A U.S. military drone strike in Afghanistan killed two “high profile” Islamic State militants Friday, Pentagon officials said Saturday, the first retaliatory action since the airport attack.
Biden reiterated Saturday that U.S. forces will “hunt down” anyone involved in the attack and “make them pay.”
“This strike was not the last,” he said.
Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor, a senior U.S. military official, described the people killed as “facilitators” and “planners,” but declined to say whether they were involved in the attack.
Many of the slain U.S. service members were in their infancy in 2001, the year the 9/11 terrorist attacks triggered the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, their lives bookended by the violent start and conclusion of America’s longest war.
Evacuation efforts are steadily coming to a close. Pentagon officials reported the number departing Afghanistan with U.S. assistance has slowed, with about 6,800 people carted out of the country in the 24 hours before 3 a.m. Saturday. The United Kingdom’s last flight for civilians has left Kabul, officials said.
Here’s what to know:
- Authorities have identified the 13 service members killed in Thursday’s attack. These are some of their stories.
- The Taliban said it has arrested two members of ISIS-K, but declined to identify the pair or give details of their possible involvement in the blast.
- A Washington Post review of dozens of photos and videos, satellite imagery and interviews with witnesses to the Aug. 26 Kabul airport bombing reveals a complex web of checkpoints and visualizes a chaotic scene in the wake of the attack.
- The Taliban has requested that the United States keep a diplomatic presence in Afghanistan beyond the Aug. 31 withdrawal of U.S. military forces, the State Department said.
- As NATO allies end their evacuations, thousands of Afghan interpreters, embassy staffers and drivers are being left behind.
Most of the Americans killed in the Kabul bombing were 9/11 babies who never knew a nation at peace
They had signed up to do their part, to heal a country — their own — that had not known a moment of peace in their entire lives. Rylee McCollum wanted to become a history teacher, but only after doing what he could as a Marine to serve his country. Hunter Lopez knew this was what he wanted since he was 11 years old. Ryan Knauss knew it in second grade.
The 13 American service members killed in Kabul on Thursday died in gruesome violence, victims of a terrorist bombing. They were, with one exception, 9/11 babies, born within a few years of the terrorist attacks that led the United States into a military conflict that stretched across four presidencies and throughout these 11 men’s and two women’s lives.
They never knew a nation that was not at war, never lived in the world before Homeland Security and the TSA, a country without ID checks in office buildings, metal detectors at schools, X-rayed shoes at the airport.
Instead, they grew up keenly conscious of security concerns, in a culture now sometimes fixated on safety, always aware of a War on Terror that men and women in uniform were fighting thousands of miles from home.
They were in Afghanistan this month not to fight, but to help finally end a two-decade-long war. In the pictures they posted, the videos they sent home, they held Afghan babies and guided fleeing families and stood guard in a hectic, precarious place.
On Saturday, as the Pentagon released the names and biographies of those who were killed, their families groped to make some sense of the ultimate loss. Parents and other relatives spoke of these deaths as searing reminders that these young people had lived in the shadow of wars that took place an ocean away, conflicts strangely detached from most Americans’ daily existence.
Hope dwindles among U.S.-based Afghans trying to get family members out of Kabul: ‘It’s over’
Gul Manalai had been stuck in the same loop for days: She came home from a night shift as a pediatrician and turned on the television. Slept in fits. Woke up and turned on the television again.
CNN had become the soundtrack of her apartment, its chyrons bearing perpetual news of the evacuation in Afghanistan that Manalai had steadily come to realize might not include her family.
At first, two of her siblings — who worked for an American nonprofit organization and State Department contractor — told her they could be called to the Kabul airport at any moment to be flown out of the country. But any moment turned into any day, and the days were running out.
She woke up Wednesday and thought of calling her senators. She already had called the chief executive of her hospital. She even called her old English teacher: Did he know anybody? She was running out of ideas.
“As soon as [President Biden] said they were going to pull out on the 31st, I knew it’s over,” Manalai said from her Maryland apartment, CNN rolling in the background. “I so very hope somebody can help us, but even if I call a senator, I know so many people have been calling them. What will be one doctor’s voice?”
The problem, she said, is the timing. “It’s five days left,” she said Wednesday. “Nobody can do anything in five days.”
Manalai, one of 12 siblings, said her family had been through this before.
Analysis: Will the chaotic and deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan be Biden’s defining moment?
President Biden could not — and did not try to — hide the sorrow he felt on the worst day of his presidency; his opening words — “Been a tough day” — and his body language conveyed everything. As commander in chief he will live with what happened Thursday outside the airport in Kabul for the rest of his presidency. But will the deadly attack and the chaotic withdrawal that surrounded it be the defining moment of his time in office?
The withdrawal has been marked by heroism and tragedy. The airlift, which officials say has evacuated more than 117,000 people since Aug. 14, stands as one of the most impressive humanitarian and logistical such undertakings in the history of the country, a mobilization that hardly seemed possible during the first stumbling days after the Taliban completed their takeover of Afghanistan by overrunning Kabul.
However, the chaos that has accompanied the withdrawal tells a different story. The experience has scarred Biden and his national security team, affected America’s standing in the world, handed a short-term propaganda victory to America’s adversaries, and probably emboldened those who would do this country harm.
Wisconsin towns await influx of Afghans and wonder what it will mean
SPARTA, Wis. — As the frenzied withdrawal from Afghanistan races toward Tuesday’s deadline, the number of refugees at Fort McCoy is increasing by the day. The surrounding communities are watching warily, with the recent deaths of 13 Americans in Kabul adding to the anxiety. Up to 10,000 Afghans could pass through the base, according to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.).
It’s still unclear whether the effects of the Afghan refugees on this part of Wisconsin will extend past the tall metal gates of the century-old installation. Yet residents are nursing concerns big and small: Will Afghan children share schoolrooms with local children in a district already short-staffed and contending with the coronavirus? Has the government properly vetted people fleeing a place known to harbor terrorists?
And while the Biden administration says the refugees will be settled throughout the country, residents here wonder: How long will western Wisconsin be playing host?
The answers to such questions will, among other things, color how people in this battleground state perceive President Biden, who narrowly won Wisconsin in November by 20,000 votes — a little more than half of a percentage point. As Biden says he’s restored competence and Republicans insist that he’s brought only chaos, places such as Sparta will serve as testing grounds.
Nationally, several installations are the waystations in the United States for thousands of incoming refugees as the war in Afghanistan comes to its bitter end.
Among those with the most at stake are local school officials. Educators in the Tomah Area School District do not know whether they will be expected to help teach Afghan children, said the superintendent, who is considering contingency plans in case he suddenly faces an influx of students who speak only Pashto or Dari.
Surprise, panic and fateful choices: Inside the day the U.S. lost its longest war
KABUL — On the day when Afghanistan’s capital fell to the Taliban this month, 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 the dawn of Aug. 15 broke over the misty mountains that ring the city, 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.
Taliban says it affirms Afghans’ right to mobility and to leave Afghanistan
Taliban leaders said they would allow Afghans to move freely and leave the country, by air or by land, in an attempt to assuage fears of restricted mobility after the withdrawal of foreign troops.
Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, deputy head of the movement’s political commission, said in a televised Friday address that Afghanistan’s borders will remain open to travel at any time into and out of the nation.
“Those Afghans who are intending to go abroad, they can do so in a dignified manner and peace of mind by having legal documents like passports and visas after resumption of commercial flights in the country,” tweeted Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen, quoting Stanikzai.
The message came amid the chaos of thousands of Afghans struggling to catch flights out of Kabul before Tuesday’s deadline for the end of the U.S. evacuation operation.
Some of those who have fled include academics, professionals and specialists. In his speech, Stanikzai urged Afghans to unite to rebuild their country, Reuters reported. “The ground is prepared for the doctors, engineers and teachers that Afghanistan needs and for people from every profession, whether civilian or military. All are invited to start their work,” he said.
“The statement is positive. We, our allies, and the international community will hold them to these commitments,” U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad wrote in his first tweets since the fall of Kabul.
Khalilzad posted a translation of the Taliban’s message on freedom of travel. According to the translation, the Taliban spokesman said, “We want you to travel abroad: for medical treatment, business, education, and any other reason. We have no issues with your intent. But it should be in a dignified fashion that is appropriate with you as an Afghan and Muslim.”
Taliban appoints education ministers, promise to form an inclusive government
Most private and government schools, as well as universities, remain shut — and local news outlet Khaama Press reported that as many as 200 university lecturers have left Afghanistan — but the Taliban has appointed an acting minister of higher education. The Taliban government and bureaucracy is slowly being formed as the group appoints and announces Taliban veterans, some obscure and others better known, as heads of government ministries.
Shaikh Abdul Baqi Haqani was named acting minister of higher education this week. The group also appointed an acting deputy minister of education, minister of student affairs, and minister of finance and administration, reported Kabul News.
The new ministers met with former leadership, and the acting minister noted that national and religious values are vital to their administration, Khaama Press News Agency reported Saturday.
Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, deputy head of the Taliban’s political office and among the Taliban’s most powerful figures, gave a nationally televised speech reiterating that the Taliban aims to form a government that represents all ethnic groups.
“All people will be included in the new system. Talks with all politicians are underway in this regard,” Stanikzai said, according to local network Ariana News.
The Taliban has filled other key posts, including interior minister and finance minister. Amid a cash shortage and soaring prices, the group chose Haji Mohammad Idris, an obscure Taliban official, as acting governor of Afghanistan’s central bank. Although Idris has no formal financial training, he has worked closely on economic matters with former Taliban leaders, a senior member of the group told Reuters last week.
Biden says another attack on Kabul airport ‘highly likely’ in next 24 to 36 hours, vows to ‘hunt down’ terrorists
President Biden on Saturday said that his commanders have advised him that another attack on the Kabul airport is “highly likely” in the next 24 to 36 hours, as efforts to evacuate U.S. citizens and Afghan allies continue through Aug. 31.
Biden, who met Saturday with his national security team in Washington and commanders in the field, said the on-the-ground situation in Afghanistan “continues to be extremely dangerous.”
“I directed [my commanders] to take every possible measure to prioritize force protection, and ensured that they have all the authorities, resources and plans to protect our men and women on the ground,” Biden said in a statement. “They assured me that they did, and that they could take these measures while completing the mission and safely retrograding our personnel.”
Biden also said that the drone strike that killed two Islamic State militants on Friday would not be the last, and he continued to vow retribution against anyone else who was responsible for the attack that killed 13 U.S. service members outside Kabul airport and injured scores of others.
“I said we would go after the group responsible for the attack on our troops and innocent civilians in Kabul, and we have,” Biden said. “This strike was not the last. We will continue to hunt down any person involved in that heinous attack and make them pay. Whenever anyone seeks to harm the United States or attack our troops, we will respond. That will never be in doubt.”
Pentagon officials have said that the drone strike Friday killed an Islamic State “facilitator” and “planner,” and wounded a third person, but they declined to go into details about how or whether the deceased were involved in the Kabul airport attack.
Pentagon identifies 13 service members killed in terrorist attack at Kabul airport
Defense officials on Saturday afternoon identified the 13 American service members killed alongside at least 170 others in the terrorist attack Thursday at the Kabul airport.
Eleven of the dead were Marines, one was an Army staff sergeant, and one was a hospitalman, according to the Department of Defense. The youngest was 20, the oldest 31. They were identified as:
- Marine Staff Sgt. Darin T. Hoover, 31, of Salt Lake City
- Sgt. Johanny Rosariopichardo, 25, of Lawrence, Mass.
- Sgt. Nicole L. Gee, 23, of Sacramento
- Cpl. Hunter Lopez, 22, of Indio, Calif.
- Cpl. Daegan W. Page, 23, of Omaha
- Cpl. Humberto A. Sanchez, 22, of Logansport, Ind.
- Lance Cpl. David L. Espinoza, 20, of Rio Bravo, Tex.
- Lance Cpl. Jared M. Schmitz, 20, of St. Charles, Mo.
- Lance Cpl. Rylee J. McCollum, 20, of Jackson, Wyo.
- Lance Cpl. Dylan R. Merola, 20, of Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.
- Lance Cpl. Kareem M. Nikoui, 20, of Norco, Calif.
- Navy Hospitalman Maxton W. Soviak, 22, of Berlin Heights, Ohio.
- Army Staff Sgt. Ryan C. Knauss, 23, of Corryton, Tenn.
They died after a suicide bomber detonated explosives at an airport gate where U.S. troops were searching evacuees rushing to depart the country. Officials said Saturday that the service members’ remains were being transported to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware and that the attack was “under investigation.”
The attack was the single deadliest enemy strike against U.S. forces in Afghanistan since August 2011, when militants shot down a Chinook helicopter, killing 30 U. S. troops onboard.
Many of the service members killed Thursday were in their infancy when the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, prompted the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.
One had gotten married in the winter and was expecting his first child when he was transferred to Afghanistan to help with the evacuation mission.
Another had recently posted a photo of herself helping load evacuees onto an airplane. The caption: “I love my job.”
Shawn Boburg, Meagan Flynn, Alex Horton, Ellen McCarthy, Dalvin Brown, María Luisa Paúl, Rebecca Tan and Jose A. Del Real contributed to this report.
Evacuations continue to drop as Pentagon pulls equipment out of Afghanistan
The evacuations from Hamid Karzai International Airport slowed dramatically on Friday, with Pentagon officials reporting that approximately 6,800 people were brought out of Afghanistan — about 4,000 of them on U.S. military planes — in the 24-hour period before 3 a.m. Saturday morning.
The people were taken out on 32 U.S. military aircraft and 34 other planes — a comparable number of flights to prior days, when the count of evacuees was far higher. Army Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor acknowledged to reporters Saturday that “there is equipment leaving on those flights,” which is taking up some of the space.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby was insistent Saturday that the military is “not shutting down evacuation operations” and that “we’re going to continue to the end.”
“We are still in charge of the airport, and we are still in charge of security at the airport,” he said. But officials have acknowledged that some gates at the airport that were previously open have been shut. And while officials have been adamant that U.S. passport holders arriving at the Kabul airport will be allowed in, the fate of Afghans is not as clear.
Kirby, responding to reports of Afghans being turned away at the airport, stressed that as far as he knew, the policy allowing Afghans to be eligible for departure had not changed.
Yet the Pentagon’s own numbers suggest that fewer Afghans are being allowed onto the field. Taylor said there are 1,000 people at the Kabul airport who have been screened and manifested for flights today. In recent days, upward of 21,000 people daily have been airlifted out of Afghanistan, and there have been over 10,000 people waiting within the airport for their turn.
Taylor said Saturday that of the 117,000 people who have flown out of Afghanistan since the start of evacuations on Aug. 14, “the vast majority” are Afghans. To date, he added, 5,400 American citizens have been able to leave on U.S. military or other coalition flights.
People taken out of Kabul are first transported to intermediary destinations for processing before arriving in the United States. Taylor said that 2,000 Afghans are expected to be flown from Italy to the Philadelphia International Airport, which has been added to Dulles International Airport in Virginia as a place to receive such flights of refugees.
Pentagon says 2 ‘high-profile’ Islamic State militants killed in drone strike in Afghanistan
Two “high-profile” Islamic State militants were killed in a drone strike in Afghanistan, Pentagon officials said Saturday, but they stopped short of saying the militants were directly involved in a suicide bombing that killed 13 U.S. troops and dozens of Afghans in Kabul.
The update from Pentagon officials came after the U.S. military announced it had carried out a strike Friday that killed an Islamic State “planner.” Additional assessments found that a second Islamic State member was killed in the operation in Nangahar province, and a third person was wounded, said Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor, a senior U.S. military official.
Taylor described the people killed as “facilitators” and “planners,” but he declined to say whether they were involved in the Kabul attack.
“We’re not going to go into that,” he said.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby added that the individuals’ involvement in the Islamic State was enough to make them a target. He declined to identify them.
Kirby also declined to detail how the strike was carried out or where the aircraft came from, citing a desire not to release tactical details. The strike came from “over the horizon,” Kirby said, Pentagon language meaning the aircraft flew in from outside Afghanistan.
Two Afghan Paralympians who were evacuated to Paris arrive in Tokyo to compete in Games
TOKYO — The two Afghan Paralympians who were evacuated last weekend to Paris from Kabul have arrived in Tokyo and are scheduled to compete in the Games, organizers said Saturday.
Zakia Khudadadi and Hossain Rasouli, the two athletes, have been resting and training at the National Institute of Sport, Expertise and Performance in Paris since their evacuation. They traveled on an 11-hour flight from Paris and arrived at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport on Saturday to compete, Paralympics organizers said in a statement.
Khudadadi will compete in taekwondo on Sept. 2, which would make her Afghanistan’s first female athlete to compete in the Paralympics since the 2004 Athens Games, organizers said. Rasouli will compete in the men’s athletics event on Sept. 3.
A number of organizations and governments were involved in arranging the athletes’ evacuation and arrival in Tokyo — including the Center for Sport and Human Rights, International Paralympic Committee, Human Rights for All, French and British Paralympic organizations, and World Taekwondo — according to the statement.
“Both athletes have been extremely clear that after years of training they wanted to compete on the biggest stage of all, the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. The fact that so many authorities have combined to make this possible is truly wonderful,” said Chelsey Gotell, chairwoman of the International Paralympic Committee’s Athletes’ Council.
Arian Sadiqi, head of the Afghan Paralympic Team, said in a statement that by competing in the Tokyo Games, the Afghan athletes can help deliver “the positive message that peaceful co-existence is best for humanity.”
“I strongly believe that, through the Paralympic Movement and the Paralympic Games … we should keep and cherish peace because quarrels and negative feeling only destroy humankind,” Sadiqi said.
Italy concludes evacuations from Kabul
Italy on Saturday became the latest European country to conclude its evacuations, with a flight of refugees and diplomats arriving in Rome. Italy’s foreign minister said the country had evacuated some 5,000 people, mostly Afghan citizens, in recent days.
But reflecting the scope of the hasty withdrawal, in which some people who assisted Western governments and militaries were unable to make it to Kabul’s airport, Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio said Italy would continue to lend support in a subsequent, “more difficult” phase.
Among those who landed in Rome on Saturday was Tommaso Claudi, a young diplomat who helped pull a child from a crush outside Kabul’s airport — a searing moment captured in a photograph that went viral in Italy.
At the airport, Stefano Pontecorvo, the NATO senior civilian representative to Afghanistan, told reporters that what he’d seen over the past two weeks — including Thursday’s terrorist attack — had changed his life.
“I have dealt with Bosnia, Kosovo, but what I have seen in these two weeks, I haven’t seen it in the past,” Pontecorvo said.
Taliban says it captured two ISIS-K members suspected of involvement in airport bombing
DOHA, Qatar — The Taliban said Saturday that it has arrested two members of the Islamic State-Khorasan, also known as ISIS-K, the fundamentalist militant group that claimed responsibility for Thursday’s deadly suicide bombing outside of the Kabul airport.
“They are under investigation,” Taliban spokesman Qari Muhammad Yousaf Ahmadi told The Washington Post. He declined to identify the pair or give details of their possible involvement in the blast.
The Taliban, which has pledged to provide security in Afghanistan now that it has gained control of the country, condemned the bombing, which killed at least 170 people. At least 13 U.S. service members were also killed. Pursuing the suspected attackers forces the Taliban and the United States into an uncomfortable alliance. President Biden pledged to find and retaliate against ISIS-K members after Thursday’s attack, which occurred at a U.S.-operated checkpoint outside the airport.
The U.S. military said Friday that it had carried out a drone strike in eastern Afghanistan killed an “ISIS-K planner.” Taliban leaders declined to comment on the American action.
Details of the drone strike were unclear Saturday. Several residents of Jalalabad, capital of Nangahar province on the Pakistan border, confirmed an overnight attack that targeted a house in the city’s 7th district. But the residents, who were reached by phone, gave conflicting accounts of the damage.
One resident told The Post that a strike on a house in the Naghrak neighborhood on the outskirts of the city killed two people and wounded three others. The Taliban was not allowing people near the site, the person said.
Residents said that they didn’t know the identities of the people killed but that one man was not well known because he came from outside the district and didn’t associate with his neighbors.
“The identity of the person killed was not known as he was not mixing up with the people,” said one neighbor, who asked to not be identified out of safety concerns.
