New world news from Time: Last U.S. Troops Leave Afghanistan After 20 Years of War

(WASHINGTON) — The United States completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan late Monday, ending America’s longest war and closing a chapter in military history likely to be remembered for colossal failures, unfulfilled promises and a frantic final exit that cost the lives of more than 180 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members, some barely older than the war.

Hours ahead of President Joe Biden’s Tuesday deadline for shutting down a final airlift, and thus ending the U.S. war, Air Force transport planes carried a remaining contingent of troops from Kabul airport. Thousands of troops had spent a harrowing two weeks protecting the airlift of tens of thousands of Afghans, Americans and others seeking to escape a country once again ruled by Taliban militants.
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In announcing the completion of the evacuation and war effort. Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, said the last planes took off from Kabul airport at 3:29 p.m. Washington time, or one minute before midnight in Kabul. He said a number of American citizens, likely numbering in “the very low hundreds,” were left behind, and that he believes they will still be able to leave the country.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken put the number of Americans left behind at under 200, “likely closer to 100,” and said the State Department would keep working to get them out. He praised the military-led evacuation as heroic and historic and said the U.S. diplomatic presence would shift to Doha, Qatar.

Biden said military commanders unanimously favored ending the airlift, not extending it. He said he asked Blinken to coordinate with international partners in holding the Taliban to their promise of safe passage for Americans and others who want to leave in the days ahead.

The airport had become a U.S.-controlled island, a last stand in a 20-year war that claimed more than 2,400 American lives.

The closing hours of the evacuation were marked by extraordinary drama. American troops faced the daunting task of getting final evacuees onto planes while also getting themselves and some of their equipment out, even as they monitored repeated threats — and at least two actual attacks — by the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate. A suicide bombing on Aug. 26 killed 13 American service members and some 169 Afghans.

The final pullout fulfilled Biden’s pledge to end what he called a “forever war” that began in response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and rural Pennsylvania. His decision, announced in April, reflected a national weariness of the Afghanistan conflict. Now he faces criticism at home and abroad, not so much for ending the war as for his handling of a final evacuation that unfolded in chaos and raised doubts about U.S. credibility.

The U.S. war effort at times seemed to grind on with no endgame in mind, little hope for victory and minimal care by Congress for the way tens of billions of dollars were spent for two decades. The human cost piled up — tens of thousands of Americans injured in addition to the dead.

More than 1,100 troops from coalition countries and more than 100,000 Afghan forces and civilians died, according to Brown University’s Costs of War project.

In Biden’s view the war could have ended 10 years ago with the U.S. killing of Osama bin Laden, whose al-Qaida extremist network planned and executed the 9/11 plot from an Afghanistan sanctuary. Al-Qaida has been vastly diminished, preventing it thus far from again attacking the United States.

Congressional committees, whose interest in the war waned over the years, are expected to hold public hearings on what went wrong in the final months of the U.S. withdrawal. Why, for example, did the administration not begin earlier the evacuation of American citizens as well as Afghans who had helped the U.S. war effort and felt vulnerable to retribution by the Taliban?

It was not supposed to end this way. The administration’s plan, after declaring its intention to withdraw all combat troops, was to keep the U.S. Embassy in Kabul open, protected by a force of about 650 U.S. troops, including a contingent that would secure the airport along with partner countries. Washington planned to give the now-defunct Afghan government billions more to prop up its army.

Biden now faces doubts about his plan to prevent al-Qaida from regenerating in Afghanistan and of suppressing threats posed by other extremist groups such as the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate. The Taliban are enemies of the Islamic State group but retain links to a diminished al-Qaida.

The final U.S. exit included the withdrawal of its diplomats, although the State Department has left open the possibility of resuming some level of diplomacy with the Taliban depending on how they conduct themselves in establishing a government and adhering to international pleas for the protection of human rights.

The speed with which the Taliban captured Kabul on Aug. 15 caught the Biden administration by surprise. It forced the U.S. to empty its embassy and frantically accelerate an evacuation effort that featured an extraordinary airlift executed mainly by the U.S. Air Force, with American ground forces protecting the airfield. The airlift began in such chaos that a number of Afghans died on the airfield, including at least one who attempted to cling to the airframe of a C-17 transport plane as it sped down the runway.

By the evacuation’s conclusion, well over 100,000 people, mostly Afghans, had been flown to safety. The dangers of carrying out such a mission came into tragic focus last week when the suicide bomber struck outside an airport gate.

Speaking shortly after that attack, Biden stuck to his view that ending the war was the right move. He said it was past time for the United States to focus on threats emanating from elsewhere in the world.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “it was time to end a 20-year war.”

The war’s start was an echo of a promise President George W. Bush made while standing atop of the rubble in New York City three days after hijacked airliners slammed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

“The people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!” he declared through a bullhorn.

Less than a month later, on Oct. 7, Bush launched the war. The Taliban’s forces were overwhelmed and Kabul fell in a matter of weeks. A U.S.-installed government led by Hamid Karzai took over and bin Laden and his al-Qaida cohort escaped across the border into Pakistan.

The initial plan was to extinguish bin Laden’s al-Qaida, which had used Afghanistan as a staging base for its attack on the United States. The grander ambition was to fight a “Global War on Terrorism” based on the belief that military force could somehow defeat Islamic extremism. Afghanistan was but the first round of that fight. Bush chose to make Iraq the next, invading in 2003 and getting mired in an even deadlier conflict that made Afghanistan a secondary priority until Barack Obama assumed the White House in 2009 and later that year decided to escalate in Afghanistan.

Obama pushed U.S. troop levels to 100,000, but the war dragged on though bin Laden was killed in Pakistan in 2011.

When Donald Trump entered the White House in 2017 he wanted to withdraw from Afghanistan but was persuaded not only to stay but to add several thousand U.S. troops and escalate attacks on the Taliban. Two years later his administration was looking for a deal with the Taliban, and in February 2020 the two sides signed an agreement that called for a complete U.S. withdrawal by May 2021. In exchange, the Taliban made a number of promises including a pledge not to attack U.S. troops.

Biden weighed advice from members of his national security team who argued for retaining the 2,500 troops who were in Afghanistan by the time he took office in January. But in mid-April he announced his decision to fully withdraw.

The Taliban pushed an offensive that by early August toppled key cities, including provincial capitals. The Afghan army largely collapsed, sometimes surrendering rather than taking a final stand, and shortly after President Ashraf Ghani fled the capital, the Taliban rolled into Kabul and assumed control on Aug. 15.

Some parts of the country modernized during the U.S. war years, and life for many Afghans, especially women and girls, improved measurably. But Afghanistan remains a tragedy, poor, unstable and with many of its people fearing a return to the brutality the country endured when the Taliban ruled from 1996 to 2001.

The U.S. failures were numerous. It degraded but never defeated the Taliban and ultimately failed to build an Afghan military that could hold off the insurgents, despite $83 billion in U.S. spending to train and equip the army.

New world news from Time: European Union Removes U.S. From Safe Travel List, Recommends Member States Reimpose Restrictions for American Tourists

(BRUSSELS) — The European Union recommended Monday that its 27 nations reinstate restrictions on tourists from the U.S. because of rising coronavirus infections there.

The decision by the European Council to remove the U.S. from a safe list of countries for nonessential travel reverses advice that it gave in June, when the bloc recommended lifting restrictions on U.S. travelers before the summer tourism season.

The guidance is nonbinding, however, and U.S. travelers should expect a mishmash of travel rules across the continent.

“Nonessential travel to the EU from countries or entities not listed (…) is subject to temporary travel restriction,” the council said in a statement. “This is without prejudice to the possibility for member states to lift the temporary restriction on nonessential travel to the EU for fully vaccinated travelers.”
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The EU also removed Israel, Kosovo, Lebanon, Montenegro and North Macedonia from the list.

The EU has no unified COVID-19 tourism policy and national EU governments have the authority to decide whether they keep their borders open to U.S. tourists. Possible restrictions could include quarantines, further testing requirements upon arrival or even a total ban on all nonessential travel from the U.S.

More than 15 million Americans a year visited Europe before the coronavirus crisis, and new travel restrictions could cost Europe billions.

The recommendation doesn’t apply to Britain, which formally left the EU at the beginning of the year and opened its borders to fully vaccinated travelers from the U.S. earlier this month.

The United States remains on Britain’s “amber” travel list, meaning that fully vaccinated adults arriving from the U.S. to the U.K. don’t have to self-isolate. A COVID-19 test is required three days before arrival in the U.K. and another test is needed two days after arriving.

Meanwhile, the United States has yet to reopen its own borders to EU tourists, despite calls from the bloc for the Biden administration to lift its ban. Adalbert Jahnz, the European Commission spokesperson for home affairs, said Monday that the EU’s executive arm remained in discussions with the U.S. administration as both sides have so far failed to find a reciprocal approach.

In addition to the epidemiological criteria used to determine the countries for which restrictions should be lifted, the European Council said that “reciprocity should also be taken into account on a case by case basis.”

The European Council updates the safe travel list based on criteria relating to coronavirus infection levels. It gets reviewed every two weeks. The threshold for being on the EU list is having not more than 75 new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 inhabitants over the last 14 days.

Last week in the U.S. new coronavirus cases averaged over 152,000 a day, turning the clock back to the end of January, and the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients was around 85,000, a number not seen since early February.

U.S. coronavirus deaths have been over 1,200 a day for several days, seven times higher than they were in early July.

New world news from Time: China Sees Opportunity After America’s Withdrawal From Afghanistan. But Can Beijing Do Any Better?

The speed of the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan has been a surprise; China’s reaction to the “U.S. humiliation” anything but.

As the Aug. 31 deadline for U.S. troops to leave the nation approaches, with thousands of Afghans and foreign nationals still desperately trying to board evacuation planes amid bloody terrorist attacks, Beijing’s official media has been pointing fingers.

“The disaster in Afghanistan was caused by the U.S. and its allies,” said the state-run Global Times, whose editor tweeted a photo of calm scenes around the Chinese embassy in Kabul while the U.S. legation was overrun. “Death, bloodshed and a tremendous humanitarian tragedy are what the United States has truly left behind in Afghanistan,” said state news wire Xinhua.
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China did not oppose the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. In fact, Beijing backed U.N. Security Council resolutions that endorsed international efforts to oust the Afghan Taliban, with then President Jiang Zemin concerned about Al Qaeda militants spilling over its shared border into restive Xinjiang province. Just days after the Taliban fell, in December 2001, China sent a Foreign Ministry delegation to Kabul with a message of congratulations for new President Hamid Karzai, whom Jiang hosted in Beijing a month later.

But this is now being overlooked as state media portrays the present Taliban as a more moderate group than the one ousted in 2001—even attempting to characterize it as primarily an anti-American one. The Communist Party People’s Daily flatteringly credited the Taliban’s victory to its supposed adoption of Mao Zedong’s “people’s war” tactic: rallying the support of the rural population, while drawing the enemy deep into the countryside.

Read more: An Afghan Teacher on How the World Can Protect Girls From the Taliban

“Among the Chinese population, there is actually pretty strong admiration of the Taliban this time around,” Sun Yun, director of the China Program at the Stimson Center, told a recent meeting of the Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club.

Ever the pragmatist, Beijing has always maintained links with the Taliban regardless of who was in power in Kabul. In 2000, before 9/11 stunned the world, China’s ambassador to Pakistan met with then Taliban chief, Mullah Omar, in one of the hardliner’s only meetings with foreign diplomats. In 2015, China hosted negotiations between the Taliban and Afghan officials in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi, with a Taliban delegation visiting Beijing four years later.

Last month, with a Taliban takeover looking increasingly obvious, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi received a nine-strong Taliban delegation in China’s northeastern port city of Tianjin, including group number two Abdul Ghani Baradar. There, Wang called the insurgents “a pivotal military and political force.”

Samina Yasmeen, director of the Centre for Muslim States and Societies at the University of Western Australia, says China is trying to create a zone of influence, which extends beyond Pakistan to include Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq. The underlining supposition is that if China can rebuild Afghanistan, it’s model must be superior to the Western one.

“The Chinese are looking at the region, saying, ‘Where are the areas where there’s dissatisfaction with the United States, either at the government level or among the people?’” says Yasmeen. “And that’s where they are signing comprehensive strategic partnerships, especially if it helps them with energy resources.”

Li Ran/Xinhua via Getty ImagesChinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi meets with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, political chief of Afghanistan’s Taliban, in north China’s Tianjin, July 28, 2021.

Will Afghanistan become part of China’s Belt and Road?

Previously, China’s overriding interest in Afghanistan was security. Rahimullah Yousafzai, a Pakistani journalist and security expert, who once interviewed Osama Bin Laden, says that under pressure from Beijing the Afghan Taliban have been telling Uighur militants that China is off-limits. “The Taliban don’t want to create a problem for China,” says Yousafzai.

Today, in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal, Chinese strategists are thinking bigger, and eyeing deals to exploit Afghanistan’s mineral deposits. An Afghan parallel to the China Pakistan Economic Corridor—the $50 billion development of factories, power plants and pipelines from Kashgar in Xinjiang province to the Pakistani port of Gwadar in the Persian Gulf—might even be on the cards.

In 2016, India signed a $500 million deal to invest in Iran’s Chabahar port, which was seen as a strategic rival to Gwadar. In the years since, however, India’s relations with Iran have strained under pressure from the U.S., while Beijing in March inked a deal with Tehran to invest $400 billion over 25 years. Some strategists believe that China is well-placed to take over Chabahar and link it to China with a corridor though Afghanistan.

“If China were able to extend the Belt-and-Road from Pakistan through to Afghanistan—for example, with a Peshawar-to-Kabul motorway—it would open up a shorter land route to gain access to markets in the Middle East,” wrote Former People’s Liberation Army Colonel Zhou Bo in a New York Times op-ed.

AAMIR QURESHI/AFP via Getty Images A Chinese worker stands near trucks carrying goods during the opening of a trade project in Gwadar port, some 700 kms west of the Pakistani city of Karachi on November 13, 2016.

China, adds Zhou, “is ready to step into the void left by the hasty U.S. retreat to seize a golden opportunity.”

But Afghanistan isn’t called the “graveyard of empires” for nothing, and China’s “Peace through development” model has failed to completely quell Tibet and Xinjiang. Beijing also has a patchy record overseas, with states where it has gained tremendous influence—Myanmar, Venezuela, Sudan, among others—perpetually consumed by strife.

Last Thursday’s suicide bombing at Kabul Airport demonstrates that Taliban control is by no means absolute. The attack, which killed at least 170 Afghans as well as 13 U.S. military personnel, was claimed by ISIS in Khorasan, otherwise known as ISIS-K, an Islamist group opposed to both the U.S. and the Taliban. They were believed to be behind a particularly horrifying attack on a maternity hospital in Kabul in 2020.

In Tianjin, Wang urged the Taliban “to draw a line” between itself and terrorist groups, particularly the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which has launched attacks in Xinjiang. But whether the Taliban’s leadership can maintain political discipline among the group’s 70,000 fighters is another matter. The same goes for the group’s ability to police its vast, porous territory. That last week’s assailants managed to slip past Taliban checkpoints points to failings at best, and collusion at worst, on the part of Afghanistan’s new rulers.

AFP via Getty Images This photo taken on February 27, 2017 shows Chinese military police getting off a plane to attend an anti-terrorist oath-taking rally in Hetian, northwest China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.

China’s record in Pakistan

That investment and strong government ties do not necessarily spell security is already evident across Afghanistan’s eastern border in Pakistan. China’s all-weather ally has long been bankrolled by Beijing yet militants have attacked Chinese interests in Pakistan at least four times in recent months, making an apparent assassination attempt on China’s ambassador in April, and launching an attack on Chinese workers last month that killed 13 and injured 41.

Attacks against Chinese infrastructure used to be primarily perpetrated by separatist groups—typically from Balochistan, where Gwadar port in based— because China was the Pakistani state’s chief local sponsor. Increasingly, however, militant Islamists like the Pakistani Taliban are taking aim at China, indicating Beijing’s appearance in the crosshairs of a broader Jihadist campaign. Riled by the persecution of Uighur Muslims, Al Qaeda ideologues have begun talking about China as the “new imperialists.”

It must not be forgotten that China indirectly contributed to the formation of the Pakistani Taliban in the first place. In March 2007, students at two seminaries affiliated with Islamabad’s Red Mosque launched vigilante raids against “un-Islamic” targets such as DVD vendors, beauty parlors and a Chinese-run massage parlor that they accused of being a brothel. Ten Chinese nationals were kidnapped, with the female masseurs paraded on TV in burqas before being released. Outraged, the Chinese government put huge pressure on the Pakistani military to rein in the extremists, culminating in a week-long siege of the Red Mosque that July and 154 deaths.

Read more: All Is Not Lost in Afghanistan. Yet

Such bloodshed at a holy site coalesced support for hardliners in Pakistan, providing a rallying point for myriad Islamist groups that, over the next five months, committed 56 suicide attacks claiming almost 3,000 Pakistani lives. Their savagery was demonstrated by the 2014 Peshawar school massacre that saw 141 people killed, 132 of them children, in an atrocity that the Afghan Taliban condemned. In December, about 13 of these Islamist groups united to form the Pakistani Taliban.

Of course, Beijing could not have foreseen the chain of events when it put pressure on Pakistan to protect Chinese citizens in 2007. But in this fractured crucible of conflicting religious, tribal and political interests, even the most straightforward diplomatic move can create effects that are impossible to predict. China cannot expect to pursue sustained engagement in Afghanistan without risking significant blowback.

“While there may be a lot of gloating in China that they have a better possibility of influencing this region, I think they’re going to find it very hard,” says Yasmeen. “Afghanistan is not there for the taking.”

New world news from Time: U.S. Drone Strike Kills Suicide Bombers Targeting Kabul Airport

KABUL, Afghanistan — A U.S. drone strike Sunday struck a vehicle carrying “multiple suicide bombers” from Afghanistan’s Islamic State affiliate before they could target the ongoing military evacuation at Kabul’s international airport, American officials said.

There were few initial details about the incident, as well as a rocket that struck a neighborhood just northwest of the airport, killing a child. The Taliban initially described the two strikes as separate incidents, though information on both remained scarce and witnesses heard only one large blast Sunday in the Afghan capital.

The airstrike came as the United States winds down a historic airlift that saw tens of thousands evacuated from Kabul’s international airport, the scene of much of the chaos that engulfed the Afghan capital since the Taliban took over two weeks ago. After an Islamic State affiliate’s suicide attack that killed over 180 people, the Taliban increased its security around the airfield as Britain ended its evacuation flights Saturday.
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U.S. military cargo planes continued their runs into the airport Sunday, ahead of a Tuesday deadline earlier set by President Joe Biden to withdraw all troops from America’s longest war. However, Afghans remaining behind in the country worry about the Taliban reverting to their earlier oppressive rule — something fueled by the recent shooting death of a folk singer in the country by the insurgents.

Two American military officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations, called the airstrike successful and said the vehicle carried multiple bombers.

U.S. Navy Capt. Bill Urban, a spokesman for the American military’s Central Command, called the drone strike an action taken in “self-defense.” He said authorities continued “assessing the possibilities of civilian casualties, though we have no indications at this time.”

“We are confident we successfully hit the target,” Urban said. “Significant secondary explosions from the vehicle indicated the presence of a substantial amount of explosive material.”

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid earlier said in a message to journalists that the U.S. strike targeted a suicide bomber as he drove a vehicle loaded with explosives. Mujahid offered few other details.

The strike was the second by America since the airport suicide bombing. On Saturday, a strike in Nangarhar province killed an Islamic State member believed to be involved in planning attacks against the United States in Kabul.

The Sunni extremists of IS, with links to the group’s more well-known affiliate in Syria and Iraq, have carried out a series of brutal attacks, mainly targeting Afghanistan’s Shiite Muslim minority, including a 2020 assault on a maternity hospital in Kabul in which they killed women and infants.

The Taliban have fought against Islamic State militants in Afghanistan, where the Taliban have wrested back control nearly 20 years after they were ousted in a U.S.-led invasion. The Americans went in following the 9/11 attacks, which al-Qaida orchestrated while being sheltered by the group.

The rocket attack struck Kabul’s Khuwja Bughra neighborhood, said Rashid, the Kabul police chief who goes by one name. Video obtained by The Associated Press in the aftermath of the attack showed smoke rising from building at the site around a kilometer (half a mile) from the airport.

No group immediately claimed the attack, however militants have fired rockets in the past.

Meanwhile, the family of a folk singer north of Kabul say the Taliban killed him under unclear circumstances in recent days.

The shooting of Fawad Andarabi came in the Andarabi Valley for which he was named, an area of Baghlan province some 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of Kabul. The valley had seen upheaval since the Taliban takeover, with some districts in the area coming under the control of militia fighters opposed to the Taliban rule. The Taliban say they have since retaken those areas, though neighboring Panjshir in the Hindu Kush mountains remains the only one of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces not under its control.

The Taliban previously came out to Andarabi’s home and searched it, even drinking tea with the musician, his son Jawad Andarabi told the AP. But something changed Friday.

“He was innocent, a singer who only was entertaining people,” his son said. “They shot him in the head on the farm.”

His son said he wanted justice and that a local Taliban council promised to punish his father’s killer.

Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, told the AP that the insurgents would investigate the incident, but had no other details on the killing.

Andarabi played the ghichak, a bowed lute, and sang traditional songs about his birthplace, his people and Afghanistan as a whole. A video online showed him at one performance, sitting on a rug with the mountains of home surrounding him as he sang.

“There is no country in the world like my homeland, a proud nation,” he sang. “Our beautiful valley, our great-grandparents’ homeland.”

Karima Bennoune, the United Nations special rapporteur on cultural rights, wrote on Twitter that she had “grave concern” over Andarabi’s killing.

“We call on governments to demand the Taliban respect the #humanrights of #artists,” she wrote.

Agnes Callamard, the secretary-general of Amnesty International, similarly decried the killing.

“There is mounting evidence that the Taliban of 2021 is the same as the intolerant, violent, repressive Taliban of 2001,” she wrote on Twitter. “20 years later. Nothing has changed on that front.”

Also on Sunday, private banks across Afghanistan resumed their operations. However, they limited withdrawals to no more than the equivalent of $200 a day.

While some complained of still being unable to access their money, government employees say they haven’t been paid over the last four months. The Afghani traded around 90.5 to $1, continuing its depreciation as billions of dollars in the country’s reserves remain frozen overseas.

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Akhgar reported from Istanbul, Baldor from Washington and Gambrell from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

New world news from Time: Final U.K. Evacuation Flight Leaves Kabul as Troops Head Home

LONDON — Britain ended evacuation flights from Kabul airport on Saturday and began bringing troops home, even as the U.K.’s top military officer acknowledged “we haven’t been able to bring everybody out.”

Britain’s defense ministry said the final flight for Afghan citizens had left Kabul and further flights over the weekend will bring home British troops and diplomats, though they may also carry a few remaining U.K. or Afghan civilians.

Britain’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Laurie Bristow, said from Kabul airport that it was “time to close this phase of the operation now.”

“But we haven’t forgotten the people who still need to leave,” Bristow said in a video posted on Twitter. “We’ll continue to do everything we can to help them. Nor have we forgotten the brave, decent people of Afghanistan. They deserve to live in peace and security.”
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A Royal Air Force plane carrying U.K. diplomatic staff and soldiers landed at the RAF Brize Norton airbase northwest of London early Saturday morning. The troops from the 16 Air Assault Brigade were part of a contingent of 1,000 British soldiers who have been based in Kabul to help run the airlift.

Britain says it has evacuated more than 14,500 people from Kabul in the past two weeks but that as many as 1,100 Afghans who were entitled to come to the U.K. have been left behind. Some British lawmakers who have been trying to help stranded constituents and their families believe the true total is higher.

“We haven’t been able to bring everybody out, and that has been heartbreaking, and there have been some very challenging judgments that have had to be made on the ground,” the head of British armed forces, Gen. Nick Carter, told the BBC.

Foreign citizens from around the world and the Afghans who worked with them have sought to leave the country since the Taliban’s swift takeover this month after most U.S. forces departed. More than 100,000 people have been evacuated through Kabul airport, according to American officials.

The desperate, chaotic exodus turned deadly on Thursday, when a suicide bomber struck crowds gathered near the Kabul airport. The attack killed 169 Afghans, according to a preliminary count, and 13 American troops. Two British citizens and the child of another Briton also were among the people killed.

In London, Afghans came to the Afghanistan and Central Asian Association advice center, desperate for news of friends and relatives.

Saraj Deen Safi said he had been unable to make contact with relatives who were near Kabul airport since Thursday’s bomb attack. He said he hoped they would be able to reach a safe European country, but he felt “despaired” at the lack of news.

While the U.K. has evacuated thousands of former interpreters and others who worked with British forces, the advice program coordinator for the London association, Shabnam Nasimi, said she was “devastated” for many others.

“There are many others who indirectly supported our work there to bring about democracy and free speech and a much better society for Afghanistan,” Nasimi said. “And the fact we haven’t recognized that and now abandoned those people. And these include journalists and judges, for instance, who are directly going to be targeted by the Taliban.”

“The future of these individuals is very bleak,” she said.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised Friday to “shift heaven and earth” to get more people from Afghanistan to Britain by other means, though no concrete details have been offered.

U.K. officials hope some people may be able to leave Afghanistan overland for neighboring countries, where their claims to come to the U.K. could be processed. That will depend on diplomatic coordination and cooperation — not least from the Taliban.

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Associated Press video journalist Jo Kearney contributed to this story.

New world news from Time: U.S. Airstrike Targets Islamic State Member in Afghanistan After Kabul Airport Bombing

WASHINGTON — Acting swiftly on President Joe Biden’s promise to retaliate for the deadly suicide bombing at Kabul airport, the U.S. military said it killed a member of the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate with a drone strike in the group’s eastern stronghold.

–==as the U.S.-led evacuation from Kabul airport moved into its final days. Biden has set Tuesday as his deadline for completing the exit.

Biden authorized the drone strike and it was ordered by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, a defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to provide details not yet publicly announced. It was not immediately clear whether the targeted IS member was directly involved in Thursday’s airport attack.
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U.S. Central Command said the targeted individual, whose name and nationality were not released, was an IS “planner” and that he was hit in Nangarhar province, which borders Pakistan in eastern Afghanistan and was an early IS stronghold.

A U.S. official said Saturday that the targeted individual appeared to survive an initial drone strike aimed at the vehicle in which he was riding. A second strike killed him, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to provide details not yet publicly released.

The airstrike was launched from beyond Afghanistan less than 48 hours after the devastating Kabul attack that killed 13 Americans and scores of Afghans with just days left in a final U.S. withdrawal after 20 years of war. U.S. Central Command said it believed its strike killed no civilians.

The speed with which the U.S. military retaliated reflected its close monitoring of IS and years of experience in targeting extremists in remote parts of the world. But it also shows the limits of U.S. power to eliminate extremist threats, which some believe will have more freedom of movement in Afghanistan now that the Taliban is in power.

Central Command said the targeted IS member was believed to be involved in planning attacks against the United States in Kabul. The strike killed one individual, spokesman Navy Capt. William Urban said.

It wasn’t clear if the targeted individual was involved directly in the Thursday suicide blast outside the gates of the Kabul airport, where crowds of Afghans were desperately trying to get in as part of the ongoing evacuation.

The airstrike came after Biden declared Thursday that perpetrators of the attack would not be able to hide. “We will hunt you down and make you pay,” he said. Pentagon leaders told reporters Friday that they were prepared for whatever retaliatory action the president ordered.

“We have options there right now,” said Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff.

The president was warned Friday to expect another lethal attack in the closing days of a frantic U.S.-led evacuation. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden’s national security team offered a grim outlook.

“They advised the president and vice president that another terror attack in Kabul is likely, but that they are taking maximum force protection measures at the Kabul airport,” Psaki said, echoing what the Pentagon has been saying since the bombing Thursday at Kabul airport.

Late Friday, the State Department again urged Americans to stay away from airport gates, including “the New Ministry of Interior gate.”

Few new details about the airport attack emerged a day later, but the Pentagon corrected its initial report that there had been suicide bombings at two locations. It said there was just one — at or near the Abbey Gate — followed by gunfire. The initial report of a second bombing at the nearby Baron Hotel proved to be false, said Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff; he attributed the mistake to initial confusion.

Based on a preliminary assessment, U.S. officials believe the suicide vest used in the attack, which killed at least 169 Afghans in addition to the 13 Americans, carried about 25 pounds of explosives and was loaded with shrapnel, a U.S. official said Friday. A suicide bomb typically carries five to 10 pounds of explosives, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss preliminary assessments of the bombing.

Biden still faces the problem over the longer term of containing an array of potential extremist threats based in Afghanistan, which will be harder with fewer U.S. intelligence assets and no military presence in the nation.

Emily Harding, a former CIA analyst and deputy staff director for the Senate Intelligence Committee, said she doubted Biden’s assurances that the United States will be able to monitor and strike terror threats from beyond Afghanistan’s borders. The Pentagon also insists this so-called “over the horizon” capability, which includes surveillance and strike aircraft based in the Persian Gulf area, will be effective.

In an Oval Office appearance Friday, Biden again expressed his condolences to victims of the attack. The return home of U.S. military members’ remains in coming days will provide painful and poignant reminders not just of the devastation at the Kabul airport but also of the costly way the war is ending. More than 2,400 U.S. service members died in the war and tens of thousands were injured over the past two decades.

The Marine Corps said 11 of the 13 Americans killed were Marines. One was a Navy sailor and one an Army soldier. Their names have not been released pending notification of their families, a sometimes-lengthy process that Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said involves “difficult conversations.”

Still, sorrowful details of those killed were starting to emerge. One Marine from Wyoming was on his first tour in Afghanistan and his wife is expecting a baby in three weeks; another was a 20-year-old man from Missouri whose father was devastated by the loss. A third, a 20-year-old from Texas, had joined the armed services out of high school.

Biden ordered U.S. flags to half-staff across the country in honor of the 13.

They were the first U.S. service members killed in Afghanistan since February 2020, the month the Trump administration struck an agreement with the Taliban that called for the militant group to halt attacks on Americans in exchange for a U.S. agreement to remove all American troops and contractors by May 2021. Biden announced in April that he would have all forces out by September.

Psaki said the next few days of the mission to evacuate Americans and others, including vulnerable Afghans fleeing Taliban rule, “will be the most dangerous period to date.”

The White House said that as of Saturday morning, about 6,800 people were airlifted from Kabul in the past 24 hours on U.S. and coalition aircraft. Nearly 112,000 people have been airlifted over the last two weeks, according to the White House. The administration has said it intends to push on and complete the airlift despite the terrorist threats.

Kirby told reporters the U.S. military is monitoring credible, specific Islamic State threats “in real time.”

“We certainly are prepared and would expect future attempts,” Kirby said. He declined to describe details of any additional security measures being taken, including those implemented by the Taliban, around the airport gates and perimeter. He said there were fewer people in and around the gates Friday.

___

Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani, Darlene Superville and Nomaan Merchant contributed to this report.

New world news from Time: After ISIS-K’s Kabul Airport Attack, the U.S. Faces a New Terrorist Threat in Afghanistan

Just days away from pulling its last troops out of Afghanistan following 20 years of protracted war, the U.S. faces a new terrorist threat: Islamic State-Khorasan Province.

The group, abbreviated ISIS-K or ISKP, claimed responsibility for the coordinated bomb attack Thursday at the Abbey Gate of Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, where hundreds of Afghans and foreign citizens had been queuing up to get on the last evacuation flights out of the country. At least 90 people were killed, including 13 U.S. service members. It was the deadliest day for the U.S. military in Afghanistan in a decade.
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ISIS-K was labelled by the Institute of Economics and Peace’s Global Terrorism Index in 2019 as one of the most dangerous terrorist organizations in the world, though many believed it had been decimated by U.S. and Afghan military counter-terrorism efforts.

The attack raises questions about whether Islamist terrorist groups will yet again find safe haven in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. However, this time around, Afghanistan’s politics are different. The Taliban sees ISIS-K as a rival, not an ally—and ISIS-K is neither as large, nor as wealthy as al Qaeda was.

“They are definitely not comparable to al Qaeda in 2001,” says Kabir Taneja, a fellow at New Delhi-based think tank Observer Research Foundation. “For now, they are an Afghan-based insurgency with diminished power.”

While experts say it’s difficult to estimate how ISIS-K’s presence in Afghanistan will play out in the future, the attack at Kabul airport indicates that it is a growing threat.

“The fact that they could impact Western forces and the Taliban in one attack is a big win for them,” says Saurav Sarkar, a security specialist and former visiting fellow at the Stimson Center, a Washington, D.C. think-tank

Here is what you need to know about the Islamic State-Khorasan Province, a.k.a. ISKP or ISIS-K.

What is Islamic State-Khorasan Province?

The Islamic State-Khorasan Province is a regional offshoot of the extremist group Islamic State, which took control of large swaths of Iraq and Syria in 2014. It came into existence in January 2015 with its base in the Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan, which shares a border with Pakistan.

Many of its initial members were fighters with the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a militant organization in Pakistan, according to a Congressional Research Service report. The breakaway militants crossed the border into Afghanistan following an operation by the Pakistani army to drive them out. Looking for a new flag to rally around, these fighters are believed to have joined other militants in Afghanistan and pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, which had just declared a caliphate in 2014.

“The euphoria around ISIS was quite high then, and the best brand to co-opt was the Islamic State,” says Taneja. “It also gave them immediate recognition, in terms of attracting personnel and fighters.”

The group is believed to be more extreme in its views on women and religious minorities than other militant groups in the region—including the Taliban. Since its inception, ISIS-K has attracted militants who had fallen out with various other insurgencies in Afghanistan.

At its peak in 2018, the group had up to 8,500 fighters, and claimed responsibility for carrying out some of Afghanistan’s worst atrocities in recent years. Earlier this year, a bombing at a girls school in Kabul, which targeted members of the Hazara ethnic minority, killed at least 90 people—many of whom were students. The group also is believed to be behind an attack on a hospital last May, in which terrorists fatally gunned down 16 pregnant women and two children.

These attacks came despite major setbacks in 2019. ISIS-K was driven from its base in eastern Afghanistan by U.S. and Afghan military offensives. Though the group was diminished in rural areas, experts believe it continued to operate sleeper cells in cities like Kabul.

Getty Images/Xinhua News Agency.Books of students who were killed in a terror attack in Kabul on May 8, 2021. Most of the victims were school girls while many passers-by were also affected. Getty Images/Xinhua News Agency.

Taliban in conflict with ISIS-K

Unlike the Taliban, which doesn’t have ambitions beyond Afghanistan, ISIS-K is part of a larger group that is intent on spreading its ideology around the world. The group is also more extreme than the Taliban and has criticized Taliban leaders for negotiating on peace deals with the U.S.

“Ironically, they call the Taliban a puppet regime of the U.S.,” Taneja says.

While ISIS-K is not as powerful as the Taliban, experts say its motivation in attacking Kabul’s airport was re-establishing its relevance in the region.

“They wanted to make the Taliban look bad and incapable, as they are in-charge of Kabul now,” says Sarkar. “And in the process, attract attention to gain more recruits.”

Sarkar said he believes the Taliban “will go all out to ensure that the group doesn’t gain ground in the country,” because it views ISIS-K as a threat to its promises of restoring security and stability to Afghanistan.

A spokesperson for the Taliban condemned the attack at the airport, saying that “evil circles will strictly be stopped.”

For now, at least, the Taliban is far from giving the group a safe haven to plan attacks outside Afghanistan, experts say.

How is the U.S. responding to the ISIS-K attack?

The U.S. overthrew Afghanistan’s Taliban government in 2001 after determining that it had allowed al Qaeda to thrive there, and plot the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. However, experts interviewed by TIME say an attack from the Afghan-based group on U.S. soil appears unlikely—for now at least.

But the group’s rise is bad news for Afghans. Sarker says conflict between the Taliban and ISIS-K likely won’t devolve into civil war, but he predicts a protracted guerilla-style conflict.

U.S. President Joe Biden vowed to retaliate against ISIS-K for the attack. “We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay,” Biden said in a speech Thursday.

In a press conference Thursday, Gen. Frank McKenzie, the head of U.S. Central Command, sought to distinguish ISIS-K from the Taliban, saying that he didn’t believe the latter group was responsible for the attack. “[Taliban leaders] have a practical reason for wanting us to get out of here by the 31st of August, and that’s they want to reclaim the airfield. We want to get out by that day too if it’s going to be possible to do so,” he said. “So we share a common purpose. So as long as we’ve kept that common purpose aligned, they’ve been useful to work with.”

Security experts say they are watching closely to see how, exactly, the U.S. responds to ISIS-K—and whether military retaliation against the terrorist group runs the risk of drawing American forces back into Afghanistan. “The next thing you know, it will be a redux of what happened with al-Qaeda in 2001,” Taneja says.

New world news from Time: The Stakes for Tokyo’s COVID-19 Bubble Are Even Higher for the Paralympics. Can It Keep Vulnerable Athletes Safe?

It began much like its bigger counterpart: fireworks, music and a parade of athletes waving to an empty National Stadium in Tokyo. But only two days after the opening ceremony for the Tokyo Summer Paralympic Games, organizers confirmed the first hospitalization for COVID-19 of a person involved in the event. They said only that the patient was from overseas and not an athlete, but the news came as 184 people involved in the Paralympic Games have tested positive for the coronavirus. Ten athletes are among the confirmed cases.

Despite this, organizers insisted the world’s largest sports event for people with disabilities will be held safely. Tokyo’s COVID-19 “bubble” largely protected Olympic athletes and others associated with the Games—with some 500 reported cases and no major clusters out of the tens of thousands who traveled to Japan.
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But the stakes are even higher for the Paralympics, which come two and a half weeks after the Tokyo Olympics closing ceremony. COVID-19 cases are now higher in Tokyo and across Japan, and the medical system has nearly reached a breaking point.

Some Paralympic athletes at higher risk

Ulrik Pedersen—NurPhoto/Getty IMagesIbrahim Elhusseiny Hamadtou during table tennis event at the Tokyo Paralympics in Japan on August 25, 2021.

Additionally, some Paralympic athletes may be at greater risk of COVID-19 complications due to respiratory or immune system issues or the need to use their mouths to grasp things. Egypt’s Ibrahim Hamadtou has turned heads by playing table tennis holding his paddle in his mouth. Some athletes competing in the sport of boccia, for instance, have decreased lung capacity due to cerebral palsy: Japan’s Takayuki Hirose, 36, has compared his breathing to someone in their 80s. In boccia, players compete by throwing balls as close as possible to a target ball.

Some prominent critics have called for the Paralympics to be canceled, fearing that they cannot operate safely under these conditions. In a letter to organizers and political leaders on Monday, Yasuhiko Funago and Eiko Kimura, two members of Japan’s legislature who use wheelchairs, demanded the Paralympics be stopped immediately and the medical system strengthened. Others echo their sentiments.

“I’m afraid that the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics will send the message that medals are more important than life. While praising the medalists, there are daily reports of people dying without medical treatment,” says Kumiko Fujiwara of Tokyo-based DPI Women’s Network Japan, an advocacy group for women with disabilities.

But those who work with athletes said they are prepared. “We have many medical personnel and we established infection-prevention guidelines, held training camps without infections in cooperation with local governments, and shared our knowledge with the Organizing Committee,” says Hiroko Miura, a spokesperson for the Japan Boccia Association.

READ MORE: Tokyo’s Plan to Avoid Pandemic Disaster During the Olympics

“On top of all the basic measures like hand washing, masks and ventilation, floors and wheelchair wheels are disinfected. I believe measures are being taken at the Games so that the risk is minimized.”

The tough COVID-19 restrictions have already sparked controversy. Team USA star Becca Myers, a deaf-blind Paralympic swimmer, withdrew from the Tokyo Paralympics because entry rules prevented her mother, who is her guide, from traveling with her.

Japan’s hospitals in crisis

The Delta variant of the coronavirus has ripped through Japan in recent weeks, pushing daily cases of new cases to record levels: above 25,000 nationally and 5,000 in Tokyo, where more than 4,000 are hospitalized and 25,000 are isolating at home. The government has expanded its fourth coronavirus state of emergency so that it covers 13 prefectures, with 16 others subject to anti-infection measures.

While there are signs that Japan’s fifth wave of infections may have peaked in Tokyo, the situation on the ground remains unsettling. Hospitals have few or no free COVID-19 beds, forcing paramedics to spend hours, or even days, trying to get patients admitted. People who test positive are being asked to isolate at home. In one tragic case, a pregnant woman with COVID-19 gave birth prematurely at home after hospitals in Chiba prefecture west of Tokyo did not admit her. The baby did not survive.

READ MORE: How the Olympics Broke Japan’s COVID-19 Defenses

Warning that the medical system is at the breaking point, health officials have called for even stricter infection-control measures for the Paralympics than the already onerous ones that were in place for the Olympics “bubble.”

A record-high 4,403 athletes are competing at the Paralympics through Sept. 5, and about 90% of those scheduled to stay at the Athletes’ Village are vaccinated, according to organizers. Staff at the village are now required to test every day, instead of every four days as in the Olympics, and volunteers every four days instead of seven, according to organizers.

“It’s possible that the effectiveness of the state of emergency may have been diminished due to the widespread infection at the time, rather than a failure of infection control at the Olympics,” says Satoshi Kutsuna, a professor of infection control at Osaka University. “It’s unclear whether the Paralympics themselves will lead to a spread of infection, but there’s concern that the public’s attention will be diverted and infection controls won’t be implemented thoroughly.”

New world news from Time: We Have No Idea What We’re Fighting For Anymore

Once again, we are we seeing Americans being airlifted to safety amidst chaos and defeat, abandoning many of those who helped us. There will be much finger-pointing and political posturing about who is to blame. We can have those conversations. But the question no one is discussing is why for decades successive administrations of both parties continue to involve us in wars that not only we don’t win, but that for years we keep on fighting even when we know we can’t win and our objectives in those wars are confusing and malleable. If you look back over the history of our war in Afghanistan, it was clear as early as 2002 that we didn’t fully understand what we were doing there anymore or how to go about doing it. Yet we remained for nearly 20 more bloody years.
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Why do we keep doing this? How can we stop?

We get into these wars on the recommendations of presidents who are influenced by their staffs, most of whom are selected by the president and share the president’s viewpoint. These come after we are already involved militarily. Before the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, Green Berets were advising the South Vietnamese armed forces, our Air Force was bombing North Vietnamese supply routes in Laos, and our Navy was supporting South Vietnamese raids against the North Vietnamese coastline. Before the October 2002 authorization of the use of force (AUF) in Iraq, we were operating a “no fly zone,” and had military bases in several neighboring countries, a clear signal we were prepared to use military force if Saddam Hussein didn’t behave. A decade before the October 2001 AUF in Afghanistan the CIA had been helping the Taliban fight the Russians and we had supplied them with sophisticated weapons. One month before that resolution, President Bush was openly talking about “the war on terror.” What debates there were over these AUFs were largely full of jingoism and rah-rah warrior language, the last thing we want when committing our young to their possible deaths.

Most Americans don’t seem to care about any of this until, after a series of escalations, the national pain crosses some hard to define threshold and the American people want out. The policy makers usually do not want out. Their reasons range from genuine belief in the war’s objectives to self-serving fear of being blamed for failure and the ensuing damage to their political or bureaucratic careers.

We often hear about fighting to defend “American interests.” There are a host of American interests ranging from protecting American citizens abroad to protecting American trade and markets. If we’re being honest most U.S. foreign policy focuses on the latter. There is nothing wrong with this. They are American interests. They are just not worth killing and dying over, ever. Yes, we need to defend American interests, but with the powerful tools of the Departments of State, Justice, Commerce, the Treasury, and the intelligence services, not those of the Department of Defense. Yes, we need to hunt down terrorists, but terrorists are not trying to destroy the foundation of American democracy; they are generally using terror to try to change U.S. foreign policy by killing innocent people with highly symbolic attacks against such targets as the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and the satiric newspaper Charlie Hebdo, or by making us afraid to use airplanes. These are criminal acts. They are not attempts to overthrow our government. They do not threaten our values; they threaten our lives. By giving terrorists, as we have proclaimed for 20 years, the status of being involved in a “war” against the U.S., we give them the prestige of “warriors,” which aids their recruiting and propaganda efforts and builds their morale. Moreover, holding them for years as “prisoners of war” without trial is a direct violation of American values and our hypocrisy helps fuel their recruiting.

Instead, we need to rethink our entire approach to the so called “war on terrorism.” Terrorists commit criminal acts which should primarily be in the province of international courts and police, such as Interpol, the FBI, and the French Gendarmerie Nationale. These organizations can be greatly aided by organizations such as British MI6, the American CIA, and the French DGSE. Only rarely should they be aided by the judicious use of special military units, such as the SEALS, who are trained and designed to strike and get out.

Unleashing the awesome and massive power of the American military should only be done to defend against threats to our democracy and the values and hard-won rights of its citizens. Since World War Two, we have repeatedly used this power unwisely, resulting in a humiliating cycle of wasted lives and money.

But there are a wide range of ways to stop this. One way is getting more combat veterans, who have personally experienced war’s horrible costs, involved in decision-making, reigning in the corruptive elements of the military-industrial complex, and weeding out people whose careers are more important than what’s good for the country. But the best and overriding means of ending this cycle, however, is to get back in touch with what ultimately is worth fighting for. In Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq we sacrificed our young and spent massive amounts of money fighting to build nations that look and think like we do, a. goal that most Americans don’t really care about, especially when they don’t face getting drafted. In those wars there was no direct threat to Americans that our fundamental values would be taken from us. The reason we lose these wars is that our opponents are fighting for something they care about very much indeed.

Read More: American Leaders Made Defeat in Afghanistan Inevitable

These rights and values are broadly defined and open to interpretation. There is no hard line about when these rights and values are jeopardized enough to go to war. That is why our founders required that the Congress declare war, not the President, so that Congress can debate and discuss our choices. At best, in our current political balance, just over half of the American electorate has voted for a President and the policy debate about using military force takes place among people who work for and are chosen by the President. The Congress is a broad representation of the American people and therefore has a much better chance of expressing in open debate the wide range of opinion about what is at stake and how scared we should be about it. The debate should range over numerous interpretations and judgements, but then there is a vote. The result of the vote is an unambiguous hard line. What follows then is the strongest military organization in the world doing its Constitutional duty to fight or not fight and members of Congress having to go back to their states and districts to justify and defend their vote in open debate before their electorate. Politicians have sensitive antenna about voter opinion. If the American people decide they want out of a war, the Congress has far more incentive to do so than the Executive. Members of the House face a vote every two years. The President only faces a vote if the decision came in the first half of a two-term presidency.

The rights and values that I really care about, and I think I’m with a vast majority of Americans, are those clearly articulated in our nation’s founding documents.

I will fight if someone tries to take away from me and those I love the rule of law, trial by jury, the writ of habeas corpus, and a government with nobody above the law. I will fight to preserve government of the people, by the people, and for the people. I will fight to defend the self-evident truths that all people are created equal and have an unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of individual fulfillment. I will fight to protect those I love from violence. And I will fight to preserve a constitution that has wisely established a balance of power between the three branches government, which we are in danger of losing not from external threat, but from dereliction of duty.

We have sent our young to fight espousing these values, but we send them off to countries most Americans couldn’t locate on a map, and few really care about. Worse, too many people in power in those countries don’t really care about these values either, other than to mouth the rhetoric of American democracy to secure massive amounts of money and materiel, which in turn fuels massive amounts of corruption, both political and societal. In Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan we found ourselves involved in civil wars where the opposing sides were battling for power and control, not American values. In Vietnam we sided with a corrupt post-colonial government dominated by minority Catholics in a majority Buddhist nation. The South Vietnamese government was seen by the North Vietnamese government, not incorrectly, as stooges of the U.S. We saw the North Vietnamese government, not incorrectly, as a totalitarian police state that ruled its people by terror.

In Iraq we deposed a dictator who led a totalitarian police state ruling by terror who headed a minority Sunni Muslim government in a majority Shiite country. We put the Shiites in power by stripping the Sunnis of theirs and immediately were caught up in a civil war between the now deposed Sunnis fighting the American-blessed Shiites. In Afghanistan we kicked out the Taliban because we said, not incorrectly, that they were harboring al-Qaeda who had seriously hurt our people and were also horrible and repressive. However, instead of staying focused on eliminating al-Qaida and their leader, Osama bin Laden, we replaced the Taliban government with one riven with corruption and we also exacerbated tension between rival tribes and warlords. We then found ourselves in the middle of yet another civil war when the Taliban returned to fight against the new government.

We often hear the old shibboleth that “we’re fighting them abroad, so we won’t have to fight them at home.” That comes from a time when the only means of projecting power through violence was to invade someone else’s country.

The last nation that could have credibly invaded our own shores was Japan at the peak of its naval power in 1941 and they wouldn’t have gotten off the West Coast. The Taliban and the NVA were never capable of storming the beaches at Santa Monica. Sending in our ground forces to “fight them on foreign soil so we won’t have to fight them on our own” is a specious argument.

What threatens America today are nations with long-range missiles that can be launched intercontinentally from bases deep within their own territory or from submarines. We face cyber-attacks. We face possible chemical weapons attacks. We do not face invasion by China, Russia or North Korea. We are way better and far more experienced in amphibious warfare than any of these nations, and we would fail if we tried to invade them.

Sending in military forces to establish lasting governments in our own image has been demonstrated as a bad idea three times now. Democracy can’t be exported. It has to be home grown over a long time. Those ideals expressed in our founding documents didn’t just arrive in America full-blown in 1776; they developed over centuries in England and Western Europe through the sacrifices of brave men and women who suffered terrible torture, were burned alive, and spent decades in filthy prisons to establish them. The U.S. endured one of the bloodiest civil wars in history to affirm them. And even today in the U.S. we’re still fighting and debating how to uphold these sacred values. Telling nineteen-year-old Marines or paratroopers that they were fighting and losing friends in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan to protect American democracy and American values was seen as bullshit. It is.

“Protecting American democracy” must be a truthful statement, or it will not sustain the morale of those doing the fighting nor the will of the American people to endure the pain of war no matter what the cost and how long the war takes.

The last time Congress declared war was June 4, 1942, when we declared war against Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria, then allies of Nazi Germany. American presidents have gone to war ever since then without Congress fulfilling its Constitutional responsibility. True, Congress has passed authorizations for the use of force. These, however, fall far short of a declaration of war, primarily because of the symbolism of a declaration of war. They also land the decision – and the blame for possible failure—squarely with the Presidency. Authorizing someone else to take responsibility for a decision is very different from taking responsibility yourself.

However imperfect, an openly debated Declaration of War focused on a threat to our fundamental values is one of our best safeguards against repeating the mistakes we made in Vietnam and then repeated in Iraq and now in Afghanistan. We will continue to repeat those mistakes unless we have open, vigorous, and continuing debates about what we are fighting for and why it matters.

New world news from Time: Blast Outside Kabul Airport Kills 2, Wounds 15, Russia Says

A suicide attack outside Kabul’s airport Thursday killed at least 2 people and wounded 15, Russian officials said. Large crowds of people have massed outside the airport as they try to flee the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.

Western nations had warned earlier in the day of a possible attack at the airport in the waning days of a massive airlift. Suspicion for any attack targeting the crowds would likely fall on the Islamic State group and not the Taliban, who have been deployed at the airport’s gates trying to control the mass of people.

The Pentagon confirmed the blast, and Russian Foreign Ministry gave the official casualty count.
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The explosion went off in a crowd of people waiting to enter the airport, according to Adam Khan, an Afghan waiting nearby. He said several people appeared to have been killed or wounded, including some who lost body parts.

Several countries urged people to avoid the airport earlier in the day, with one saying there was a threat of a suicide bombing. But just days—or even hours for some nations—before the evacuation effort ends, few appeared to heed the call.

Over the last week, the airport has been the scene of some of the most searing images of the chaotic end of America’s longest war and the Taliban’s takeover, as flight after flight took off carrying those who fear a return to the militants’ brutal rule.

Already, some countries have ended their evacuations and begun to withdraw their soldiers and diplomats, signaling the beginning of the end of one of history’s largest airlifts. The Taliban have pledged not to attack Western forces during the evacuation, but insist the foreign troops must be out by America’s self-imposed deadline of Aug. 31.

Overnight, warnings emerged from Western capitals about a threat from Afghanistan’s Islamic State group affiliate, which likely has seen its ranks boosted by the Taliban’s freeing of prisoners during their blitz across the country.

British Armed Forces Minister James Heappey told the BBC early Thursday there was ”very, very credible reporting of an imminent attack” at the airport, possibly within “hours.” Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said his country had received information from the U.S. and other countries about the “threat of suicide attacks on the mass of people.”

The acting U.S. ambassador to Kabul, Ross Wilson, said the security threat at the Kabul airport overnight was “clearly regarded as credible, as imminent, as compelling.” But in an interview with ABC News, he would not give details and did not say whether the threat remained.

A while later, the blast was reported. U.S. President Joe Biden has been briefed on the explosion, the White House says.

Late Wednesday, the U.S. Embassy warned citizens at three airport gates to leave immediately due to an unspecified security threat. Australia, Britain and New Zealand also advised their citizens Thursday not to go to the airport, with Australia’s foreign minister saying there was a “very high threat of a terrorist attack.”

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid denied that any attack was imminent in the wake of those warnings.

Earlier Thursday, the Taliban sprayed a water cannon at those gathered at one airport gate to try to drive the crowd away, as someone launched tear gas canisters elsewhere.

Nadia Sadat, a 27-year-old Afghan, carried her 2-year-old daughter with her outside the airport. She and her husband, who had worked with coalition forces, missed a call from a number they believed was the State Department and were trying to get into the airport without any luck. Her husband had pressed ahead in the crowd to try to get them inside.

“We have to find a way to evacuate because our lives are in danger,” Sadat said. “My husband received several threatening messages from unknown sources. We have no chance except escaping.”

Gunshots later echoed in the area as Sadat waited. “There is anarchy because of immense crowds,” she said, blaming the U.S. for the chaos.

Aman Karimi, 50, escorted his daughter and her family to the airport, fearful the Taliban would target her because of her husband’s work with NATO.

“The Taliban have already begun seeking those who have worked with NATO,” he said. “They are looking for them house-by-house at night.”

Many Afghans share those fears. The hard-line Islamic group wrested back control of the country nearly 20 years after being ousted in a U.S.-led invasion following the 9/11 attacks, which al-Qaida orchestrated while being sheltered by the group.

Senior U.S. officials said Wednesday’s warning from the embassy was related to specific threats involving the Islamic State group and potential vehicle bombs. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss ongoing military operations.

The Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan grew out of disaffected Taliban members who hold an even more extreme view of Islam. The Sunni extremists have carried out a series of brutal attacks, mainly targeting Afghanistan’s Shiite Muslim minority, including a 2020 assault on a maternity hospital in Kabul in which they killed women and infants.

The Taliban have fought against Islamic State militants in Afghanistan. But IS fighters were likely freed from prisons along with other inmates during the Taliban’s rapid advance. Extremists may have seized heavy weapons and equipment abandoned by Afghan troops.

Amid the warnings and the pending American withdrawal, Canada ended its evacuations, and European nations halted or prepared to stop their own operations.

“The reality on the ground is the perimeter of the airport is closed. The Taliban have tightened the noose. It’s very, very difficult for anybody to get through at this point,” said Canadian General Wayne Eyre, the country’s acting Chief of Defense Staff.

Lt. Col. Georges Eiden, Luxembourg’s army representative in neighboring Pakistan, said that Friday would mark the official end for U.S. allies. But two Biden administration officials denied that was the case.

A third official said that the U.S. worked with its allies to coordinate each country’s departure, and some nations asked for more time and were granted it.

“Most depart later in the week,” he said, while adding that some were stopping operations Thursday. All three officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the information publicly.

French Prime Minister Jean Castex told RTL radio his country’s efforts would stop Friday evening. Danish Defense Minister Trine Bramsen bluntly warned: “It is no longer safe to fly in or out of Kabul.”

Denmark’s last flight has already departed, and Poland and Belgium have also announced the end of their evacuations. The Dutch government said it had been told by the U.S. to leave Thursday.

But Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said some planes would continue to fly.

“Evacuation operations in Kabul will not be wrapping up in 36 hours. We will continue to evacuate as many people as we can until the end of the mission,” he said in a tweet.

The Taliban have said they’ll allow Afghans to leave via commercial flights after the deadline next week, but it remains unclear which airlines would return to an airport controlled by the militants. Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said talks were underway between his country and the Taliban about allowing Turkish civilian experts to help run the facility.

The Taliban have promised to return Afghanistan to security and pledged they won’t seek revenge on those who opposed them or roll back progress on human rights. But many Afghans are skeptical.

Ziar Yad, an Afghan journalist from private broadcaster Tolo News, said Taliban fighters beat him and his colleague and confiscated their cameras, technical equipment and a mobile phone as they tried to report on poverty in Kabul.

“The issue has been shared with Taliban leaders; however, the perpetrators have not yet been arrested, which is a serious threat to freedom of expression,” Yad wrote on Twitter.

—With reporting from Joseph Krauss, Sylvie Corbet, Jan M. Olsen, Tameem Akhgar, Andrew Wilks, James LaPorta, Mike Corder, Philip Crowther, Colleen Barry, Aamer Madhani and Robert Burns.