August 17, 2021, Afghanistan-Taliban news

An Australian evacuation flight retrieving people from Afghanistan arrived in the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday, according to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

There were 26 people onboard the Royal Australian Air Force C-130 including Australian citizens, Afghan nationals with visas and one foreign official working in an international agency, Morrison added.

This is the first of an undisclosed number of Australian evacuation flights.

On Monday, the Australian military said it will be deploying more than 250 personnel “to support urgent Australian Government efforts to evacuate Australian citizens and visa holders from Afghanistan.”

CORRECTION: This post has been updated to reflect that the flight landed in the UAE.

Srosh, a former translator and interpreter for the US military in Afghanistan, came to the United States as refugee six years ago. His family remains in his country of birth, but Srosh still works in the United States.

Srosh said the Taliban shot his brother in the face in 2014, in a case of mistaken identity – the terror group thought they had killed Srosh. The Taliban recently burned down his home.

Srosh shared his story with CNN’s Don Lemon. Watch it here:

Sam used to be an Afghan interpreter for the US military. He helped American troops because he thought it would help his home country and because he was promised protection.

Though Sam is now an American citizen and living in the United States, his family remains in Afghanistan. With the Taliban’s takeover, he told CNN’s Chris Cuomo he’s worried about their safety.

Though the Taliban has promised “amnesty” to others after its takeover, details are unclear – and Sam does not believe the terror group will keep its word.

Sam is not his real name. The man requested CNN use a pseudonym to protect his family, who face possible “retribution” now that the Taliban has taken control.

He said getting help has been a logistical nightmare.

Watch Sam’s interview with Cuomo here:

Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville thanked soldiers for their service over the past two decades of war in Afghanistan, calling the sacrifices they’ve made a “lasting legacy of honor and commitment for all to remember.”

McConville tweeted the letter?that he addressed to the force, as well as to family members, veterans, and Americans, Gen. McConville acknowledged how difficult the withdrawal from Afghanistan may be, asking soldiers to check on each other and Army veterans.

The letter is the first public statement from a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff following the fall of Kabul.?

The United States military evacuated evacuated approximately 1,100 US citizens, permanent residents and their families on 13 flights from Afghanistan on Tuesday, a White House official said.

Twelve of those flights were C-17 sorties and one was a C-130.

To date, more than 3,200 people have been evacuated and nearly 2,000 Afghan special immigrants have been relocated to the United States.

The White House expects those daily numbers to escalate.

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan clarified remarks during today’s briefing on if the United States intended to keep troops in Afghanistan until all American citizens and Afghan allies were safely evacuated,?writing, “When I was asked about whether we’re going to get all Americans out of Afghanistan I said ‘that’s what we intend to do’ and that’s exactly what we’ll do.”

Asked during the briefing if US troops would remain in country until the mission was complete, Sullivan told CBS News’ Weijia Jiang, “I’m not going to comment on hypotheticals.?What I’m going to do is stay focused on the task at hand, which is getting as many people out as rapidly as possible.?And we will take that day by day.”?

Pressed in a follow up exchange with another reporter if the US would commit to ensuring that any Americans on the ground in Afghanistan were safely evacuated, Sullivan told reporters at Tuesday’s briefing, “that’s what we’re doing right now.?We have asked them all to come to the airport to get on flights and take them home.?That’s what we intend to do.”

The United States Treasury has taken steps to prevent cash reserves managed by the Federal Reserve and other US banks out of the hands of the Taliban, officials tell CNN — a sign of the government-wide effort underway after the Afghanistan government.?

As the Biden administration struggles to bring order to the chaos in Kabul, the move to effectively freeze assets is one example of something the US government can control.?

The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post reported on the action earlier today.

CNN reported earlier this week that the abrupt collapse of the Afghanistan government on Sunday had raised questions from several veterans of previous administrations about assets of the Afghan Central Bank and whether any of the money could end up in the hands of the Taliban.

The “vast majority” of the Afghan Central Bank assets are not held in Afghanistan, a US official familiar with the matter told CNN. The assets in the US have been essentially blocked by reach of the Taliban.

Separately, a Biden administration official said Sunday that any assets the Afghan government has in the United States will not be made available to the Taliban.

The closed entrance gate of the US Embassy is pictured after the US evacuated its personnel in Kabul on August 15.

American personnel destroyed the?passports of some Afghans when they were getting rid of all sensitive materials at the US Embassy in Kabul in preparation for a full evacuation, according an update that Rep. Andy Kim’s office is sharing with people who request assistance with evacuations from Afghanistan.?

It is unclear why the?passports were destroyed, but it is possible diplomats determined it would have been dangerous for the documents to fall into the hands of Taliban members, who could then target those Afghans.

Not having a?passport?creates major complications for Afghans who are desperately and urgently trying to get out of the country.?

Rep. Tom Malinowski said that the US will have to come up with ways to verify the identity of Afghans whose?passports were burned.

“We are going to have to take people without?passports and vet them in other ways, like with their phone numbers for example. In many cases we know their contact information and their phone numbers and that is how we will have to identify them. Any Afghans braving the trip to the airport will not have wanted to go there with identifying documents, anyway,” Malinowski told CNN.

The US is not protecting the fully evacuated US Embassy in Kabul, but the compound is in a heavily fortified area, according to State Department spokesperson Ned Price.?

The State Department did not respond to a request for comment about the destruction of the?passports.

US military flights on Tuesday “evacuated approximately more than 1,000 people, including 330 U.S. citizens and permanent residents,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement Tuesday.?

This is an increase from the number provided by the administration earlier in the day.

Price said the US has “evacuated more than 3,000 people so far, including our personnel.”?

In his first known call with a foreign counterpart since the fall of Kabul, President Biden has spoken with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, according to read outs from the White House and Downing Street.

The leaders “discussed the need for continued close coordination among allies and democratic partners on Afghanistan policy going forward,” according to the statement from the White House.

The two agreed to have a virtual meeting with G7 leaders next week.

Here’s the full White House readout:

UPDATE: This post has been updated to include the readout from the White House.

The US Air Force Office of Special Investigations is opening an investigation into human remains found in the?wheel well of a C-17 that took off from Kabul’s international airport, the Air Force said in a statement.

The remains were discovered after the plane landed at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.??

The crew made the decision to take off because of the deteriorating security situation at the airport after hundreds of Afghans breached the perimeter and surrounded the C-17. Video of Afghans running with the plane went viral, as did video of appearing to show Afghan civilians falling from the side of the plane in mid-air after desperately trying to hold on.

Note: This is a different flight from the C-17 which was packed with 640 people on board as it flew out. That flight left Sunday night.

Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid, center, gestures as he addresses the first press conference in Kabul onTuesday, August 17.

In the two decades since they were ousted from power, the Taliban have been waging an insurgency against the allied forces and the US-backed Afghan government.

The Taliban are led by Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada, a senior religious cleric from the Taliban’s founding generation.

He was named as the?Taliban’s leader in 2016?after the group’s previous leader, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, was killed in a?US airstrike in Pakistan.

At the time, Thomas Ruttig of the Afghanistan Analysts’ Network?said?the new Taliban leader might be able to “integrate the younger and more militant generation.”

Another key player in the group is?Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a Taliban co-founder and deputy leader. Baradar has arrived in Afghanistan, a spokesperson for the Taliban’s political bureau said Tuesday.

It marks the first time Baradar has set foot in the country for 20 years and comes 11 years after he was arrested in neighboring Pakistan by the country’s security forces.

He was a prominent member of the Taliban regime when it was last in power, and his return will fuel concerns that the nature of the new government will mirror that era. Baradar currently heads the group’s political committee, and?recently met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

Across Afghanistan, people are waiting to find out?what kind of regime they will live under?— and whether those who supported the US-backed government over the past 20 years will face retribution from the Taliban.

After the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996 until 2001, the Sunni Islamist organization put in place strict rules. Women had to wear head-to-toe coverings, weren’t allowed to study or work and were forbidden from traveling alone. TV, music and non-Islamic holidays were also banned.

Through televised briefings, statements and press conferences, Taliban officials made assurances on Tuesday that retribution was not on the cards.

The group’s deputy leader Maulvi Mohammad Yaqub told fighters not to “enter into homes of people or confiscate their cars,” in an audio message distributed widely through Taliban channels.

But those promises have been met with skepticism by the international community, and instances of intimidation have already begun.

Read more about the Taliban and their control of Afghanistan here.

CNN’s Julia Hollingsworth, Rob Picheta, Celine Alkhaldi, Nada Bashir and Nina Avramova contributed to this post.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro?Sánchez?has expressed his government’s intention to temporarily host evacuated Afghan nationals who have worked for the European Union.

The Prime Minister’s remarks come after a virtual meeting of EU foreign ministers to discuss the current situation in Afghanistan.

In an earlier statement, EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said Member States would make?“every possible effort” to ensure the security of all Afghan nationals who have worked with the EU, including offering them shelter within Europe.

John Bass, former US Ambassador to Afghanistan

The State Department is dispatching career diplomat John Bass – who formerly served as US Ambassador to Afghanistan – to Kabul “to lead logistics coordination and consular efforts,” spokesperson Ned Price said Tuesday.

The current top envoy in Afghanistan, Ross Wilson, will remain as well and “will continue to lead our diplomatic engagement.”

Price noted that State Department “staff on the ground is communicating with American citizens in Kabul who are not at the airport with instructions on when and how to get there.”

“We have communicated to the first tranche of American citizens who have requested evacuation assistance,” he said.

“All remaining embassy staff will be assisting departures from Afghanistan and the department is surging resources and consular affairs personnel to augment the relocation of American citizens and Afghan special immigrants, special immigrants and elsewhere, adding personnel to assist with P1, P2 adjudication processing,” he said. “We successfully relocated many of our locally employed staff and are in direct contact with the remainder to determine who is interested in relocation and the process for doing so.”

Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of US Central Command, visited Hamid Karzai International Airport on Tuesday, according to a release from US Central Command.?

Ahead of his visit today, the US general met with Taliban senior leaders in Doha Sunday and cautioned the leaders “against interference in our evacuation, and made it clear to them that any attack would be met with overwhelming force in the defense of our forces,” the release said.??

McKenzie engaged with “US military leaders on the ground” at HKIA today, the release said.

McKenzie said US military air traffic controllers and “ground handlers are rapidly scaling up operations to ensure the smooth flow of military reinforcements to the airport and the evacuation of US and partner civilians in coordination” with the State Department, the release said.?

The airfield is currently secure and “open to civilian air traffic,” the release said.?

US Central Command?oversees US military operations in the Middle East.

Mark Esper during his interview with Christiane Amanpour.

Former Trump defense secretary Mark Esper said that President Biden “owns” the situation unfolding in Afghanistan during an exclusive interview with CNN’s chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour.

“Of course there were more options between the two binary choices presented by the President. Just better planning and extending the timeline and taking a more thoughtful approach and not relying on simple assumptions, would have prevented this disastrous outcome that we’re seeing unfolding… before us right now. It’s a humanitarian crisis that?I fear will grow worse in the coming?days and weeks,” Esper said.

Esper told Amanpour that the Afghan people deserved better leadership over the past 20 years and “to put this all on” Afghan forces is “shifting the blame”.

“We saw them fight with the?United States and allied?support,” he said.

Amanpour pressed Esper on the negotiations the Trump administration started with the Taliban in 2020 and how that impacted the current situation on the ground: “This was started under your?administration, the President?you served.?Can you take us into the?conversations that were underway that even imagined that this?would result in anything other?than what we have seen today?”

Esper said that he ultimately agreed with the overall policy of withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, but added, “Just because negotiations began?under the Trump administration?does not ignore the fact that, again, President Biden owns this situation, implementation of his withdrawal that?we now see unfolding before us.”

Esper continued, “That said, the Trump?administration signed an?agreement with the Taliban in?February of 2020.?It was a political agreement.?It was based on a premise that I,?and many others inside and outside the government, shared and that was that the only?way forward was going to be a?political agreement.?Not a military solution imposed?by the United States and the?Afghan government.?But a political solution and the Taliban signed up to that.”

That agreement included US troop reductions and the Taliban agreeing to make sure Afghanistan does not become a safe haven for terrorists. “I was very clear at the time that this?agreement had to be conditions?based.?That both sides need to meet their?ends of the agreement,” Esper said.

“I thought, that despite it not being a?perfect deal, or great deal, it?was a good enough deal,” he noted.

Esper said that he believed Trump’s continued efforts to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan “undermined the agreement” and that is why he objected to Trump’s push to pull troops by Christmas 2020. Esper said he believed that US forces should not go below 4,500 troops until conditions were met by the Taliban.

“That said, President Biden?coming into office, he was not?necessarily bound to continue the Trump plan.?He was not necessarily bound to?implement the political?agreement.?He could have taken…. a different?path. He could have tried to go back?to the table with the Taliban and renegotiate,” Esper said.

Watch here:

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White House press secretary Jen Psaki speaks during the daily briefing at the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki pushed back against criticism from members of President Biden’s own party on the rapid deterioration of security in Afghanistan, telling CNN’s Kaitlan Collins Tuesday that she would “note and reiterate to anyone who’s a critic that any President has to make difficult choices as commander in chief.”

Psaki told Collins that the Biden administration, “did assess early on, when the President asked for a clear-eyed assessment that there would be impacts, and there would be consequences of making the choice he made,” but acknowledged, as President Biden did during remarks from the East Room Monday, “that this is happened more rapidly than we anticipated here, than anyone anticipated —?I think that accounts for members of Congress and people who are on the ground in Afghanistan.”

Pressed in a follow up, Psaki told Collings that the President still has faith in his national security team, with whom he “works in lockstep.”

A-400M transport aircrafts are seen upon arrival after they evacuated people from Afghanistan at Tashkent International Airport in Uzbekistan on August 17, 2021.?

A second German armed forces aircraft carrying 125 people left Kabul for Uzbekistan on Tuesday, with two further flights scheduled for later in the day, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas confirmed in a news conference in Berlin.

“One hundred more Germans are already in the military-secured area of the airport. The airlift will first lead to Tashkent in Uzbekistan and in the next step to Germany with special Lufthansa flights,” he added.

The German foreign minister said some Afghan workers had faced difficulties passing through Taliban security checkpoints to reach Kabul airport for evacuations flights, but noted that the situation on the ground “has stabilized.”

“With the Bundeswehr soldiers who are on the ground, we have organized a lock together with the United States, a gate at the airport, where the persons concerned can come, be received there and from there be taken to the secured area of the airport,” Maas said.

“The situation is much more dangerous because there is no promise of being let through at the relevant Taliban checkpoints,” he added.

Speaking in a later news conference, German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer confirmed that the German military will operate three evacuation flights a day from Kabul, noting that a further 180 people are still waiting at the airport to be evacuated Tuesday evening.

The defense minister added that Germany’s ambassador to Afghanistan will travel to Doha to begin talks with the Taliban to secure the safe passage of Afghan workers via the German evacuation program.

Uganda will temporarily host 2,000 refugees fleeing the Taliban in Afghanistan after granting a request from the United States government, according to the Minister of State for Relief, Disaster Preparedness and Refugees Esther Anyakun Davina.?

The refugees, who will arrive in batches of 500 at a time, are expected to arrive as early as Tuesday, Davina told CNN. With help from the UN Refugee Agency and other government organizations, the hundreds of refugees will be documented and screened before being resettled elsewhere after three months.

Uganda is Africa’s largest refugee host country, and fourth globally, with 1.4 million refugees, according to the UN Refugee Agency.

US National Security advisor Jake Sullivan speaks during the daily press briefing on the situation in Afghanistan at the White House in Washington, DC on August 17, 2021.

President Biden will speak again on the situation in Afghanistan in the coming days, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Tuesday.?

Biden briefly returned from Camp David on Monday to deliver remarks from the White House and said he stood “squarely behind my decision” to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.?

The President admitted the collapse of the Afghan government and the Taliban retaking control happened more quickly than the US government had anticipated, but insisted that ending America’s 20-year war was the correct decision.

Biden returned to Camp David shortly after his speech on Monday.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the United States government will conduct a “hot wash” review of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, suggesting that the administration may publicly disclose its findings.?

When a reporter at the White House press briefing asked what the administration would do differently, Sullivan said, “We will conduct an extensive hot wash, as we say. We will take a look at every aspect of this from top to bottom. But sitting here today, I’m spending every hour that I have focused how we execute the mission we have for us, which is getting all of these people out.”?

Asked by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins whether the administration would publicly disclose what went wrong in Afghanistan as part of the review, Sullivan said, “I didn’t describe that we were doing a ‘what went wrong’ review. What I said is we’ll do a hot wash. We’ll look at everything that happened in this entire operation from start to finish and the areas of improvement, where we can do better, where we can find holes or weaknesses and plug them as we go forward.”

“And of course, we intend, after we’ve had the opportunity to run that analysis, to share that with people,” he added.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan said that the Biden administration believes that a “fair amount” of the weapons that the US gave to Afghanistan are in the possession of the Taliban, and they don’t expect they will be returned to the US.

President Joe Biden walks from the podium after speaking about Afghanistan from the East Room of the White House, Monday, Aug. 16, 2021, in Washington.

President?Biden hasn’t spoken with any of his foreign counterparts since Kabul fell to the Taliban, his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said on Tuesday.?

Sullivan said other members of the administration were making calls abroad instead because the discussions were more logistical.

Other world leaders have spent the last several days on the telephone with allies. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson have all conferred with each other.

Johnson, meanwhile, has proposed a virtual meeting of the G7.

But Biden has left the calls to foreign allies to those on his team.

“Myself, Secretary (of State Antony) Blinken, several other senior members of the team are engaged on a regular basis with foreign counterparts and we intend to do so in the coming days,” Sullivan said.?

“Right now, the main issue is an operational issue,” he added. “It’s about how we coordinate with them to help them get their people out and we are operating through logistic channels and policy channels to make that happen.”

Asked to explain further why Biden hadn’t conferred with any of his foreign counterparts, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the current matters at hand fell below high-level talks.?

She said Biden would likely place calls to foreign leaders soon.

“If there is a benefit in the president picking up the phone and calling a world leader he will do that and I expect he will do that in the coming days,” she said.

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said?Tuesday that?the Taliban has committed to?allowing?a “safe passage” for civilians heading to the Kabul airport.

“We are in contact with the Taliban to ensure the safe passage of people to the airport,” Sullivan said in his opening remarks at the White House briefing.?

Sullivan added that the administration believes this?commitment?will?last until at least?Aug. 31 and are currently in talks with the Taliban about the future.

“We believe that this can go till the 31st. We are talking to them about what the exact timetable is for how this will all play out, and I don’t want to negotiate in public. I’m on working out the best modality to get the most people out in the most efficient way,” Sullivan said.

Asked later about reports about Taliban-run checkpoints outside of the airport, beatings and whippings for some who try to pass through, Sullivan said they are aware of those reports and concerned but are “taking it up” with the Taliban directly.

Earlier, officials said the US military had evacuated “more than 700 people, including 150 American citizens,” on Monday.

US National security adviser Jake Sullivan said that his “heart goes out to Afghan women?and girls in the country today?under the Taliban,” but the decision to withdraw troops from the ground “wasn’t a choice just?between saving those women and?girls and not saving those women?and girls.”

“The alternative choice had its?own set of human costs and?consequences,” Sullivan said.

“Those human costs and?consequences would have involved?a substantial ramp up of the?American participation in a?civil war with more loss of?life, more bloodshed, families?here in the United States that?would be asking a different form?of the question you just asked,” he told reporters.

“These are the choices a?President has to make,” he added.

Sullivan also noted that while US forces would not be present on the ground in Afghanistan, humanitarian efforts will continue in other capacities.

President Biden, who spent the weekend at Camp David, “worked throughout the entire weekend” monitoring the events unfolding in Afghanistan, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters at Tuesday’s White House briefing.

“I was intimately familiar with his working habits over the course of the weekend, because I was on the phone with him constantly. Secretary Austin was on the phone with him, Chairman Milley, Secretary Blinken, the team in country,” Sulivan told reporters Tuesday when asked why Biden was not at the White House while the Afghan government collapsed.

Biden left for the presidential retreat Friday afternoon, where he spent the weekend. He returned to the White House briefly Monday afternoon, where he delivered remarks, before immediately returning to Camp David Monday night.

Sullivan told reporters at the White House that Biden convened the principals Thursday to discuss “the deteriorating situation on the ground in Afghanistan,” giving the order to flow forces into the region Thursday morning, before, in the following days, “we determined that we would go from step one of that contingency plan, which was about 3,000 troops, to step two of that contingency plan which was about 6,000 troops.”

Former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani makes brief remarks during a meeting with President Joe Biden in the Oval Office on June 25.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan said former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani “is no longer a factor” when discussing the country.

During a White House briefing Tuesday he was asked by a reporter if President Biden felt he had a willing partner in Ghani.

Sullivan replied: “I won’t characterize anything?about president Ghani at this?point who is no longer a factor?in Afghanistan and I don’t think?there is much merit in me?weighing in more deeply on him.”

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan was asked today about evacuation flights and the difficulty for some who are trying to get out of Afghanistan.

Sullivan said that the Biden administration believes that issues are being resolved and “we will be putting?300 passengers on your average?military cargo plane heading out?of the country.”

On people being turned away, he said that “very large numbers” of?people have been able to get to?the airport and present?themselves.?

Sullivan did not say who was behind the beatings.

“We are taking that up in a?channel with the Taliban to try?to resolve those issues and we?are concerned whether that will?continue to unfold in the coming?days,” Sullivan added.?

The evacuation of European Union nationals and Afghan citizens working with the EU is a key priority for the bloc, EU Foreign Affairs Chief Josep Borrell said in a press conference Tuesday.?

“The priority is to ensure the evacuation — in the best conditions of security — of the European nationals still present in the country, and also of the Afghan citizens who worked with us for more than 20 years, if they want to leave the country,” Borrell said.?

Speaking after a virtual meeting of EU foreign ministers, Borrell stressed that the EU will make “every possible effort” to ensure the security of all those who have worked with the EU.?

“We cannot abandon them. We will do – we are doing –??everything we can in order to bring them to and offer them shelter in the European Union’s member states,” Borrell said.?

“The European Union will also pay special attention to those Afghans whose security might now be in jeopardy due to their principled engagement for our common values,” he later added in a written statement.

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters President Biden “is taking responsibility for every decision the United States government took with respect to Afghanistan because as he said, the buck stops with him.”?

“Now, at the same time, that doesn’t change the fact that there are other parties here responsible as well, who have taken actions and decisions that helped lead us to where we are,” Sullivan told reporters at Tuesday’s White House Press Briefing. “So, from our perspective, what we have to do now is focus on the task at hand, the mission at hand,” he added pointing to ongoing efforts to evacuate Americans and Special Immigrant Visa recipients from the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.

In remarks from the White House Monday, Biden told reporters gathered in the East Room, “I will not mislead the American people by claiming that just a little more time in Afghanistan will make all the difference.?Nor will I shrink from my share of responsibility for where we are today and how we must move forward from here. I am President of the United States of America, and the buck stops with me.”

However, Biden also laid some of the blame with the previous administration, pointed to a deal he “inherited” that former President Trump brokered with the Taliban.

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the Biden administration is in contact with the Taliban about the situation in Afghanistan.

Sullivan said that the White House is also?monitoring for any?potential terrorist threats, including from ISIS.

“We intend to continue these?operations over the coming days?before completing our draw down,” he said.

Some more context: Pentagon press secretary John Kirby confirmed at a news conference earlier today that US military commanders have had communication with the Taliban.

“Our commanders in the?operation have had communication?with Taliban leaders,” he said.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan defended the Biden administration’s decision to not evacuate Afghan allies and embassy staff earlier, saying they didn’t want to “trigger a loss of confidence” in the Afghan government.

“There have been questions raised about whether we should have drawn down our embassy and evacuated our Afghan allies earlier. These are reasonable questions,” Sullivan during a news briefing from the White House.

He noted that the administration did “dramatically accelerate the Special Immigrant Visa process and “move out a substantial number of SIV applicants and their families. But the Afghan government and its supporters, including many of the people now seeking to leave, made a passionate case that we should not conduct a mass evacuation less we trigger a loss of confidence in the government.”

Sullivan continued, “Now our signaling support for the government obviously did not save the government, but this was a considered judgment.”

“When you conclude 20 years of military action in a civil war in another country, with the impacts of 20 years of decisions that have piled up, you have to make a lot of hard calls. None with clean outcomes. What you can do is plan for all contingencies. We did that,” he said, citing how the Biden administration prepped military operations to be on the ground for “dire scenarios.”

“As Admiral Kirby?said, even well-drawn plans don’t?survive first contact with?reality and?they require adjustments.?And we’ve made those adjustments,” Sullivan added.

The refugee crisis in Afghanistan is growing as the Taliban take over the country. Since the start of this year, 550,000 Afghans were forced to flee their homes due to internal fighting, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

Now, tens of thousands more are trying to leave the country as many Afghans — especially women and children — fear a resumption of Islamic fundamentalism under the Taliban.

Others, including interpreters who helped the US military fight the Taliban, fear retribution. Afghan journalists who have been covering the war are also at particularly high risk. You can help these refugees through non-profits providing protection, shelter, water and health care both in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

CNN’s Impact Your World has compiled?a list of vetted organizations accepting donations, including; the Global Giving Fund, Committee to Protect Journalists, International Rescue Committee and Women for Woman International.

Silhouettes of US Marines are seen in 2009 in Herat, Afghanistan.

Two Afghanistan veterans said many soldiers?have mixed feelings about how the 20-year conflict in Afghanistan unfolded this week, but they both feel that it was worth it – in the way it benefited the Afghan people and protected the United States from terrorism.

Former Army Ranger and Retired Staff Sgt. Dan Blakeley said “a lot of veterans’ process is different” when it comes to thinking about the conflict. He interviewed dozens of veterans for a book he co-authored about Afghanistan, “The Twenty Year War.”

Blakeley said that while the images coming out of Kabul this week are “gut-wrenching” and “horrifying” he wants veterans, Gold Star families and the American people to know the mission at the time was very important.

Retired Staff Sgt. Tom Amenta, who is also a former army ranger and the other author of “The Twenty Year War,” said he wrestled with the question of if the war was worth it for a long time until one of his friends messaged him and provided a different perspective.

Amenta said she pointed out that in those 20 years there hasn’t been another 9/11-style attack in the United States.

He said she told him “at the end of the day, we?didn’t fear the things that we’re?starting to fear of a resurgence of terrorism in?Afghanistan, of the possibility?of the next 9/11 after seeing?all of this happen – but her point?was we haven’t had to worry?about that for the past 20?years.”

“So from that metric was it worth?it??Yes, it was.?Our job was to go out and root?those people out and try to keep?America safe, and I think that we?did a pretty good job of that,” he added.

Read more about how US veterans are reacting here.

Learn about organizations offering help to veterans troubled by events in Afghanistan here.

A general overview of a market place at the Kote Sangi area of Kabul on August 17.

The busy Kabul street looks almost as if nothing has changed. People rush by, as shopkeepers arrange their colorful merchandise and police direct traffic.

There’s one big change, though: There are almost no women here. Since the?Taliban took over?the Afghan capital on Sunday, women have largely stayed indoors.

The Taliban has repeatedly said that?women’s rights?will be protected under their rule, but it is clear that many Afghan women are terrified by the prospect of life under the Taliban.

Far fewer women are venturing out into the streets now, compared to just a few days ago. Those who do brave the outside world tend to be dressed more conservatively than before, their faces often covered with niqabs, or veils.

Many of the educated, fearless women who spent the last decade building their careers are desperately looking for a way out, worried they may be?targeted by the Taliban.

The woman, who CNN is not naming for security reasons, has worked for a number of international NGOs. She said she has spent days desperately pleading with them for help, but none has responded.

“It is not easy … having more than 10 years experience of working with international [organizations] and not one of them helped me,” she said.

For one clothing store in central Kabul, the Taliban takeover has meant a boost for business; Its owner told CNN he has sold many burqas in recent days.

The garment covers the body from head to toe, with a mesh panel over the eyes. It was mandatory attire for women when the Taliban last ruled in Afghanistan in the 1990s.

Burqas?became a far less common sight in Kabul over the past two decades, but the news that the Taliban is once again in charge has sparked an increase in sales.

Read the full story here.

Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said Tuesday that there would be “no violence against women” in Afghanistan and assured members of the international community that they “should not be concerned” on this matter, but added that they should respect the Taliban’s “core values” on women.

Talking about the rights of women is a change in approach from how the Taliban has approached the issue previously. However, Taliban officials did not go into detail, so the reality of what that will look like remains to be seen.

When the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996, the Sunni Islamist organization put in place strict rules. Women had to wear head-to-toe coverings, weren’t allowed to study or work and were forbidden from traveling alone. TV, music and non-Islamic holidays were also banned under their rule at the time.

“Our sisters and mothers — as has been said in Sharia law, which is our value — women are an important part of society,” Mujahid said today during a televised press conference from Kabul.??

He provided no specific details about what “the framework of Islamic law” meant in their interpretation.

Pressed on whether Afghan women will be able to go to work, Mujahid said that the rights of women will be determined within the framework of Sharia Law.?

“Yes, with regards to women, as I stated earlier, it will be within the framework of Sharia Law. In all sectors in society, where they are required, it will be within this framework,” Mujahid said.?

The events of the last few weeks show a military and political collapse “at a speed which had not been anticipated,” Jens Stoltenberg,?NATO’s Secretary General, said as he expressed?deep sadness over the events unfolding in Afghanistan on Tuesday.

“Parts of the Afghan security forces fought bravely, but they were unable to secure the country, because, ultimately, the Afghan political leadership failed to stand up to the Taliban and achieve the peaceful solution that Afghans desperately wanted,” Stoltenberg told journalists at a virtual press conference.

“This failure of Afghan leadership led to the tragedy we are witnessing today,” he added.?

Stoltenberg also addressed NATO’s engagement in the country, saying it needs an honest assessment.?

He described the dilemma NATO allies faced around the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan. Troops could either leave and risk seeing the Taliban regain control – or stay and risk renewed attacks and an open-ended combat mission, he said, adding, “We never intended to stay in Afghanistan forever.”

Stoltenberg added that while the risk of the Taliban regaining control was clear when the block decided to end its military presence, the speed of the Taliban’s seizure was a surprise. The big question to ask is why the forces, which NATO trained, supported and equipped, weren’t able to stand up to the Taliban in a stronger way, he said.

NATO’s focus currently is to ensure the safe departure of personnel from allied and partner countries as well as Afghan nationals, who have worked for them, Stoltenberg said. Around 800 NATO civilian personnel, working for example in air traffic control, have remained at Kabul’s international airport, working under challenging circumstances, according to Stoltenberg.

“I would like to thank them,”?he said. Operations at the airport are resuming, and allies are sending additional airplanes.

The Secretary General urged the Taliban to respect safe departures of all those wishing to leave.?

An Afghan interpreter who assisted US military and coalition forces on the ground in Afghanistan says he feels abandoned as he struggles to get a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV).

The interpreter, who has fled Afghanistan and spoke to CNN without appearing on camera, remained anonymous as he fears for his safety. He told CNN’s Jim Sciutto that he is afraid the Taliban will attack him.

“I?worked for US coalition Army special?foreign coalition forces… for about ten years.?So I was highly known and?targeted by them.?And the people like me, they are never forgiving them and never forgetting them,” the interpreter told CNN.

He said that if he stayed in Afghanistan, that he would have died. He believes the country will become violent under Taliban rule.

“At night they come to your?houses, they put hand grenades on them, they kill your kids, they kill the interpreters. So the interpreters are the people that they will never forgive them,” he said, noting that the Taliban have been calling interpreters the “most dangerous enemy” because they are the “eyes in front of the US forces.”

The interpreter said that after a lengthy process to get an interview with the US embassy, when he applied for a visa with the embassy, it was rejected.

Watch the interview:

Yesterday, President Biden said that in the coming days the US military will provide assistance to evacuate more Afghans eligible for special immigration visas and their families to the US.

The President on Monday claimed that the reason evacuations of SIV applicants were not conducted sooner — perhaps the biggest criticism his administration has received since announcing the withdrawal — was because some Afghans did not want to leave before the situation became dire. He again sought to blame the Afghan government, claiming its leaders were afraid of the optics.

CNN’s Kevin Liptak, Jeff Zeleny, Kaitlan Collins, Jennifer Hansler and Maegan Vazquez contributed reporting to this post.?

Pakistan’s recognition of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan will come in the form of a “regional decision” according to Pakistan’s minister of information Fawad Chaudhry on Tuesday.?

Chaudhry was speaking at a news conference after a cabinet meeting with Prime Minister Imran Khan. The cabinet meeting was held to appraise all members of the decisions of the National Security Council meeting held on Monday.

During the press briefing, Chaudhry also stressed that Pakistan will not make any decision on recognizing the Taliban regime “in isolation” and that the decision will be a “multilateral one” made “in consultation” with regional and international powers.

Chaudhry also stressed that Pakistan expects the Taliban to follow internationally recognized human rights.

He criticized Ashraf Ghani’s former Afghan government for pushing “only one major ethnic group” in Afghanistan and excluding other groups.?

Chaudhry further said Prime Minister Imran Khan also had a detailed discussion with his Turkish counterpart a day ago on the Afghanistan situation, while the US secretary of state had spoken to Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on the same topic.

There are approximately 5,000 to 10,000 Americans “near Kabul” in Afghanistan, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said during an interview with CNN’s John Berman on New Day.?

“We think there are certainly thousands of Americans. We don’t have an exact count. I would say somewhere best guess between 5 and 10,000 near Kabul,” Kirby said.?

Kirby said Americans in Kabul no longer need to shelter in place. The State Department put out a message “advising those Americans about how to queue up and get to the airport,” Kirby said.

“They can begin movement to the airport for processing flights out,” he added.?

Taliban co-founder and deputy leader Mullah?Abdul Ghani?Baradar?has arrived in Afghanistan, Muhammad Naeem Wardak, the spokesperson for the Taliban’s political bureau, said Tuesday.?

A source with knowledge of Baradar’s movements confirmed to CNN earlier on Tuesday that he had departed from Doha, Qatar, for Afghanistan’s Kandahar province.?

The deputy leader and co-founder of the Taliban movement hasn’t set foot in Afghanistan in 20 years. He currently heads the Taliban’s political bureau.

In 2010 he was arrested in neighboring Pakistan by the country’s security forces and released in 2018 when the US intensified efforts to leave Afghanistan.

Russian Ambassador to Afghanistan Dmitry Zhirnov said he had a positive and constructive meeting in Kabul with representatives of the Taliban on Tuesday.

“There will be no obstacles to the embassy’s activities. There will be no deterioration in status compared to the previous government. All our needs will be met,” he added.

The ambassador stressed that this meeting?was of a purely technical nature. He said the?Taliban representative asked not to disclose his name.

Right now the US does not have a plan to get Afghans in other parts of the country to the airport in Kabul to be evacuated – despite them having previously helped the United States.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said he knows the US has an “obligation” to help these people and their families but “right now our focus is on the airport itself and making sure it stays safe and secure.”

“There is an awful lot that?has to be done in that,” he said.

Kirby said people in other parts of Afghanistan should apply for visas and consult with State Department officials to get themselves enrolled. He said, from there, the US will help them get out of Kabul, but he did not say if there was a plan to help them travel to the capital city.

John Kirby speaks during a news briefing at the Pentagon August 16, 2021 in Arlington, Virginia.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby confirmed at a news conference today that US military commanders have had communication with the Taliban.

Asked by CNN’s Barbara Starr to clarify if US military personnel are the ones talking to Taliban?leaders, Kirby said, “Our commanders in the?operation have had communication?with Taliban leaders.”

Kirby would not get into the details of “how those discussions are progressing,” but said US military leaders are interacting with the Taliban “multiple times a day,” at the airport. Kirby said he would “let the results speak for themselves,” referring to the relative stability that has been established at the airport, allowing military planes to fly in and out since yesterday.

In a follow-up question, Starr asked the Pentagon spokesman if it’s the United States’ 82nd airborne division that is in the command at?the airport and the general is?the one talking to the Taliban, Kirby said, “I’m not going to talk about?specific conversations…or?who is having what” interactions.?

Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor, vice director for logistics of the Joint Staff, said that US troops have not had “hostile interactions” with the Taliban during their departure operations.

“I want to reinforce that we are?focused on the present mission.?To facilitate the safe?evacuation of US citizens, SIV’s and Afghans at risk, to get?them out of Afghanistan as?quickly and as safely as?possible.?That mission has not changed,” he continued.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby reiterated Taylor’s comments later in the briefing, saying the US mission is “about the airport” and there has been ”?no?hostile interactions with the?Taliban on either our people or?our operations.”

Some more context: Violence erupted at the Kabul airport as US forces shot and killed two armed men who fired on them Monday, the Pentagon said, as the US resumed temporarily suspended operations at the airfield after clearing crowds off the runways.

Kirby said yesterday “there is no indication” that the two men killed by US troops were Taliban and added that while the mission at the airport is “not offensive,” US forces “have the inherent right of self-defense.”

CNN’s Barbara Starr, Jason Hoffman and Jennifer Hansler contributed reporting.?

Secretary of State Tony Blinken addressed how “wrenching” it is for?US diplomats to watch what is unfolding in Afghanistan and assured them that?the administration’s top priority is safely getting out the State Department team and Americans as well as doing everything possible to help Afghan partners, in a department-wide memo on Monday.?

Blinken lauded the work US diplomats have done in the country, despite the fact that their efforts may all be eroded as the Taliban take over control of the country.

“In that time, you did what American diplomats everywhere do: you carried out the mission and worked to advance our interests and values, all while building lasting relationships with the country and its people,” Blinken said.

He specifically thanked the US diplomats who remain in Afghanistan.

“Nobody is working harder on this than our team in Kabul.?Under tremendous pressure, they’ve performed with professionalism, courage, and grace.?We’ve asked so much of them, and they’ve consistently exceeded it,” he said.?

But US diplomats have grown increasingly frustrated by how the Biden administration handled the US withdrawal from the country.?

“Home. Angry,” said one who just returned from Afghanistan.

Two other US diplomats who served in Afghanistan said the chaos could have been averted, or at least mitigated, if action had been taken sooner to get people out. While the Biden National Security Council has a lot of meetings, the diplomats said, it doesn’t make many rapid decisions – and in this situation, they believe, valuable time was lost.?

Blinken said that even as the situation in Afghanistan unfolds, US diplomats are busy at work globally, and he thanked them for how they continue to carry out their work.?

US Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor, vice director for logistics of the Joint Staffs, provided an update on the US military operations in Afghanistan right now.

Taylor said yesterday the US military footprint in Afghanistan “started at?about roughly 2,500.”?By the end of today, there?will be more than?4,000 troops on the ground in?Kabul, he said.

He said the Hamid Karzai International Airport airport (HKIA) in Kabul remains “secure.”

“It is currently open for?military flight operations as?well as limited commercial?flight operations,” he added.

Taylor said that throughout the night nine C-17 aircraft?arrived in Kabul delivering equipment and?approximately 1,000 troops.?He said that flights out of Kabul “lifted?approximately 700 to 800?passengers and we can confirm?165 of these passengers are?American citizens, the rest are?a mix of SIV [Special Immigrant Visa] applicants and?third-country nationals.”?

“Right now, we’re looking at one?aircraft per hour in and out of HKIA.?It looks like 5,000 to 9,000?passengers departing per day,” Taylor said.

He added that the US military has had “no hostile?interactions” with the Taliban.

The Indian government announced Tuesday that it had evacuated its entire diplomatic staff from Afghanistan.?

“In view of the prevailing situation in Kabul, it was decided that our Embassy personnel would be immediately moved to India. This movement has been completed in two phases and the Ambassador and all other India-based personnel have reached New Delhi this afternoon,” read the news release issued by the Ministry of External Affairs.?

In a military-operated C-17, the last group of Indians arrived earlier today. The Indian embassy will continue its e-Emergency visa operations for Afghan nationals who are interested in leaving the country for India.?

Commercial operations into Kabul were stalled Monday and the rest of the evacuations were expected to resume once the Kabul airport is open, according to the ministry.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said during a press briefing Tuesday that the body is no longer providing support to the now collapsed Afghan government following the Taliban’s takeover of the country.

“No money is transferred no support is provided to Kabul after the collapse of the government,” added Stoltenberg.

Stoltenberg was answering a question about NATO’s funding of the Afghan national army.

Germany has stopped development aid to Afghanistan, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Tuesday.?

Speaking alongside Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas at a news conference in Berlin, Merkel also confirmed the second Bundeswehr (German armed forces) aircraft has arrived in Kabul to evacuate more people.?

The German military came under criticism earlier on Tuesday after the first flight carried only seven people out of Afghanistan, including five German nationals, one EU national and one Afghan, according to a German military spokesman.

Merkel pointed out Germany and Estonia are working closely with the EU and Nato.

“Germany still wants to help very many people who have helped us,” she said.

Amrullah Saleh speaks at the presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, on August 4, 2021.

The first vice president of Afghanistan’s now toppled government has called on his countrymen to “join the resistance” and show that the country is not like Vietnam.

“We Afghans must prove that Afghanistan isn’t Vietnam and the Taliban aren’t even remotely like Vietcong,” Amrullah Saleh wrote on twitter. “Unlike US/NATO we haven’t lost spirit and see enormous opportunities ahead.”

“Join the resistance!,” he concluded.

Saleh also said it was “futile to argue with the President of the United States on Afghanistan now.”

“Let him digest it,” he added.?

Some more context: Taliban fighters entered Afghanistan’s Presidential Palace hours after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country on Sunday, a milestone in the insurgent group’s assumption of control over capital city Kabul.

The Taliban?had been in talks with Afghanistan’s government over who would rule the nation, following the militant group’s strikingly rapid advance across the country, in which it seized power over dozens of key cities, often with little to no resistance. But those talks are likely to have been upended by the sudden departure of President Ghani.

CNN’s Clarissa Ward, Tim Lister, Angela Dewan and Saleem Mehsud contributed reporting to this post.?

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) released a non-return advisory for Afghanistan on Monday, calling for “a bar on forced returns of Afghan nationals, including asylum seekers who have had their claims rejected.”

At a press briefing in Geneva on Tuesday, UNHCR spokesperson Shabia Mantoo called on States to halt forcible returns of Afghan nationals who were previously considered in no need of international protection.

“States have a legal and moral responsibility to allow those fleeing Afghanistan to seek safety, and to not forcibly return refugees,” said Mantoo. ?

During the briefing, Mantoo expressed concern for women and girls, as well as those perceived to have a current or past association with the Afghan government, international organizations or with international military forces.

According to UNHCR data:

Afghans have seen more than four decades of displacement, constituting one of the largest protracted refugee situations in the world, with and one of the biggest displacement crises in modern history, according to the UNHCR.

Caroline Van Buren, UNHCR’s representative in Afghanistan told CNN’s Robyn Curnow on Sunday that between 20,000 and 30,000 people were leaving the country on a weekly basis.

“But now we’re also seeing a trend of people who are moving in an irregular way, people who are fleeing for their own safety without travel documents and they are much at risk for exploitation,” she continued.

Taliban fighters drive around a market in Kabul on August 17.

Just last week, US intelligence analysts had predicted it would likely take several more weeks before Afghanistan’s civilian government in?Kabul fell to Taliban fighters. In reality, it only took a few short days.

On Sunday, Taliban militants retook Afghanistan’s capital, almost two decades after they were driven from Kabul by US troops.

But who are the Taliban? Formed?in 1994, the Taliban were made up of former Afghan resistance fighters, known collectively as mujahedeen, who fought the invading Soviet forces in the 1980s. They aimed to impose their interpretation of Islamic law on the country — and remove any foreign influence.

After the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996, the Sunni Islamist organization put in place strict rules. Women had to wear head-to-toe coverings, weren’t allowed to study or work and were forbidden from traveling alone. TV, music and non-Islamic holidays were also banned.

That changed after Sept. 11, 2001, when 19 men hijacked four commercial planes in the US, crashing two into the World Trade Center towers, one into the Pentagon, and another, destined for Washington, into a field in Pennsylvania. More than?2,700 people?were killed in the attacks.

The attack was orchestrated by al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who operated from inside of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Less than a month after the attack, US and allied forces invaded Afghanistan, aiming to stop the Taliban from providing a safe-haven to al Qaeda — and to stop al Qaeda from using Afghanistan as a base of operations for terrorist activities.

In the two decades since they were ousted from power, the Taliban have been waging an insurgency against the allied forces and the US-backed Afghan government.

What do the Taliban want? The Taliban have tried to present themselves as different from the past — they have claimed to be committed to the peace process, an inclusive government, and willing to maintain some rights for women. However,?it remains to be seen if they will follow through and deliver on it.

Taliban spokesman Sohail Shaheen said women would still be allowed to continue their education from primary to higher education – a break from the rules during the Taliban’s past rule between 1996 and 2001. Shaheen also said diplomats, journalists and non-profits could continue operating in the country.

“That is our commitment, to provide a secure environment and they can carry out their activities for the people of Afghanistan,” he said.

But many observers worry that a return to Taliban rule is a return to the Afghanistan of two decades ago, when women’s rights were severely restricted. Antonio Guterres, the United Nations secretary-general,?said in a tweet?that hundreds of thousands were being forced to flee amid reports of serious human rights violations.

Read more about the group here.

Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, center, arrives at an international conference on Afghanistan in Moscow, Russia, on March 18, 2021.

Taliban co-founder and deputy leader Mullah?Abdul Ghani?Baradar is returning to Afghanistan, a Taliban source with knowledge of his movements told CNN on Tuesday.

“Mullah Baradar with a number of high-ranking Taliban officials left Doha to Kandahar province of Afghanistan,” the source said, without providing additional details.

The deputy leader and co-founder of the Taliban movement hasn’t set foot in Afghanistan in 20 years. He currently heads the Taliban’s political bureau.

In 2010 he was arrested in neighboring Pakistan by the country’s security forces and released in 2018 when the US intensified efforts to leave Afghanistan.

President Donald Trump and Baradar, who was the Taliban’s chief negotiator, spoke by telephone last year, after the US and Taliban signed a historic agreement in Qatar in March 2020.?Trump called it a good conversation.

“The relationship is very good that I have with the mullah,” Trump said.

“They want to cease the violence, they’d like to cease violence also.”

Baradar also met with China’s Foreign Minister, in Tianjin China in July.

Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee, who was the only member of Congress who voted against the war in Afghanistan in 2001, said the country needs to learn from its mistakes and rebalance who controls diplomacy, development and defense moving forward.

Lee supported President Biden’s decision to withdraw troops and said no one expected the Taliban to take over the capital city of Kabul so quickly.

Now, she said it is important to use “all of our tools” to make sure every American and Afghan ally gets out safely.

“This is a very dire?situation in many ways, it’s an?emergency,” she said. “We?have to use every tool we have?to ensure their safety.?It has to be orderly,” Lee added.

“Our troops did everything we?asked them to do.?They accomplished their goals?and their mission.?Why in the world would we allow?any president to keep our brave?troops in harm’s way for this?long is mind-boggling,” Lee said.

Hear what Rep. Barbara Lee said in 2001:

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Some Taliban leaders have said they “want to see girls education,” while in talks with the United Nations Children’s Fund and partner NGOs, UNICEF Chief of Field Operations?Mustapha Ben Messaoud?said on Tuesday.

The messages from the Taliban are “more or less the same” but with “small differences,” especially in terms of girls’ education, Messaoud told reporters during a UN press briefing.

Taliban officials have held talks with UNICEF and partner NGOs at a number of UNICEF regional offices in Afghanistan over the past days, according to Messaoud.

Addressing the ability for female aid workers and female Afghan staff to continue in their roles, Messaoud said the Taliban has given “mixed, measured answers” but that UNICEF is “cautiously optimistic.”

At least 11 of UNICEF’s 13 field offices in Afghanistan have remained operational since the Taliban took over the country, with the organization currently delivering in “most places,” yet there continues to be “great need” Massaoud warned.?“Half of the population — more than 18 million people, including nearly 10 million children —?need humanitarian assistance.”

UNICEF and aid partners are in “ongoing discussions” with the Taliban and are “quite optimistic” about the future relationship, based on discussions held at UNICEF field offices, Messaoud told the briefing. “We have not a single issue with the Taliban in those field offices.”

President Joe Biden walks from the podium after speaking about Afghanistan from the East Room of the White House on Monday, August 16.

As President Biden receives his national security briefings at Camp David this morning, including updates on evacuation efforts from Kabul, officials at the White House are trying to contain the fallout amid blistering criticism for how the administration was caught so off guard by the swift collapse of the Afghanistan government.

Never in the seven months of Biden’s presidency has the competence of the administration been so intensely questioned, with the President’s defiant and defensive speech on Monday only fueling the concerns, rather than working to allay them.

A senior White House official tells CNN today that “there is no second-guessing of the President’s strategy,” but the official acknowledged that far more had to be done to explain how the crisis escalated and the government was blindsided by the Taliban’s surge. But the official stressed the administration was focused “on looking forward, not looking back.”?

No changes are expected on the schedule of the President, who remains out of public view today. But National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki will take questions at an afternoon briefing at 1:30 p.m. ET.

The White House is also reaching out to allies on Capitol Hill – and beyond – to explain their efforts and try to ease their concerns.

The European Union’s “top priority” remains rescuing Afghans working for the EU delegation and member states, the Commission’s lead spokesperson for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Peter Stano said Tuesday.??

Speaking at a news conference in Brussels, he said: “We are working very intensively, this is the priority right now for us […] to save people who are working for the EU delegation. The same goes for the Member States. Their priorities [are] their own citizens, and ensure the safety of the local population who were working for the diplomatic missions of individual Member States.?

He would not go into details of timelines of evacuations, adding that EU Foreign Affairs chief Josep Borrell — who is meeting with the bloc’s foreign ministers later on Tuesday — has been in touch with his NATO counterparts including US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the issue.

Responding to a question on how Afghanistan will now be classified under?Taliban?rule – for example as a safe, dangerous or developing country — Stano said: “Discussions are taking place at the highest levels” and “the review of all the policies and assessments is ongoing in light of the latest developments in the country.”

Asked if individuals arriving in the EU from Afghanistan in an “irregular way” should be deported, the Commission’s Rule of Law spokesperson Christian Wigand said: “We are working on a comprehensive approach to address the current crisis in Afghanistan.”

He continued: “Such an approach will need to include the need to provide safe and legal pathways for vulnerable people, while addressing risks of irregular migration and ensuring the management of our borders. These elements will need to be discussed at political level in the coming days.”

Pentagon press secretary John?Kirby speaks during a press briefing on August 16.

After the chaos and disruptions at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on Monday, US air operations have resumed on Tuesday, however, the military is still working to ensure that the security is sustainable, Pentagon press secretary John?Kirby said.

Over the last 24 hours, the United States has flown in about 1,000 troops into Afghanistan, bringing the total number of troops to 3,500, he told CNN.

At the same time, 700 to 800 individuals have been flown out of Afghanistan, which includes roughly 150 Americans, Kirby said Tuesday.

Once all the troops are in, military crafts could keep flying in and out of the country, he explained.

Now that the air operations have resumed, Americans present in the country can begin to move to the airport to get a flight out, Kirby said.

The Pentagon press secretary was not able to give specific numbers for how many Americans may be present in the country, looking for a flight out, or how many Afghans may be eligible for withdrawal.

However, he emphasized that the US is committed to the Afghan applicants and their families. “We know we have an obligation to them,” he said.

The military’s focus will remain on the airport, and Kirby said he would not want to “set?the expectation that we are?equipped and able to go out into?the countryside and physically?move people into Kabul.”

Afghan news network?TOLO news has applauded the work of women journalists who are continuing to report under Taliban-rule.

Saad Mohseni, Director of Moby Media Group, TOLO’s parent company, posted images of some of their journalists in action in a message on Twitter Tuesday, with the caption: “Our brave female journalists out and about in Kabul this morning.”

Earlier Tuesday, a female TOLO journalist, Beheshta Arghand, interviewed senior Taliban representative Abdul Haq Hammad on air – an interview that would have been unimaginable when the militant group last ruled Afghanistan two decades ago. Then, women were barred from public life and were only allowed outside when fully covered in a burqa, and escorted by a male chaperone.

The Taliban says it has changed, promising that women will retain certain rights under their renewed leadership. But many fear a return to the dark days, with some female journalists having already left the country in the wake of the Taliban’s resurgence.

On Monday, CNN’s Clarissa Ward in Kabul reported that Afghan journalists are “absolutely petrified, particularly women journalists.” They know that they are “big targets because they have been so outspoken against the Taliban in the past,” she said.

Ward spoke with Taliban fighters on Monday who told her that female journalists would still be able to practice their profession as long as they adhered to their rules. Female journalists, he said, will be expected to wear the niqab, and should not engage with men outside of their family.

Fear running high: On Sunday?the homes of two unidentified female journalists were visited by Taliban fighters, a contact of the women told CNN Monday, adding that both women were severely shaken psychologically.

Several female journalists are said to have received threatening calls from the Taliban, with the calls increasing over recent days, the source added. One prominent female journalist in Kabul said she had received a threatening call from the Taliban, telling her they “will come soon.”

An April Human Rights Watch report found that Taliban forces have deliberately targeted journalists and other media workers, including women journalists, especially those who appear on television and radio.

“Female reporters may be targeted not only for issues they cover but also for challenging perceived social norms prohibiting women from being in a public role and working outside the home,” the report said, adding that a “recent wave of violent attacks has driven several prominent women journalists to give up their profession or leave Afghanistan altogether.”

Taliban fighters stand guard in front of the Hamid Karzai International Airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan, on August 16.

Facebook has reiterated its ban on accounts praising, supporting or representing the Taliban.

In a statement Tuesday, Facebook underscored its Dangerous Organizations policies, which block accounts maintained by or on behalf of the Taliban.

“The Taliban is sanctioned as a terrorist organization under US law, and we have banned them from our services under our Dangerous Organization policies,” Facebook stated.

The ban also covers Facebook’s WhatsApp and Instagram platforms.

The company said it employs a “dedicated team of Afghanistan experts, who are native Dari and Pashto speakers, and have knowledge of local context.” This team is tasked with removing contravening material.

“Regardless of who holds power, we will take the appropriate action against accounts and content that breaks our rules,” Facebook stated.?

The Taliban have not been officially designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the US. However, the group was placed on a US Treasury Department list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists and a Specially Designated Nationals list.

In this photo from Stefano Pontecorvo, the NATO Senior Civilian Representative to Afghanistan, airplanes are seen at the Kabul International Airport on August 17.

Chaos unfolded at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport yesterday, with scores of people rushing the runway in an attempt to flee the country.

Here’s how things currently stand:

Who controls what: The Taliban controls access roads to Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, meaning that anyone wishing to gain entry to the airport’s main gates will have to pass their checks. Taliban forces are continuing to try to control crowds trying to enter.

The US still controls the military side of the airport, which was fenced off yesterday afternoon with a layer of razor wire, guarded by US military personnel after scenes of pandemonium ensued.?

On Monday afternoon, crowds of people ran onto the tarmac in desperation, including some who climbed onto US military aircraft as it was preparing to take off.?

US forces at Kabul airport killed 2 armed men on Monday after they fired on US troops, one witness told CNN. The witness also said a third fighter was injured in the confrontation.

Commercial flights aren’t operating: Commercial flights were canceled out the airport on Monday, and remain so. Evacuation flights organized by foreign governments however are still taking off.

US President Joe Biden said on Monday that he knows that there are “concerns about why we did not begin evacuating Afghan civilians sooner.”

“Part of the answer is some of the Afghans did not want to leave earlier, still hopeful for their country. And part of it because the Afghan government and its supporters discouraged us from organizing a mass exodus to avoid triggering, as they said, a crisis of confidence,” he said.

Biden added that US troops will continue to undertake their mission and that the Taliban will be met with “devastating force if necessary,” if they seek to disrupt it.

On Tuesday, UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said that the UK had sent in 600 extra personnel to assist with stability on the ground, especially around the evacuation efforts. He added that over the next 24 hours, 350 British and Afghan nationals who worked for the UK are expected to be evacuated from Afghanistan.?

Meanwhile, the German military has come under criticism for only rescuing seven people from Kabul on its first evacuation flight from Afghanistan. A German army spokesperson said that there were not any more people around to evacuate when they landed, given that they had arrived at night and that the US was already in control of the airport.

Disruption at the airport is delaying vital health supplies: WHO spokesperson?Tarik Ja?arevi? said on Tuesday that Afghanistan’s health system has already been facing shortages of essential medical supplies and equipment in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. The current situation at the airport is compounding that crisis, he said, with the disruption delaying urgently needed health supplies, including Covid-19 and polio vaccines.

Chaos and disruption at the Kabul airport is “delaying urgently-needed essential health supplies,” and impacting the already “fragile health system” of Afghanistan, World Health Organization spokesperson Tarik Ja?arevi? said in a statement.

Afghanistan’s health system has been facing shortages of essential medical supplies and equipment in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, Ja?arevi??pointed out, adding that the vaccination campaign has also been significantly affected due to the fighting.

On Monday, photos and videos showed desperate crowds on the tarmac of Kabul’s international airport, seeking a way out of the country.

Crowding at health facilities and internally displaced people’s camps will hamper infection prevention measures, increasing the risk of Covid-19 transmission and other disease outbreaks.

Afghanistan is also one of two polio-endemic countries in the world. Any delays and disruptions to the polio vaccine campaign “will directly jeopardize the health of Afghan children,” warned?Ja?arevi?.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed on the need for global cooperation on Afghanistan during a phone call on Tuesday morning.

Johnson also stressed that “any future Taliban government in Afghanistan” should agree to the shared international human rights standards held by the international community.

“The Prime Minister outlined his intention to convene G7 leaders for a virtual meeting to discuss this at the earliest opportunity,” the spokesperson added.

The Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt ?avu?o?lu says his country is maintaining dialogue with all parties in Afghanistan, including the Taliban.

“We continue our dialogue with all parties, including Taliban,” he said on Tuesday, in a joint press conference with Jordanian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Ayman Safadi in Amman, Turkish state news agency Anadolu reported.

“We would like to say that we have welcomed the messages given by the Taliban so far. We will continue to support Afghanistan’s economic development, stability, peace and tranquillity,” ?avu?o?lu added.

The Pakistani Taliban, the TTP, has congratulated the Afghan Taliban on taking control of Afghanistan.

“It is a victory for the whole Islamic world,” the official statement issued by the TTP and released to CNN, read.

In the statement, TTP spokesperson Mohammad Khorasani reiterated the group’s “allegiance to the Afghan Taliban leadership,” and pledged to “support and strengthen the Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan.”

The Pakistani Taliban’s main leadership has long operated out of Afghanistan and has been behind some of the worst terrorist attacks in Pakistan.

In a statement released by Pakistan’s national security committee on Monday night, a request was made that “Afghan soil is not used by any terrorist organization/group against any country.”

“We would not hesitate to sacrifice at any level as we consider it our religious responsibility,” the statement said.

The Taliban must honor its promise to allow women to work and girls to go to school, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Rupert Colville urged in a statement Tuesday.?

“Such promises will need to be honored, and for the time being — again understandably, given past history — these declarations have been greeted with some skepticism,” he said, adding that whether or not the promises are “honored or broken will be closely scrutinized.”

The “desperate scenes” at Kabul airport on Monday, which saw crowds of people scrambling to get on evacuation flights, “underlined the gravity of the situation” after the Taliban seized all the major population centers in Afghanistan, Colville said.

He added:

Evacuees crowd the interior of a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III transport aircraft, carrying some 640 Afghans to Qatar from Kabul, Afghanistan on August 15.

As scores of Afghans are desperate to flee the country, a photo shows a massive military cargo plane carrying about 640 Afghan people from Kabul to Qatar Sunday.

The US Air Force C-17 Globemaster III aircraft has been operated by the United States and its allies for nearly three decades.

The German military has come under criticism for only rescuing seven people from Kabul on its first evacuation flight from Afghanistan.

The seven passengers included five German nationals, one European national and one Afghan, according to a German Army spokesperson.

After hours of circling in the air due to a chaotic situation on the ground, the A400M could just land briefly, take some guests, and fly in direction of Tashkent, Uzbekistan, the spokesperson explained.

The spokesperson also said that there were not any more people around to evacuate when they landed, given that they had arrived at night and that the US was already in control of Hamid Karzai International Airport.

The US fenced off the military side of the airport yesterday after thousands of Afghans gathered on the runway in a bid to leave the country, while the Taliban controls who can actually gain entry to the airport itself. The commercial side of the airport is currently not operational.

The plane unloaded the German troops traveling to assist with the evacuation effort in the coming days, and quickly departed, the spokesperson added.

The German Army is waiting in Tashkent for the next slot to send the next waiting plane to Kabul.

Prince Harry encouraged military veterans to “reach out to each other and offer support for one another” in the wake of the Taliban taking over Afghanistan.?

The Duke of Sussex served in the British Army for 10 years, including two tours in Afghanistan. He went on to found the Invictus Games Foundation in 2014, which supports veterans’ recovery through sporting events.?

In a joint statement posted on the Invictus Games Twitter account, Prince Harry urged “everybody across the Invictus network – and the wider military community – to reach out to each other and offer support for one another.”

“What’s happening in Afghanistan resonates across the international Invictus community,” the statement from the Duke of Sussex, Dominic Reid, CEO of the Invictus Games Foundation and Lord Allen of Kensington, Chair of the Invictus Games Foundation read.?

“Many of the participating nations and competitors in the Invictus Games family are bound by a shared experience of serving in Afghanistan over the past two decades, and for several years, we have competed alongside Invictus Games Team Afghanistan.”

Taliban fighters stand guard along a street near the Zanbaq Square in Kabul on August 16.

The deputy leader of the Taliban and head of the group’s military commission, Maulvi Mohammad Yaqub, ordered fighters and commanders not enter people’s homes or to seize their property and assets.

Those found to be disobeying the instructions would be considered guilty of an “act of revolt.” ?

Former US Army Ranger Tom Amenta

Former US Army Ranger Tom Amenta, who served two tours in Afghanistan, says all veterans want to get out of Afghanistan, “but this isn’t the way,” and that America will end up returning to the country.

“All of us want to find a way to?get us out, but this isn’t the?way.?We are going to go back to?Afghanistan at some point because, we haven’t … rooted?out terrorism,” Amenta said. “We have just given back to that?country the group that harbored and?kept Osama bin Laden safe.”

Despite 20 years of US military presence in Afghanistan, the Taliban seem “20 years smarter, 20?years wiser and 20 years better?prepared,” and look fully disciplined, Amenta said.

“Now, they look the way we?train people in how to fight,” he told CNN.

Amenta disputes the argument that the Afghan army did not have the will to fight.

“Knowing how much they?sacrificed — not getting paid?properly because of government?corruption, not being fed?properly — and to somehow say?that they lacked the will when?45,000 of them perished over?the past six years??That’s disingenuous at best,?in my opinion.?They fought very hard.”

The situation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, where crowds flooded the tarmac desperately seeking a route out of the country on Monday, is “stabilizing,” UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said Tuesday morning.

The foreign secretary added that over the next 24 hours 350 British and Afghan nationals, who worked for the UK, are expected to be evacuated from Afghanistan.

Afghan nationals queue up at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border crossing point in Chaman, on August 17.

Two border crossings between Afghanistan and Pakistan have been reopened, including a major transit point at Chaman, according to a senior official there.

The official, who spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity as they are not authorized to speak for the government, said Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban agreed to keep the Chaman border open between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. daily.

The southern crossing located alongside the Afghan town of Spin Boldak was also reopened, but only those holding Pakistan or Afghanistan national identity cards were allowed to pass. It was previously closed for two weeks.

The official, who was part of the team that spoke to the Taliban, said the militant group has asked that Afghans be allowed visa-free entry into Pakistan on humanitarian grounds.?

French soldiers stand guard near a military plane in Kabul, on August 17.

A French military aircraft carrying special forces troops landed at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai airport Tuesday,?according to the French Embassy in Kabul.?

The embassy said the Airbus A400M military transport then took off on an evacuation flight carrying French nationals.

“France is implementing the necessary means to ensure the protection of our compatriots. It will continue to stand with the Afghan people,” the embassy said in a tweet Tuesday.

The Taliban have given a stamped statement to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR,) which reassures that the organization can continue their humanitarian and relief efforts in the country,?said Aurvasi Patel, the acting director of UNHCR’s regional bureau for Asia and Pacific.

“If this actually materializes, then we can?certainly stay and deliver and provide?humanitarian assistance, which?is critical for Afghans today,” she told CNN.

As the crisis intensifies, Afghans remain “terrified” despite the Taliban’s reassurances and statements, urging people to trust them.

“The Afghans are terrified by?the history and the fact that?the Taliban have a past record?on what they have done to the?citizens,” Patel said.

“Right now, they?have given assurances.?But, there have been reports?of some of their actions that go?against their current?narrative.?So, I think it is important?that the Taliban actually do?what they say, and reassure the?people —?not only in word, but in?practice — to help to the civilians to?understand that they want to have a state of?Afghanistan.”

The top American diplomat in Afghanistan said he is still in the country and, along with his staff, helping US citizens and vulnerable Afghans.

On Sunday, State Department spokesman Ned Price said that embassy personnel had relocated to Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul under the protection of the US military.

Robert Crews, a historian at Stanford University specializing in Afghanistan and central Asia, said he believes the Trump administration’s deal with the Taliban last year played a role in the group’s takeover of the country.

The agreement struck last year laid out a 14-month timetable for the withdrawal of “all military forces of the United States, its allies and coalition partners.” The US agreed to withdraw troops and release some?5,000 Taliban prisoners,?while the Taliban agreed to take steps to prevent any group or individual, including al Qaeda, from using Afghanistan to threaten the security of the US or its allies.

Crews told CNN’s John Vause that the accord “legitimized the Taliban” and gave them a “road map” to conduct their offensive and oust the democratically elected government.

Crews said the question going forward is can the Taliban establish their so-called “Islamic emirate” in a society that has dramatically changed in the two decades since they were last in charge.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison speaks during a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra, on August 17.

Australia will allow Afghan nationals in the country on temporary visas to remain indefinitely in light of the Taliban’s takeover of the country.

Morrison said he was “optimistic” about a current Australian Defence Force operation to Kabul that is seeking to repatriate 130 citizens as well as Afghan nationals who worked with Australians through the war.

But the Prime Minister said the mission could not rescue all those who have worked for Australia.

Since April Australia has settled 430 Afghan “locally engaged employees” as well as their families, the Immigration Department announced Tuesday.?

Ministry of Home Affairs office in New Delhi, India.

India’s Ministry of Home Affairs said it will introduce a new emergency e-visa to fast-track visa applications for people coming from Afghanistan, which is home to small Hindu and Sikh communities.

Indian Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar said late Monday that his office was “in constant touch with the Sikh and Hindu community leaders in Kabul.

Afghanistan is home to Sikh and Hindu communities and holy sites for both religions. The Gurdwara (Sikh temple of worship) Chisma Sahib in Jalalabad is considered sacred as Sikhs believe Guru Nanak, the founder of their religion, visited the region in the 15th century. In Kabul, the Asamai temple is located on a hill named after Asha, the Hindu goddess of hope.

The country used to be home to large Sikh and Hindu communities. There were about 220,000 of them living in Afghanistan in the 1980s, according to Afghanistan’s TOLOnews, but most fled the Taliban’s religious persecution in the 1990s. By 2016, nearly 99% had fled, according to TOLOnews.

Indian think tank Gateway House estimated in 2020 that only about 300 families of each faith were left in Afghanistan.

The Indian government has prioritized the safety of Hindus and Sikhs in Afghanistan because they are minority groups protected under the country’s controversial 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

The law fast-tracks citizenship for religious minorities, including Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians, from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan – but not Muslims.

Opponents say the bill is unconstitutional as it bases citizenship on a person’s religion and would further marginalize India’s 200-million strong Muslim community.The government, ruled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), said the bill seeks to protect religious minorities who fled persecution in their home countries.

Embassy closing and staff evacuating: India’s External Affairs Ministry said it will close its embassy in Kabul and relocate its ambassador and diplomatic staff back to India “immediately” due to the situation in Afghanistan.

Instantly iconic imagery now bookends?the lost war in Afghanistan, telling a poignant tale of a just venture born out of national tragedy ending in a chaotic US retreat?on President Joe Biden’s watch.

On September 14, 2001, President George W. Bush stood on a twisted concrete pyre at Ground Zero?in New York and vowed through a bullhorn: “The people who knocked down these buildings will hear all of us soon.”

On Monday, 19 years and 11 months later, desperate Afghans fleeing the Taliban reinstatement, a decade after the US won its revenge against Osama bin Laden in neighboring Pakistan,?clung to a departing US cargo aircraft at Kabul airport.?Several apparently fatally fell to earth after takeoff, hauntingly recalling those who leapt to their deaths from the Twin Towers rather than burn in the inferno set off by airliners hijacked by the?Taliban’s terrorist guests – al Qaeda – on September 11, 2001.

The battles, human tragedies and political errors that unfolded between these era-defining moments are culminating in the current defeat?and are driving the treacherous crisis politics facing another White House 20 years on.

Read more:

President Joe Biden speaks about Afghanistan from the East Room of the White House, Monday, August 16, 2021, in Washington, DC.

Related article Analysis: Desperate scenes lay bare an Afghan defeat that Biden cannot deny

Ronald Neumann speaks with CNN on Monday.

Ronald Neumann, a former US ambassador to Afghanistan and Algeria, spoke to CNN’s Don Lemon about the fall of the Afghan government and what he believes the Biden administration must do next.

Watch:

Like hundreds of other Kabul residents, Aisha Ahmad scurried to the Hamid Karzi International Airport on Monday, hoping to catch a flight out of the country as it became apparent the government would fall to the Taliban.

Ahmad did not make it out. On Twitter, she asked for help from a third country, only to receive death threats, she said.

The 22-year-old university student recounted her experience to CNN and explained why she’s fearful for the future.

Her experience at the airport: Ahmad said she got a call from a friend in the United States and was told that people were being ferried out of Afghanistan on military flights. She didn’t believe it at first, but when a second friend called and said the same thing, she thought they might both be right.

The streets were quiet as she ran to the airport, except for the occasional crackle of gunshots. People were calm and looked curious.

But at the airport, Ahmad said “there were thousands of people, including many without passports and little security. She got stuck.

“The crowds were pushed by police,” she said. “Kids and women were on the ground.”

Ahmad said it felt like “doomsday.”

Though she did not manage to make it out of Kabul, she escaped the airport with only scrapes and bruises.

Will she go back to school: Taliban spokesman and leaders have said that they plan to run an “inclusive Islamic government” and allow women and girls to go to school. Many Afghans are deeply skeptical of those claims because it’s a major departure from the fundamentalist, totalitarian tendencies that marked the group’s time in power in the 1990s.

“Some people say the Taliban have changed, others say that they have not,” Ahmad said. “To be honest now I do not believe the Taliban.”

Taliban leaders have said that people should continue to go about their day-to-day lives for now, including women who go to school. Ahmad said based on what she sees on TV, she thinks she can go back to school but isn’t exactly sure.

She fears that she will not be able to finish her university education and worries that things will start getting harder for women in the days and weeks ahead

“Definitely there will be restrictions for women, but we do not know how much,” Ahmad said.

“People are not much outside, and they do not know how their daily activity will be when life is back to normal. Will they force stores to close during prayer time? Will there be punishment for not going to the mosque, will they force people to go? … No one knows,” she said.

Taliban fighters sit inside the presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Sunday, August 15.

Just last week, US intelligence analysts had predicted it would likely take several more weeks before Afghanistan’s civilian government in?Kabul fell to Taliban fighters. In reality, it only took a few short days.

On Sunday, Taliban militants retook Afghanistan’s capital, almost two decades after they were driven from Kabul by US troops.

Although Afghan security forces were well funded and well equipped, they put up little resistance as Taliban militants seized much of the country following the?withdrawal of US troops beginning in early July.

On Sunday, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani?fled the country, abandoning the presidential palace to Taliban fighters.

Already, US officials have admitted that they miscalculated the speed at which the Taliban were able to advance across the country, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken?saying?of Afghanistan’s national security forces: “The fact of the matter is we’ve seen that that force has been unable to defend the country … and that has happened more quickly than we anticipated.”

The Taliban’s swift success has prompted questions over how the insurgent group was able to gain control so soon after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Over the past two decades, the US spent more than a trillion dollars in Afghanistan. It trained Afghan soldiers and police and provided them with modern equipment.

As of February, the Afghan forces numbered 308,000 personnel, according to a United Nations Security Council?report?released in June — well above the estimated number of armed Taliban fighters, which ranged from 58,000 to 100,000.

Ultimately, though, the Afghan forces proved to be no match for the Taliban.

Carter Malkasian, a former senior adviser to the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, who is also the author of “The American War in Afghanistan: A History,” said the Afghan forces sometimes lacked coordination and suffered from poor morale. The more defeats they had, the worse their morale became, and the more emboldened the Taliban were.

Taliban spokesman Shaheen said they weren’t surprised by their successful military offensive.

“Because we have roots among the people, because it was a popular uprising of the people, because we knew that we had been saying this for the last 20 years,” he said. “But no one believed us. And now when they saw, and they were taken by surprise because before that they didn’t believe.”

Read more about the situation in Afghanistan here.

President Joe Biden speaks about Afghanistan from the East Room of the White House, on Monday, August 16.

President Biden admitted on Monday that the?collapse of the Afghan government?and the Taliban retaking control happened more quickly than the US government had anticipated, insisted that ending America’s?20-year war was the correct decision.

But the President refused to back away from his decision to end the American military’s combat mission in the nation, where the US had fought the nation’s longest war, asserting that the US mission was “never supposed to be nation building” and blaming the Afghan government for the fall.

Biden added that the US national interest in Afghanistan has always been “preventing a terrorist attack on American home land,” and that that US mission had already been met.

Despite saying he was willing to take criticism over the decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan, Biden pointed fingers at a series of others for the unfolding crisis.

Biden blamed Afghanistan’s armed forces for not standing up to the Taliban’s lightning quick offensive, which put the repressive group back in control of the nation two decades after US troops helped toss the Taliban out of power and the creation of a democratic government.

The President also pointed to the top Afghan leaders as deserving blame.

“So, what happened?” Biden asked. “Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country.”

The President said he had “frank conversations” with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, chairman of the Afghan delegation to peace talks, earlier this summer, but — ultimately — they didn’t take the US’ suggestions.

Biden also laid part of the blame for the current situation on his predecessor, Donald Trump, who brokered a deal with the Taliban to withdraw American troops by May 1, 2021.

Read more about Biden’s remarks here.

The Taliban has swiftly regained control of Afghanistan 20 years after US forces began Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF).

The United States linked the?September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks?to al Qaeda, a group that operated under the Taliban regime’s protection in Afghanistan. The operation was launched to stop the Taliban from providing a safe haven to al Qaeda and to stop al Qaeda’s use of Afghanistan as a base of operations for terrorist activities.

Operation Enduring Freedom began on October 7, 2001, under President George W. Bush’s administration, with allied air strikes on?Taliban?and al Qaeda targets.

On Oct. 14, 2001, the Taliban offered to discuss giving?al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to a third country for trial if the United States provided evidence of bin Laden’s involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks. The White House rejected the offer.

On Nov. 13, 2001, US airstrikes and ground attacks by the anti-Taliban Afghan Northern Alliance led to the fall of Kabul.

That same month many European countries offered troops to support OEF including, Germany, the Netherlands, France and Italy. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld?also announced that the US had doubled the number of its troops based in the country.

Over the next 20 years, the US along with allied nations and coalitions worked to create a stable Afghan led nation and also create and train an Afghan national army. Here’s a timeline:

Dec. 2-5, 2001 -?The?United Nations?hosts the Bonn Conference in Germany, results from the Bonn Agreement creates an Afghan Interim Authority and outlines a process for creating a new constitution and choosing a new government.

Dec. 20, 2001 -?The United Nations authorized the?International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)?to provide security support to the Afghans. The United Kingdom agrees to lead the force initially.

Dec. 22, 2001 -?Hamid Karzai?is sworn in as head of an interim power-sharing government.

March 25, 2002 -?Rumsfeld announces that there are plans under way for US and coalition forces to help train and create an Afghan national army.

January 2004 -?Afghanistan passes a new constitution by consensus.

Oct. 9, 2004 -?Afghanistan’s first direct democratic election is held.

Dec. 7, 2004 -?Karzai is sworn in as the first democratically elected president of Afghanistan.

Dec. 1, 2009 -?Obama announces the deployment of 30,000 additional US troops. This new deployment, set for 2010, brought US troop totals to almost 100,000, in addition to 40,000 NATO troops.

January 2010 -?Representatives from more than 60 nations meet in London for the International Conference on Afghanistan, pledging to support the development of the Afghan National Security Forces.

May 2, 2011 -?In the early morning hours, a small group of US Forces, including Navy Seals, raid a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan and kill Osama bin Laden.

June 22, 2011 -??Obama announces a plan to reduce the number of troops in Afghanistan and that US combat operations in the country will end by 2014.

Feb. 1, 2012 -?Defense Secretary Leon Panetta?announces that the US hopes to end its combat mission in Afghanistan in 2013, transitioning primarily to a training role.

May 27, 2014 -?President Obama announces that the?United States combat mission in Afghanistan will end in December 2014.

Sept. 30, 2014 -?The US and Afghanistan sign a joint security agreement?that will allow US troops to stay in Afghanistan beyond the previous December deadline to withdraw.

Jan. 1, 2015?- After more than 13 years of combat operations in Afghanistan, the US begins Operation Freedom’s Sentinel (OFS). The new mission conducts counterterrorism operations targeting terrorist groups like al Qaeda and the local ISIS affiliate and also focuses on building up local Afghan security forces to help fight the Taliban.

Dec. 9, 2019 -?Confidential documents obtained by The Washington Post?reveal that top US officials misled the American public about the war in Afghanistan in order to conceal doubts about the likelihood that the United States could be successful in the nearly 20-year effort since its earliest days, the paper reports.

April 14, 2021 -?US President Joe Biden?formally?announces his decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan?before?September 11, 2021, deeming the prolonged and intractable conflict in Afghanistan no longer aligns with American priorities. “It’s time to end America’s longest war,” he says.

August 2021 - The Taliban?take control of Afghanistan’s capital city, Kabul, almost two decades after they were driven out by US troops. President Biden sends an additional 5,000 troops to Kabul to evacuate US personnel.

Read more about the key events here.