The U.S. and coalition forces have ramped up their evacuations from Kabul as President Joe Biden has opted to maintain his Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline.
More than 21,600 people were evacuated via 94 flights from Hamid Karzai International Airport on Monday, according to a White House official. Of those people, 12,700 departed on 37 U.S. military flights (32 of them were C-17s and 5 were C-130s), while the rest left on coalition aircraft.
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There have been a total of 63,900 people who have been relocated this month, and 58,700 of them left Afghanistan since Aug. 14.
Evacuation flights took off on Monday approximately every 45 minutes, Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor, deputy director of the Joint Staff for regional operations, told reporters on Tuesday.
“I want to reiterate that we’re able to achieve this level of increased departures because of U.S. military personnel and our partners’ work around the clock [to] conduct this highly important mission, including airport security and flight operation. To that end, we’re seeing increased pace in Kabul,” he said.
The U.S. and coalition forces evacuated approximately 16,300 people on 89 flights on Monday, comparatively, while a day before that, they utilized 57 flights to help evacuate fewer than 8,000 people, per a White House official.
Maintaining the speed of evacuations is “definitely the plan,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters at Tuesday’s briefing. “So, our plan is to continue this pace as aggressively as we can.”
Biden decided on Tuesday to stick to the Aug. 31 deadline despite conflicting pressures as to whether to extend the evacuation window. Foreign partners had urged the president to keep forces in Afghanistan to ensure the safe and successful evacuation of Afghan allies and refugees, and the G-7 met on Tuesday ahead of the president’s decision.
The Pentagon announced on Tuesday that approximately 4,000 American passport-holders plus their families have been evacuated. Prior to the announcement, Kirby told reporters on Monday and Tuesday that “several thousand” Americans were among the evacuated, though he declined to narrow it down.
Taylor and Kirby both attributed the increase in evacuations to smoother operations at the Kabul airport and to a smaller crowd outside it as well.
Before the commitment to maintain the Aug. 31 deadline was announced, the CIA director met with top Taliban leaders, who have expressed opposition to any extension as well as the evacuation of Afghans.
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“The continued ability to inform, and get the word out, of how to get into the gates, where to come,” Taylor explained. “The processing of those, not only through the gates, but the processing internally on Kabul by our troops that are there continues to become more efficient.”
Kirby said that “the crush of those first few days has reduced,” allowing U.S. and allied troops to restore “more order, and structure around the airport has increased.”
