President Joe Biden announced that he has asked defense officials to put together “contingency plans” for keeping American forces on the ground in Afghanistan beyond the end of this month — despite claiming earlier Tuesday that the White House would abide by the Taliban’s “red line” of a full withdrawal by Aug. 31.
Biden said Tuesday that the completion of US forces’ evacuation operation at Kabul’s international airport by the end of this month “depends on the Taliban continuing to cooperate,” and confirmed that he had asked the Pentagon and the State Department for “contingency plans to adjust the timetable, should that become necessary.”
Biden delivered his latest update on the ongoing chaos in brief remarks from the Roosevelt Room at the White House. He spoke for approximately 13 minutes — the first five of which were devoted to his domestic agenda — and took no questions from the press pool.
The president insisted that the US and its allies “are currently on a pace” to finish evacuations by Aug. 31 — a date the Taliban has said is a “red line” beyond which no American troops can remain.
“The sooner we can finish, the better,” the president said. “Each day of operations brings added risk to our troops.” He cited the threat of an attack by the ISIS affiliate in Afghanistan, known as ISIS-K.
“Every day we’re on the ground is another day we know that ISIS-K is seeking to target the airport and attack both US and Allied forces and innocent civilians,” Biden said.
Earlier Tuesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki admitted to reporters that the evacuations of Americans, Europeans and their Afghan allies would have to stop sometime before the 31st in order to buy time for US forces to leave the country safely along with their equipment.
“There would need to be time to wind down the presence,” the press secretary said.
Biden spoke a little more than seven hours after meeting virtually with leaders of the G7 nations (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom) as well as the European Union, NATO and the United Nations.
America’s European allies have called on Biden to extend US forces’ stay beyond the end of this month to ensure that as many people as possible can get out of Afghanistan.
The president also sought to assuage concerns raised by some conservatives about the vetting of thousands of Afghan refugees who are being brought to America. He vowed that “anyone arriving in the United States will have undergone a background check” and called on Americans to work together to help the new arrivals resettle.
Biden estimated in an interview last week that between 10,000 and 15,000 Americans were in Afghanistan, which was reconquered by the Taliban earlier this month. Earlier Tuesday, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said that approximately 4,000 “American passport holders” had been flown out of Afghanistan along with their families.
However, lawmakers from both parties have said that not enough time remains to get every American out of Afghanistan before the deadline.
“We have a moral obligation to ensure that we get American citizens out and our Afghan partners out,” said Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), a veteran of the Afghan war. “There are more of those folks in the country in Afghanistan right now than we have the capability to evacuate between now and the end of the month.”
Biden promised at the end of his remarks that Secretary of State Antony Blinken would provide a complete accounting Wednesday of “exactly how many Americans are still in Afghanistan, how many we got out, and what our projection is.”
Both the State Department and Pentagon had scrapped briefings scheduled for Tuesday afternoon to make way for the president’s remarks, which were originally scheduled for noon, then pushed back to 2 p.m., then 4:30 p.m., and were delivered shortly after 5 p.m.
