Biden said in a speech on Friday (local time) that one will closely follow how the Islamists treat their compatriots and especially women and girls. A Taliban spokesman said they wanted to present plans for the future of Afghanistan within weeks.
One will present ideas of how the country should be governed in the future. A corresponding framework plan will be drawn up by lawyers, clergy and foreign policy experts, said the spokesman.
Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar will also take part in talks about forming a government in Kabul. Baradar has arrived in Kabul and will “meet with jihadist leaders and politicians to form an inclusive government,” said a senior Taliban official. The Taliban leader, who is being traded as a possible new head of government, returned to Afghanistan on Tuesday.
“Strong reaction” from the US
Biden said the US would coordinate with its allies to put international pressure on the Taliban. At the same time, it is in the interests of the Islamists not to turn the Afghans against them. “They are trying to gain a certain legitimacy. They will have to find a way to hold the country together,” said the US President. According to Biden, the US is in contact with the Taliban to ensure access to the airport in the capital, Kabul. If the Islamists disrupt the evacuation operations or attack US troops, there will be a “strong reaction,” he threatened.
“Survival of the fittest”
It is true that Americans would not be stopped at checkpoints on the airport premises. However, the situation around the airport is different. Until you get there, “the survival of the fittest,” said CNN reporter Clarissa Ward, who until recently was one of the few foreign journalists on site and who was also flown out on Friday.
The situation around the airport has been chaotic since the Taliban came to power, and the situation is extremely dangerous. On Saturday, thousands of people besieged the airport in the hope of being able to flee the crisis state. Two Germans were also injured near the site. One of the two has already been flown to Tashkent in Uzbekistan. The other was transportable, but was still in Kabul on Friday evening, according to the German Foreign Office.
In order to avoid the dangerous crowd in front of the entry points, according to US media reports, 169 Americans are said to have been brought by helicopter from a hotel in the immediate vicinity to the airport. But even there, many people had to persevere because the evacuation flights had been stopped in the meantime. According to the US Department of Defense, the reason for this was that there was no longer any capacity in Qatar to handle the arrival and onward travel of other travelers. The USA is therefore trying to win over other countries to temporarily take in people who have flown out of Afghanistan and to organize safe transit.
Evacuations with risk
According to NATO, around 12,000 foreign citizens and Afghans who worked for embassies and international aid groups have been taken out of the country since the Taliban marched into Kabul. “The evacuation process is slow because it is risky. We do not want any clashes with Taliban members or civilians outside the airport,” said an unnamed NATO representative.
Germany had agreed with the US that their troops could use the US military base in Ramstein as a hub for evacuation flights. “In total, as of 11.15 on Saturday, there were around 1,550 evacuees who came with eleven machines,” said a spokesman for the US base of the German press agency. Further flights are also expected in the following days. Their number cannot be precisely determined for the time being. Ramstein is only a stopover – long-term accommodation is not planned, a senior military representative told CNN.
The Kabul-based employees of the World Bank Group and their immediate family members have meanwhile been brought to Islamabad. This is evident from an internal note released on Friday and viewed by Reuters.
The evacuation of the German armed forces continues. On Saturday night, several A400M military aircraft took off again in Kabul to fly those in need of protection to the Uzbek capital Tashkent, as the Bundeswehr wrote on Twitter. The two planes landed safely, according to the Bundeswehr in another tweet on Saturday morning. Eight other people have now been evacuated, it said.
The German Chancellor Angela Merkel admitted that they had misjudged the resilience of the Afghan army. “The army has collapsed at a breathtaking pace,” said Merkel at the start of the Union’s election campaign. “We had assessed the resilience to be stronger,” she adds, referring to the debate as to whether the government should have acted faster.
