UK is working ‘full speed’ to rescue 4,000 Brits and Afghans STILL stuck in Kabul

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The UK Government is now in a race against time to airlift nearly 2,000 Afghan interpreters and other staff who worked for Britain out of Kabul amid a growing backlash at Joe Biden over his decision to stick to his August 31 withdrawal deadline. 

The interpreters are understood to have been deemed eligible to come to the UK and have passed security checks but remain on the ground at Kabul airport.

The Pentagon briefed this afternoon that there are currently 10,000 people in total waiting at the airport for a flight out of the capital.  

Mr Biden sparked fury yesterday by ‘point blank’ refusing G7 calls to push back the exit date for US forces, with Washington of the belief that an extension would leave troops at too great a risk of attack from the Taliban or Isis.

His decision has angered some Tory MPs who have questioned Mr Biden’s ‘intellectual fitness’ to do the job, with one backbencher labelling the US President ‘gaga’.   

Mr Biden has warned the Taliban that it must ‘continue to co-operate’ with the US evacuation mission but there are growing fears that a crackdown by the group is already underway.

There are claims from people on the ground in Kabul that Afghans are being prevented by Taliban fighters from accessing the city’s airport for evacuation. Yesterday the extremists issued an edict banning nationals from leaving the country. They also blocked roads and set up check-points around Kabul airport. 

Meanwhile, video footage emerged showing a bloodied man who claimed to be an Australian citizen who had apparently been beaten by Taliban guards as he tried to reach the airport.   

Some 19,000 people were extracted from Kabul yesterday, taking the overall number since the operation began to 88,000, with the UK having brought more than 10,000 individuals – including more than 5,500 Afghans and their families – to Britain.  

The Pentagon said evacuations will continue ‘all the way to the end’ but also warned that in the ‘last couple of days’ leading up to the withdrawal date ‘we will begin to prioritise military capabilities and military resources to move out’ in order to end the deployment. 

Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, this morning admitted the evacuation mission is in its final stages.      

Mr Raab said the UK is working ‘as fast as we can’ to maximise the number of people who can flee, saying 2,000 were taken to safety in the last 24 hours and almost all single-nationality Britons are now out. He declined to say when the last UK flight will be leaving.

Former chief of the defence staff Lord Richards said he believes even after the last official flight the British military will ‘sneak others in who arrive late along with their own people’.

Mr Biden’s decision to stick with the withdrawal date has sparked Tory fury, with MP Bob Seely telling MailOnline: ‘If this does destroy Biden’s presidency, you have to question his fitness for the role.

‘You have got to question Trump’s moral fitness for the role, but you have got to address Biden’s intellectual fitness and health fitness for the role.

‘I’m sorry, he is just gaga… he doesn’t have a grip. How many slip ups before people think, yep, he can’t do the job.’

It comes as:

Former military chiefs and Tory MPs have urged Boris Johnson to reverse military cuts saying the Afghanistan crisis shows they were a mistake; Dominic Raab has angrily denied that he was cavorting on a Crete beach while Afghanistan descended into chaos, saying the sea had been closed at his luxury holiday resort due to a ‘red notice’;Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has said former Royal Marine Paul ‘Pen’ Farthing will be allowed to fly his staff and rescue animals out of Kabul after initially refusing the request; Mr Johnson has pleaded with Taliban to continue to let people out of Afghanistan after August 31 and announced a ‘roadmap’ for dealing with new Islamist government;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.

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 Pentagon said on Wednesday that US forces have ‘been very clear’ with the Taliban ‘about what credentials we are willing to accept’ for people trying to get to the airport.

‘By and large, with caveats’ people have been getting through checkpoints, spokesman John Kirby said, adding ‘we also have other means to get people in.’

‘When we have reports that someone credentialed is not being let in, we are making that clear to Taliban leaders they need to let them in,’ Kirby said.

It was also revealed that a military operation recovered ‘less than 20 people’ from Kabul under cover of darkness and brought them safely to the airport for evacuation.

Members of the GOP said on Tuesday night that Biden has ‘blood on his hands’ because thousands of American citizens and Afghan allies who helped U.S. troops could be left to die when the final evacuation flights depart – which could even be before midnight on Aug. 31 to ensure a safe evacuation of everyone at the airport.

Rep. Seth Moulton, a Democrat from Massachusetts, and Rep. Peter Meijer, a Republican from Michigan, who underwent a secret trip to Kabul to witness the situation at the airport for themselves, challenged President Biden and claimed that ‘we won’t get everyone out on time’.  

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

Mr Raab said he was unclear how many people will be left behind in Afghanistan.

The Foreign Secretary said the figure depends on ‘the window’ left in terms of timing and how many people they manage to process over the next few days.

He told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: ‘It’s also how many want to come, as there are some finely balanced cases.’

Mr Raab said the details of how UK forces will withdraw were still being firmed up. There is speculation the British team will initially withdraw to the airport from the Baron hotel, where they have been processing applications. 

The UK contingent is then expected to hand over duties to the Americans, who will be the last to leave. 

‘The military planners are firming up the details of what the extra – the time they will need at the end to drawdown their own staff, personnel and equipment. We will get the details of that I’m sure, shortly,’ Mr Raab said.

‘We need to get that clear from the military planners, they are obviously working on that. Ideally we want to limit the period that they need for their drawdown to maximise the period for the civilian airlift, if you like. But that is something that they will need to provide the details on.’

Mr Raab tried to play down concerns about the Taliban obstructing extractions, saying that although trust was at ‘rock bottom’ there had been ‘constructive’ engagement.

‘They have, so far, in relation to the airport, behaved constructively and engaged constructively more or less.

‘There’s clearly reports and some of the people on the ground – roadblocks or elsewhere – are not following what the political leadership are requiring. But overall, one of the reasons that we have been able to get the numbers out through the evacuation is because we have engaged and they have lived up to some of the things that they have said.

‘We need to then set further tests for them and be very clear about what we are willing to do, if and only if they live up to their assurances.’

Mr Raab also declined to comment on whether British troops would return to Afghanistan in the future.

‘I’m not going to speculate on that while we’re in the middle of withdrawals,’ he said.

‘The United Kingdom retains the right to exercise self-defence in relation to our nationals in our country. We’re not getting into speculating about that.’

After the setback for the alliance with the US, Mr Raab suggested the UK is looking to ‘broaden the group of like-minded countries’ trying to rein in Taliban extremism in future. 

He told Times Radio: ‘I’ve been speaking to China, Pakistan, India and we’ll be trying to convene meetings of the permanent members of the Security Council to agree the contours for the way forward.

‘In terms of the leaders, we will use all the leaders at our disposal. Sanctions potentially, access to the international financial institutions… If they (the Taliban) want aid going into Afghanistan, it won’t go through the Taliban, they’ll have to provide a permissive environment for NGOs (non-governmental organisations) and the UN.’

There were grim reports of the growing tensions at the airport today, with one British businessman referred to as Shafiullah telling The Times he had been beaten by the Taliban and sworn at by British soldier.  

‘In the space of a few hours, after a ten-hour wait without water, I was beaten by the Taliban and told to f*** off by the British army,’ the Bromley businessman in his forties said. ‘We are desperate here… We know the clock is counting down to the last flights. There’s too little time left to evacuate us all.’

It comes after Mr Johnson yesterday faced humiliation with Mr Biden shrugging off his 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. 

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’. 

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 told the Guardian that US-UK relations were ‘about to enter their lowest point since Suez’.  

Tory MP Colonel Bob Stewart said he did not believe that the Afghan episode would do lasting damage to the Special Relationship between US and UK forces.

But the backbencher – who served in Bosnia – warned that it was more evidence of the UK’s inability to act independently.

‘Let’s be quite clear, parliament and the British public have reduced the armed forces of this country to very very small players, and we cannot do things,’ he told MailOnline.

‘We should be paying at least 3 per cent of gross national product on defence.

‘People say ”why don’t we do more?” Well, we can’t do more. We haven’t got the resources to do more, because they have all gone.

‘We don’t have the capacity to do more than ally with a stronger military power.’

He added: ‘You cannot have your cake and eat it. People are saying we should be protecting more people, but at the same time they are cutting our armed forces.’

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.’