue.

Afghans in the U.S. confront post-withdrawal politicsLink copied

HAYWARD, Calif. â€" On Wednesday evening, more than 200 people filled the lawn in front of City Hall here, protesting the Taliban’s conquest of Afghanistan. They waved the green, red and black flag that the country’s new rulers had torn down, and held signs calling for sanctions on Pakistan.

“How many Afghans do we have here?” asked Democratic City Council member Aisha Wahab, the first Afghan American woman ever elected to political office in the Bay Area. Nearly every hand went up.

California’s Bay Area is home to more Afghan refugees than any other part of the country. The collapse of the U.S.-backed government in Kabul led to a scramble by local Afghans, charities focused on refugee resettlement and local Democrats who are working to bring into the country Afghans who worked with the U.S. military or who have family already in the United States.

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