The terrorist group known as Islamic State-Khorasan, or ISIS-K — the Afghanistan and Pakistan arm of the Islamic State — claimed responsibility for Thursday’s suicide bombings, which killed 13 American service members and 170 other people.
The U.S. still plans to withdraw its ambassador and all diplomatic staffers in Afghanistan by Tuesday, though it remains unclear whether, and when, they might return to America, U.S. officials said.
Evacuees weigh safety risk outside of Kabul airport gates
Amid warnings of a credible threat at Kabul’s airport, some people seeking to flee Afghanistan have had to turn away at the heavily guarded gates with fears that they may not get another chance to get out.
As the day approaches when the last of the U.S. forces depart Afghanistan, few of the approximately 1,200 people identified as at risk in the past week by organizers of the Female and Free Speech Airlift — an organization trying to relocate outspoken women, journalists, artists and scholars — have escaped, according to California-based volunteer Daisy Pistey-Lyhne.
On Saturday, two buses waited 12 hours outside an airport where a chartered plane had sat on the tarmac. When news came of a threat of violence, the evacuees fled, after activists in the United States had scrambled to get American officials to intervene and let the buses into the airport.
Pistey-Lyhne said the group is in touch with the White House, Congress and the State Department. The State Department said Saturday that about 350 Americans were awaiting evacuation from Afghanistan. Many more Afghans who fear for their lives have pleaded for help.
“It’s maddening,” Pistey-Lyhne said. “They’re treating it like it’s an immigration issue that we can sit and wait and process people instead of a humanitarian crisis on the ground, which is what it is.”
Representatives for the White House and the Pentagon did not respond to requests for comment.
The United States has repeatedly warned Americans to stay away from the airport because the potential for an attack, but Free Speech Airlift organizers had hoped they could pick up people with a plane they sent to Kabul using money raised by Instagram influencer Quentin Quarantino.
Pistey-Lyhne said an unknown number of people waiting on buses have given up, making the treacherous trip away from the airport, perhaps to return later.
Pistey-Lyhne said concerns are mounting as the Tuesday deadline for U.S. withdrawal approaches.
“We may have to turn back soon, which is incredibly disappointing,” Pistey-Lyhne said.
Surprise, panic and fateful choices: The day America lost its longest war
KABUL — On the day that Afghanistan’s capital fell to the Taliban, delivering the definitive verdict on a war that had lumbered on ambiguously for nearly 20 years, one of the city’s top security officials woke up preparing for battle.
The day before, government forces in the north’s largest city — Mazar-e Sharif, a notorious anti-Taliban stronghold — had surrendered with barely a fight. The same had happened overnight in Jalalabad, the traditional winter home of Afghanistan’s kings and the country’s main gateway to the east.
As dawn broke over the misty mountains that ring the city on Aug. 15, Kabul had suddenly become an island — the last bastion of a government that the United States had supported at a cost of trillions of dollars and thousands of lives. But it was an island that some were still prepared to defend.
“Everyone was ready to fight against the Taliban,” said the Afghan security official, who had spent the previous evening distributing new uniforms to his officers. “All the security forces were ready.”
Or so he thought. When he prepared to reinforce one of the main checkpoints protecting the city that morning, his commander waved him off. “He told me, ‘Leave that for now,’” the official recalled. “‘You can do it in a few days.’”
But Kabul didn’t have days.
David Espinoza, 20, had always dreamed of being a Marine
On Wednesday, Elizabeth Holguin received a call from her son, who was stationed in Kabul. Before hanging up, he said, “I love you,” she told The Washington Post. That was the last time they ever spoke.
Inspired by the prospect of helping others, David Espinoza, 20, had always dreamed of being a Marine, his mother said. He enlisted after graduating from high school.
“It was his calling and he died a hero,” Holguin said.
Holguin remembered him as a quiet, soft-spoken young man who enjoyed spending time with family and friends. Now, her heart has “a David-sized hole nobody can fill,” she said.
Espinoza graduated in 2019 from Lyndon B. Johnson High School in Laredo, Tex. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Tex.) said he “embodied the values, the grit and the dedication” of the country’s service members.
Espinoza hailed from Rio Bravo, a small, predominantly Hispanic enclave some 10 miles away from Laredo, where his mother, stepfather and three younger siblings still live. The news of Espinoza’s death, the congressman said, was unexpected and “hit close to home.”
“When people talk about the border, they have a tendency of forgetting the good, patriotic people that believe in our country,” he said. “David is certainly one of those examples of what we have here at the border: a young man that went across the world trying to get Americans and allies of the U.S. to safety.”
Gov. Greg Abbott (R) ordered flags to be lowered to half-staff to honor the killed U.S. service members, including Espinoza.
— María Luisa Paúl
Japan has evacuated just one national from Kabul, as hundreds of citizens and support staff await
TOKYO — Japan had anticipated evacuating as many as 500 individuals from Kabul, but so far, the Self-Defense Force evacuated a lone Japanese national — Hiromi Yasui, a journalist for Kyodo News in Kabul and a business owner.
In addition, Japan has transported 14 Afghans from Kabul to Islamabad at the request of the United States, according to local media reports.
The transport aircraft that had been sent to Kabul made several round trips between the city and Islamabad, but the Japanese nationals and local staff who supported the Japanese were not able to reach the airport, Kyodo News reported Saturday.
Government officials plan to keep the planes on standby until the Tuesday deadline for U.S. withdrawal, and are exploring other methods to evacuate the remaining hundreds of individuals, including commercial aircraft in the meantime, Kyodo News reported.
Meanwhile, Afghan athletes Zakia Khudadadi and Hossain Rasouli arrived in Tokyo Saturday night after being evacuated to Paris from Kabul. Since they checked into the Paralympic Village, an International Paralympic Committee staff member who speaks Farsi has been assigned to assist them for the duration of the Games, IPC spokesman Craig Spence said in a briefing Sunday.
“This is a really complex situation, one of the most complex we’ve ever been involved in,” Spence said, describing the logistics involved with arranging their evacuation and their travel to Tokyo.
“As you can imagine the meeting was extremely emotional,” he said, describing the athletes’ arrival to Tokyo Saturday night. “There were lots of tears from everyone in the room. To actually see them in person — they’re actually here — was remarkable.”
Rasouli is now scheduled to compete in the men’s long jump on Tuesday, and Khudadadi is scheduled to compete in taekwondo on Sept. 2, to become Afghanistan’s first female athlete to compete in the Paralympics since the 2004 Athens Games.
Boris Johnson says last British soldiers, diplomats have departed Afghanistan
In a statement Sunday announcing the end of British military operations in Afghanistan, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that the Taliban would have to ensure “safe passage” for people seeking to leave the country, respect the rights of women and girls and prevent Afghanistan from “becoming an incubator of global terror,” in order for the militant group to win diplomatic recognition.
“We will engage with the Taliban not on the basis of what they say but what they do,” Johnson said in a video message posted on Twitter, hours after his government announced the withdrawal of all remaining British troops, diplomats and civil servants from Kabul — bringing to an end Britain’s two decades of military involvement in Afghanistan as the second-largest troop contributor, behind the United States.
Johnson’s comments also hinted at disagreements with the Biden administration over the chaotic exit of western forces from Afghanistan after the Taliban’s rapid advance across the country.
“Though we would not have wished to leave in this way,” he added, “we have to recognize that we came in with the United States, in defense and support of the United States.”
Fifteen thousand people, including British citizens and Afghan allies, had been airlifted out of Kabul during the two-week British evacuation mission, called Operation Pitting. The last plane carrying British troops arrived early Sunday at RAF Brize Norton, about 50 miles northwest of London, Sky News reported.
“It’s the culmination of a mission unlike any we have seen in our lifetimes,” Johnson said.
Nicole Gee, 23, was a dedicated Marine and a loving friend
On the evening of Aug. 20, the Department of Defense posted several photos to Twitter of U.S. service members taking care of infants amid the chaotic evacuation from Kabul.
One of the photos featured a young Marine in uniform as she held a baby carefully in her arms. Her long hair was pulled back in a bun and rifles sat on either side of her. But her face was gentle as she looked down at the small child. The service member was Sgt. Nicole Gee, 23, who less than one week later would die in the terrorist attack outside the airport.
Gee’s social media accounts showed a dedicated Marine and a loving friend. In February, she posted a tribute to her husband on his promotion to sergeant, big smiles showing through their masks “before being stuck in predeployment quarantine.”
In June came a photo of her riding a camel in Saudi Arabia while in uniform. She smiled ear to ear. Then on Aug. 2, she posted a photo from Kuwait marking her promotion to sergeant. Gee’s last post on Instagram before her death was a photo of her helping evacuees load onto an airplane at Hamid Karzai International Airport. In her second-to-last post, also in uniform, she reposted the Defense Department photo from Twitter. The caption: “I love my job.”
Gee’s father, Richard Herrera, remembered her as “a very determined kid,” someone who excelled in school and was remarkably self-guided. She always had straight A’s, he recalled, “except for maybe one time in her life when she got a B.”
Gee, of Roseville, Calif., joined the Marines in 2017 and had originally set out to become an air traffic controller, Herrera said, but a heartbeat irregularity had prevented her from following that path. Instead she became a maintenance technician. She was promoted to sergeant last month, and seemed to love her work, Herrera said, recalling photos she sent him from all over the world.
A few days before she died, she texted him from Afghanistan. She had just been in Kuwait and he was unsure why she was helping women and children seeking to evacuate the country since she was a technician. He had “never expected her to be on the front lines in Afghanistan,” he said. “She said she was having the experience of her life. And I told her I was proud of her.”
“She was a perfect child. She never got in trouble. She always went down the right road. She never got distracted,” he said, struggling to catch his breath. “I’m sorry. It’s hard. ”
News of her death prompted an outpouring of love and grief from friends and family. “My best friend. 23 years old. Gone. I find peace knowing that she left this world doing what she loved. She was a Marine’s Marine. She cared about people. She loved fiercely. She was a light in this dark world,” wrote one friend, Mallory Harrison, in a tribute posted on Facebook on Friday evening.
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