Britain could be out of Kabul with ’24 to 36 hours’ after Joe Biden rejects Afghanistan extension

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Britain could be forced to wrap up its Kabul evacuation mission within 24 hours – potentially leaving thousands of Afghan refugees at the mercy of the Taliban – after Joe Biden began withdrawing US troops from Kabul last night.  

The US President insisted his troops were ‘on pace’ to leave Afghanistan by August 31, after rebuffing pleas by Boris Johnson and other G7 leaders for America to extend its evacuation timetable.

However, in a live TV broadcast last night, he warned the Taliban must ‘continue to co-operate’ with the US’ evacuation mission in order for his troops to be out of Kabul by the end of this month.

It comes amid claims from people on the ground in Kabul that westerners are being blocked by Taliban fighters from accessing the city’s airport for evacuation. 

Yesterday the extremist Islamist group issued an edict banning Afghans from leaving the country. They also blocked roads and set up check-points around Kabul airport.

With an American pull-out now likely to be complete by the end of the month, other countries, such as the UK, which are reliant on the air support from US troops, now face a race against time to complete their own evacuations.

Last night the Pentagon confirmed that several hundred US troops had already started leaving Afghanistan – and allies including the UK will want to have their troops out well before the US leaves. 

The UK could now wrap up its mission within ’24 to 36 hours’, defence sources said last night.

It comes after Mr Johnson yesterday faced humiliation after President Biden shrugged off his other G7 leaders’ pleas to extend the Kabul evacuation.

The Prime Minister, along with Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel, had used a G7 meeting to urge the US President to keep the operation going longer.

But Mr Biden reportedly rejected the request ‘point blank’. ‘Mr Biden made clear that it wasn’t a runner,’ a senior government source reportedly told The Telegraph last night. 

Despite the pleas from other western leaders, The White House signalled last night that US troops were starting to withdraw. 

Officials also acknowledged on Tuesday that the US troops deployed at the airport would need to begin their own deployment in advance of the August 31 withdrawal date. 

White House sources said Mr Biden had agreed with the Pentagon that there would be no change to the timeline of the mission. Press secretary Jen Psaki said the Pentagon was ‘on pace’ to withdraw by the deadline.

And Mr Biden later confirmed this in a TV address at the White House last night, saying the US was now ‘on pace to finish by August 31’. 

It comes as:

Boris Johnson last night pleaded with Taliban to continue to let people out of Afghanistan after August 31 and announced a ‘roadmap’ for dealing with new Islamist government;The Prime Minister also promised to unlock hundreds of millions of pounds of seized cash to the Taliban if the new Afghan regime agrees to a list of demands;Reports on the ground in Kabul suggested that Taliban fighters were stopping Westerners getting to Kabul airport after the extremist group announced a ban on Afghans leaving the country;President Joe Biden told the Taliban he will stick to Aug 31 withdrawal deadline if they allow free access to Kabul airport.

Mr Biden yesterday said more than 70,000 people been evacuated since August 14. And he said 12,000 people had been evacuated by western forces in the last 12 hours alone.

However the President turned the spotlight on the Taliban, who last night reiterated their insistence that western troops to leave by the end of this month, saying it was down to militants to allow the evacuation process to go smoothly.

He said the completion of operations in Kabul ‘depends upon the Taliban continuing to cooperate’, adding there will be contingency plans to ‘adjust the timetable should that become necessary’. 

Speaking during the conference, which he left without answering questions from reporters, President Biden said: ‘We (the G7) agreed we would continue our close co-operation to get people out as efficiently and safely as possible.

‘We are currently on pace to finish by August 31. The sooner we can finish the better. Each added day brings a risk to our troops. 

But the completion by August 31 depends on the Taliban’s continued co-operation and allow access to the airport – no disruption to our operations.’ 

He said the added risk came from a ‘very real’ threat from terrorist group ISIS K – a self-proclaimed branch of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant active in parts of Afghanistan.

It comes as a humiliated Mr Johnson said after the G7 summit that the UK will continue to conduct airlifts from the country ‘right up until the last moment’ as he pleaded with the Taliban to let people leave after the deadline.

He said the leaders had agreed that the ‘number one condition’ that the Taliban must meet moving forward is to ‘guarantee right the way through August 31 and beyond safe passage for those who want to come out’. 

But last night UK defence sources reportedly told the Guardian that the UK operation could be closed down within ’24-36 hours’.

It is understood that the US military needs between two and three days to close down its operations at Kabul airport.

And UK troops will have to be 24 hours ahead of that, in order to get Afghans and then themselves out safely before US troops depart. 

Meanwhile, Conservative MPs said the US’s decision to turn their back on the UK’s pleas mean the ‘special relationship’ was now over.  One Tory MP reportedly told the Guardian that US-UK relations were ‘about to enter their lowest point since Suez’.  

Despite the setback, Mr Johnson insisted the G7 nations have ‘huge leverage’ over the Taliban because of the threat of sanctions as he said funding for the country would only be made available in the future if it meets the West’s expectations. 

‘If those huge funds are going to be unfrozen eventually for use by the government and people of Afghanistan then what we are saying is Afghanistan can’t lurch back into becoming a breeding ground of terror, Afghanistan can’t become a narco state,’ he said.  

The comments came after the Taliban repeating blood-curdling warnings of consequences if there was an attempt to cling on, saying no-one will be permitted to leave. ‘All people should be removed prior to that date,’ a spokesman told a press conference in the capital. ‘After that we do not allow them. We will take a different stance.’

According to Reuters, the Pentagon has told Mr Biden the risks to American forces are too high if they defy the Taliban. It means troops will have to abandon the humanitarian operation and start focusing on their own exit plan as soon as tomorrow. 

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has warned of the danger of a ‘shooting war’ at the airport as the deadline approaches, after the RAF extracted another 2,000 people in the past 24 hours. Berlin and Paris have also been ramping up their evacuation, but there are still thousands of desperate people waiting to be taken to safety.  

Efforts have been continuing on both sides of the Atlantic to get Mr Biden to change his approach, after he faced a furious backlash for his hamfisted handling of the crisis. 

The US chair of the House Intelligence Committee has said the current timetable for evacuating America citizens and their allies is almost certain to fail.

Tory MP Tom Tugendhat – who served as an Army officer in Afghanistan – said all the UK could do was ‘ask the Americans if they’re willing to stand with us’.

He added: ‘If they’re not then we can’t secure the perimeter and we can’t manage air traffic control, so if the Americans decide to go now I’m afraid that is it. But we can ask.’

Mr Tugendhat said he understands Mr Biden has to make ‘a very difficult decision’, but said many families are struggling to get through the gate and ‘a day, maybe two days longer, would help just a few more’.  

Pentagon chiefs yesterday poured cold water on an extension by insisting they are ‘focused on getting this done by the end of the month’.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the President was ‘taking this day by day’ and will make his decision on an extension ‘as we go’. 

But he said the President still believes ‘we have time between now and August 31 to get out any American who wants to get out’.

The Taliban has warned that any Western military operation in Afghanistan that continued into September would breach a ‘red line’ and would ‘provoke a reaction’.

At a press conference this afternoon the group’s spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid urged the West not to ‘encourage’ highly skilled people to leave Afghanistan.

He warned that the US should not be removing ‘our doctors, engineers, our educated elite’ from the country.

According to translation on Sky News, he said: ‘We need those people in the country, we do not want them out of the country to work in their institutions.’

He urged Afghans to ‘return to their homes and resume their calm everyday lives’ by the Taliban.

Mr Mujahid said crowding at the airport was dangerous and ‘people could lose their lives’.

In an apparent sign of the US administration’s desperation to find a way out of the mess, CIA Director William J Burns is reported to have held a secret meeting in Kabul yesterday with the Taliban’s de facto leader Abdul Ghani Baradar – the highest level contact between the US and extremist regime so far. 

The Washington Post said the discussions were thought to be over the US withdrawal deadline.

Mr Wallace said the danger at Kabul airport will rise the closer the evacuation effort gets to the departure deadline.

‘As we get closer to the deadline I think it’s correct to say the security risk goes up,’ he said.

‘It just gets more and more dangerous as add-on groups and other terrorist groups such as IS (so-called Islamic State) would like to be seen to take greater credit, or like to be seen to chase the West out of the airport, that is inevitably going to feed their narrative and their ambitions.

‘We are very mindful that we are very, very vulnerable should these terrorists choose to do something.’

Mr Wallace warned that there was a risk it would turn into a ‘shooting war’ as tensions rise in the coming days. 

‘Obviously, all military personnel have the right of self-defence to protect themselves and protect civilians immediately near them,’ he told LBC.

‘I suspect that it will be a mixture of- well I can’t speculate what we would do but we certainly have plans, if we’re attacked, to defend ourselves.

‘I don’t think anyone wants this to turn into a shooting war in the last few days.’

He added: ‘I don’t think they want a shooting war either. They want us out as quickly as possible and we want to get out with as many people as possible.’

The Ministry of Defence said nearly 8,500 people have been evacuated from Afghanistan by the UK since August 13. 

In a update on Operation Pitting, the MoD said on Twitter: ‘8,458 people have been evacuated by the UK since 13 August. 5,171 of those people are Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy claimants. Nine UK military flights have left Kabul in the last 24 hours.’ 

The US has ramped up airlifts to evacuate more than 17,000 people in a day and Joe Biden has finally ordered troops to rescue Americans outside the airport in a race against time before the August 31 deadline.

Washington pulled off its biggest haul of evacuations since the crisis started over the last 24 hours to early Monday morning, with 28 military jets rescuing around 10,400 people. Another 15 C-17 flights over the next 12 hours brought out another 6,660.

Meanwhile, US Special Operations rescued 16 Americans from an unspecified location around two hours outside Kabul. The Pentagon revealed it was carried out by helicopter without disclosing further details.

It has emerged that Mr Biden told military officials he was reluctant to deploy US forces outside the Kabul airport perimeter over fears of a Black Hawk Down-style tragedy.

In a video conference last week, the president also negatively commented on how quickly the Afghan government fell apart and told commanders he wanted them to be focused on beefing up security at the airport.

During the call, the president alluded to the ‘Black Hawk Down’ tragedy of the Somali Civil War, which saw 18 US personnel killed.

Mr Tugendhat told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme: ‘We’re all asking for the same thing. I support the Prime Minister completely on this, but let’s recognise what we’re asking – we’re not just asking the Americans, although clearly they’ll have a major role, we’re actually asking the Taliban, and that’s a really difficult thing, because bluntly, they’re not exactly trustworthy.’

It emerged last night that Western powers are negotiating with the Taliban on the possibility of civilian flights being used in the evacuation, even if the military flights stopped.

German foreign minister Heiko Maas said: ‘We are holding talks with the US, Turkey and other partners with the goal of allowing the airport to continue to operate a civilian operation to fly these people out.’ 

Germany will ‘also continue to talk to the Taliban about this and will do this after the withdrawal of US troops’, he added.

Mr Wallace said: ‘I don’t think there is any likelihood of staying on after the United States.’ 

Armed Forces minister James Heappey conceded that the Taliban ‘gets a vote’ on the evacuation deadline. 

‘We have the military power to just stay there by force, but I don’t know that the humanitarian mission we’re embarked on… is helped by Kabul becoming a war zone,’ he said. 

Asked about the Taliban spokesman’s remarks, the Prime Minister’s spokesman said: ‘I don’t think we’ve had any direct communication to that end.’ 

He added that ‘discussions on the ground’ have been held with the Taliban over extending the deadline.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said: ‘We’re focused on getting this done before the end of the month.’ 

But he said the US would ‘absolutely consider the views’ of allies.