Live updates Afghans running out of money as Taliban bans taking dollars out of the country

Kabul residents struggled to find money Wednesday even after the Taliban ordered banks to reopen for the first time in more than a week amid rising prices and uncertainty.

The Islamist militants have reportedly ordered some mid-level bureaucrats at Afghanistan’s Finance Ministry and central bank to resume work, as the new regime faces a cash squeeze and a looming humanitarian crisis. The hasty departure of trained officials, journalists, human rights advocates and others is leaving the war-torn country lacking in expertise needed to govern, analysts say.

It is “time for people to work for their country,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told reporters Tuesday.

Prices of gasoline, flour and rice are soaring while many residents line up at the few ATMs still functioning. The World Bank, meanwhile, announced a halt to its funding of projects in Afghanistan.

Here’s what to know

President Biden reaffirmed his intent to complete the U.S. evacuation mission by Aug. 31, but he also ordered contingency plans if that cannot be accomplished â€" a position that stoked a new round of outrage and confusion from domestic and international allies.

Britain could end its evacuation mission as early as Wednesday, the Guardian newspaper reported, citing unidentified defense sources. Prime Minister Boris Johnson failed Tuesday to persuade Biden to delay the U.S. withdrawal.

The United States and allied countries flew approximately 19,000 people out of Kabul in a 24-hour window ending early Wednesday, the White House said. Since Aug. 14, the United States has helped evacuate more than 82,000 people.

Turkey has begun withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, defense ministry says Link copied

ISTANBUL â€" Turkey, which has played a critical role in securing Kabul’s airport, announced Wednesday that it had begun withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, according to a defense ministry statement. The announcement came a day after a Taliban spokesman said Turkish soldiers were not needed in the country.

Turkey has been sending service members to Afghanistan since 2002. Currently, the nation has about 600 troops deployed there, focused principally on securing Hamid Karzai International Airport. Before the Taliban’s rapid takeover of the country this month, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government had offered to continue safeguarding the airport after the U.S. withdrawal, and more recently indicated that the offer still stands.

A Turkish defense ministry statement did not say how quickly troops would be withdrawn, saying the military evacuation was started after an evaluation of “the current situation and conditions.” Turkey’s military had helped manage the “chaos” at the airport during a panicked exodus of civilians, the statement said, adding that 1,129 people were airlifted out of Afghanistan on Turkish military aircraft.

Turkish officials told the Reuters news agency Wednesday that the Taliban had asked Turkey to continue providing unspecified “technical support” in running the Kabul airport. One of the officials told Reuters that Ankara would reach a decision on the request by Aug. 31, the deadline for foreign troops to leave Afghanistan.

A spokesman for the Turkish presidency did not immediately respond to a request to comment on the possible Taliban request. Taliban and Turkish officials have in recent days sought to portray their relations as cordial and focused on possible future cooperation.

As Afghanistan crisis unfolds, Fox News breaks recordsLink copied

As the crisis in Afghanistan unfolded, Fox News Channel was the most watched television outlet on both broadcast and cable, outpacing competitors and beating some of its own records, according to recent Nielsen figures. Fox averaged just under 3 million viewers.

The last time that the channel, popular among conservative viewers, ranked No. 1 was in September when Fox anchor Chris Wallace moderated the Biden-Trump debate, according to the Associated Press.

Fox News averaged 2.98 million viewers during the prime-time hours of 8 to 11 p.m. Eastern between Aug. 16 and 22. Meanwhile, MSNBC averaged 1.2 million, and CNN averaged only 960,000, reported Brian Flood, a media reporter for Fox.

“Hannity” had an average of 3.7 million viewers â€" making it the most watched program on cable news â€" followed by 3.6 million for “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Fox reported.

Trending on Sean Hannity’s website Wednesday afternoon were “TONE DEAF: Pelosi Hails ‘Great Day of Pride’ for America as Afghanistan Chaos Unfolds at Kabul Airport” and “CRENSHAW RIPS BIDEN: ‘He is Building the Taliban Back Better, Not America.’”

“If history is any guide, and it’s always a guide, we will see many refugees from Afghanistan resettle in our country, and over the next decade, that number may swell to the millions,” Carlson said. “So first we invade, and then we are invaded.”

Fox reported that it finished with 9 of the 10 most watched cable news programs last week. “The Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC finished 10th.

Several Fox News day programs, including “America’s Newsroom,” recorded yearly highs during their week of breaking news coverage of Afghanistan, Fox said.

For the first time since the launch of “Gutfeld!” in April, host Greg Gutfeld beat out “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” among viewers between ages 25 and 54. In the 18-49 age demographic, Gutfeld also rated higher than “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” according to the Hill.

“The Fox News Channel is claiming a huge victory: its snarky, comedic and conservative host Greg Gutfeld is the new king of late-night television,” Newsweek reported.

Key updateCanada says it might not be able to evacuate everyone it wants to before Aug. 31Link copied

TORONTO â€" Canadian officials said Wednesday that their country must cease its evacuation efforts and withdraw its military personnel from Afghanistan before the Aug. 31 deadline for U.S. troops to leave, acknowledging the possibility that Canada won’t be able to evacuate everyone it wants to before then.

“Drawing down a mission takes a considerable amount of time. It is not done overnight, and it comes with significant risks,” Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan said. “As the Americans finalize their drawdown to meet their deadline, partner nations, including Canada, must draw down our troops, assets and aircraft ahead of the Americans.”

Sajjan declined to provide specifics on when Canada’s evacuation efforts would end. He said that there is “limited time” remaining but that he hasn’t been “thoroughly briefed on the timeline.”

Since Canada began its evacuation flights this month, it has airlifted more than 2,700 people out of Afghanistan, including more than 1,000 Afghans who assisted Canada’s war effort and their families, Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino told reporters. That’s well short of the roughly 6,000 Afghans officials here have said could be eligible to come to Canada under a special program set up for them.

Marc Garneau, Canada’s foreign minister, said that “there is a possibility that we’re not going to be able to bring everyone [to Canada] that we want to when the air bridge stops.” He said the country would continue to try to evacuate vulnerable Afghans and Canadian expats after that, without providing specifics.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who is campaigning for reelection, has come under intense pressure to expedite the evacuation efforts. He and other Canadian officials have pointed the finger at the Taliban, charging that it is blocking access to the airport in Kabul. But some Afghans and their advocates have blamed Canadian bureaucracy and what they’ve described as a slapdash effort marked with confusion and insufficient information from officials in Ottawa about how to access evacuation flights.

On Wednesday, Canadian officials faced repeated questions about a video obtained by the Globe and Mail that appeared to show Canadian armed forces personnel ignoring Afghans standing in water with Canadian exit documents and trying to get into Kabul’s airport.

“That is heart-wrenching video that we have seen,” Sajjan said. “There’s many examples of where our Canadian Armed Forces are doing the tremendous work to take Afghans to safety … Lessons will be learned.”

Two House members come under criticism for unauthorized oversight trip to Kabul Link copiedHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) criticized Reps. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) and Peter Meijer (R-Mich.) for making an unauthorized trip to Afghanistan. (The Washington Post)

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) blasted two lawmakers who surreptitiously flew into Kabul without approval to examine conditions at the airport where a massive airlift is underway to evacuate U.S. citizens, allies and vulnerable Afghans.

“The secretary of defense, the secretary of state â€" there’s a real concern about members being in the region,” Pelosi told reporters Wednesday at her weekly briefing. There was an “opportunity cost” of protecting Reps. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) and Peter Meijer (R-Mich.), she said. “This is deadly serious. We do not want members to go.”

Moulton and Meijer made an unauthorized whirlwind trip to Kabul early Tuesday, leaving the city less than 24 hours later on a flight used for evacuating Americans and Afghans.

Pelosi insisted that other lawmakers should not go.

“We don’t want anybody to think that this was a good idea and that they should try to follow suit,” she said.

Key updateKabul residents are running out of cash and struggling with rising pricesLink copied

Afghans are struggling to find cash to buy basic goods that are getting more expensive as the country faces a cash squeeze more than a week into the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul.

The Islamist militants â€" who have seen many key sources of national income choked off â€" have now banned people from moving dollars out of Afghanistan. Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban’s spokesman, declared on Tuesday that they would stop Afghans carrying dollars out “by air or land” and seize the bills.

Many ATMs are empty in the capital, and people have had to wait hours to take out money in recent days. Some Kabul residents told The Washington Post that they could find only a single open ATM on Wednesday morning.

“People are running out of cash, and everyone is waiting for banks to reopen,” one doctor in the capital said on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

For families of U.S. troops killed in Afghan war, scramble to exit revives agony of their sacrificeLink copied

As Jennie Taylor watched from Utah while the Taliban seized Kabul, the mother of seven was overcome with white-hot anger. Not only was a “devastation of humanity” unfolding in Afghanistan three years after her husband, Maj. Brent Taylor, was killed there, but military families were declaring the war was not worth it.

“To me, that’s nails on a chalkboard,” she said.

A flood of heartache has swept across the country in a uniquely agonizing way for tens of thousands of “Gold Star” family members, each with a painful connection to the Afghanistan war by virtue of the death of their loved one while in uniform. Several said in interviews that they watched in horror as the Taliban swept across the capital and senior Afghan leaders fled, in a fast-moving crisis that prompted the military to send nearly 6,000 troops back to the war zone to spearhead a sprawling evacuation effort.

Key updateEuropean countries move to end Kabul evacuation efforts ahead of U.S. withdrawal deadlineLink copied

European countries, including France and Germany, indicated they would wind down efforts to evacuate at-risk Afghans partners as a U.S. deadline looms for its troops to withdraw.

Speaking to an urgent session of the German parliament on Wednesday, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany’s military airlift would end “within days.” Merkel did not expand further on the timeline, but German press reports have said that could be as soon as Thursday.

David Helmbold, a spokesman for the German military, said the airlifts were entering “the most demanding and dangerous hours” as the security situation worsens. “The safety of our soldiers and evacuees are equally central,” he said.

French European Affairs Minister Clement Beaune told C News TV that it is “very probable” that France’s efforts to extract citizens and partners would also end Thursday.

Marcin Przydacz, a Polish deputy foreign minister, told the Associated Press that Poland has already ended its evacuation efforts.

“After a long analysis of reports on the security situation, we cannot risk the lives of our diplomats and of our soldiers any longer,” he said.

Officials in Hungary also said its airlifts were nearing an end after evacuating around 500 people.

The Biden administration has resisted pressure from European allies to extend its Aug. 31 troop-withdrawal deadline to allow more time for evacuations. European officials say they will be unable to safely evacuate people after U.S. troops pull out.

As the window for military airlifts narrows, like Washington, European governments are facing fierce criticism for not acting sooner to save Afghans who risked their lives to support NATO forces and are particularly vulnerable as the Taliban takes control.

Merkel on Wednesday defended the decision not to pull out Afghan staff working on development with the German government sooner, saying that Berlin was dependent on its local staff for development work in the country to continue. “Many of them wanted to continue their work in Afghanistan,” she said. The end of the airlift “cannot mean the end of protecting local staff and others in need in Afghanistan,” she added.

Two African nations offer refuge to fleeing AfghansLink copied

African countries are stepping up, alongside other nations, to welcome a trickle of Afghan refugees fleeing the Taliban this week.

Rwanda will welcome nearly 250 students, faculty, staff and family members from a school in Kabul, the school’s president and co-founder said.

“Everyone is en route, by way of Qatar, to the nation of Rwanda where we intend to begin a semester abroad for our entire student body,” Shabana Basij-Rasikh, president of the School of Leadership Afghanistan (SOLA), a private female boarding school, tweeted on Tuesday.

Basij-Rasikh said her “heart breaks” for her war-torn country but added that the Rwanda “resettlement is not permanent.”

“A semester abroad is exactly what we’re planning. When circumstances on the ground permit, we hope to return home to Afghanistan. For now, I request privacy for our community,” she added.

Rwanda’s Ministry of Education said the East African nation was looking forward to welcoming the SOLA community.

Elsewhere in Africa, Uganda said Wednesday that 51 Afghans have landed in the country, following a request from the United States to temporarily take in refugees from Afghanistan.

The men, women and children arrived “aboard a privately chartered flight at the Entebbe International Airport,” Uganda’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement Wednesday. Uganda is expected to temporarily host some 2,000 at-risk Afghans fleeing Taliban rule, according to Reuters.

“Uganda’s commitment to welcome Afghan evacuees should be applauded,” Allison Huggins deputy regional director for Africa of the Mercy Corps aid agency, said in a statement Wednesday. “But the task is enormous, and we must stand in solidarity with the people of Afghanistan, who need support now more than ever.”

Afghan women’s soccer players, fleeing the Taliban, find refuge in AustraliaLink copied

A plane carrying more than 75 Afghan female soccer players, officials and relatives under threat from the Taliban left Kabul on Tuesday, bound for Australia, the first country to offer a haven in response to pleas from a multinational network of athlete advocates and human-rights lawyers.

Many more imperiled athletes remain in Afghanistan, and evacuation efforts are continuing around-the-clock, with outreach to multiple countries including the United States.

But the efforts are getting more challenging by the day, according to Haley Carter, a former U.S. Marine Corps officer and former assistant coach of the Afghan women’s team. Carter played a key role in orchestrating the initial evacuation, alongside Fifpro, the international soccer players’ union, and other advocates working to lobby governments to grant the athletes asylum.

Another 19,000 people evacuated from Kabul airport in previous 24 hours, White House saysLink copied

About another 19,000 people were evacuated from Afghanistan on U.S. military and coalition flights during a 24-hour period ending early Wednesday morning Eastern time, the White House said.

That figure includes about 11,200 evacuees leaving the international airport in Kabul on 42 U.S. military flights and about 7,800 people evacuating on 48 coalition flights, according to the White House. A breakdown of how many people were U.S. citizens was not provided.

The total figure is shy of the roughly 21,600 who were evacuated during the previous 24-hour period, which marked a record high in the effort.

Since Aug. 14, about 82,300 people have been evacuated on U.S. military and coalition flights, the White House said.

Britain’s top diplomat insists he didn’t go paddleboarding as Afghanistan fell because the sea was ‘closed’Link copied

LONDON â€" Britain’s embattled foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, found himself once again defending his ill-timed vacation to Crete â€" which came as the Taliban took over Afghanistan â€" saying he wasn’t swimming or paddleboarding when Kabul fell because the sea was, in fact, “closed.”

Last week, Raab faced calls to resign following his alleged failure to help evacuate interpreters who had worked for Britain.

“The stuff about me lounging around on the beach all day is just nonsense,” he said in an interview with Sky News. “The stuff about me paddleboarding is just nonsense. The sea was actually closed; it was a red notice,” he said, adding that he remained focused on urgent meetings during his island sojourn.

Raab told the broadcaster that about 2,000 people have been flown to Britain from Kabul in the last 24 hours and that “the system is operating at full speed.”

He added that, in hindsight, he wouldn’t have taken the vacation. He returned home Aug. 15 after allegedly failing to make a crucial phone call that would have accelerated evacuations on Aug. 13.

Raab’s defense prompted the word “CLOSED” to trend on Twitter as observers pounced on his remarks.

Biden pushes to complete Afghan evacuation by Aug. 31 â€" but orders backup planLink copied

President Biden on Tuesday reaffirmed his intent to complete the U.S. evacuation mission in Afghanistan by Aug. 31, but he also ordered contingency plans if that cannot be accomplished â€" a position that stoked a new round of outrage and confusion about the United States’ exit from a two-decade war.

The result was looming uncertainty over whether the United States would finalize its exit within a week, as Biden wants, as well as intensifying anger from would-be Afghan refugees, U.S. allies worried about getting their own personnel out of the country and veterans concerned about the fate of those who helped the war effort.

Speaking at the White House after meeting virtually with leaders of the Group of Seven large industrialized democracies, Biden said that the United States was on pace to wrap up its efforts in Afghanistan by Aug. 31 and that any extension risked terrorist attacks.

Former British marine and animal rescuer given permission to evacuate Kabul after tussle with U.K. governmentLink copied

LONDON â€" A former British marine campaigning to be evacuated from Taliban-held Afghanistan alongside his staff and beloved rescue animals has been given the green light to fly out of Kabul airport â€" days after he accused the British Defense Ministry of blocking his exit by not granting the clearance needed to travel.

On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Ben Wallace responded to mounting backlash and confirmed that Pen Farthing, who served in Afghanistan with the British military and founded the animal rescue charity Nowzad in 2007, had been cleared to leave the country.

The announcement followed days of back-and-forth between Farthing and the British government over how 71 people and 200 animals could be flown to Britain. At one point, talks completely broke down.

As Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, Farthing vowed not to evacuate until he was able to take his staff and animals with him. Using social media to raise awareness, he appealed to the public to help him get the funds to charter a flight to Britain and called on Prime Minister Boris Johnson to support the mission.

While Johnson said officials would “do everything we can to help,” the Defense Ministry later said the animals would have to stay behind and that officials needed to “prioritize people over animals,” even though the funds were raised and transportation to the airport was arranged.

“My direct line to the MoD has been cut off. They have left me, one of their own, out here on their own,” Farthing said Monday. “I served my country for 22 years, and right now they have turned their backs on us,” he said.

“No one has the right in this humanitarian crisis to jump the queue,” Wallace said Tuesday. But he confirmed that if Farthing arrived at the airport with his animals and staff, they would be given a slot to take off.

British evacuation mission could end as early as Wednesday night Link copied

Britain’s Kabul airlift could end as early as Wednesday evening, probably stranding at least hundreds of vulnerable people, as the Taliban becomes increasingly belligerent toward Afghans attempting to flee the war-torn country.

British troops are aiming to withdraw at least 24 hours ahead of the U.S. military, which is thought to need two to three days to close down its operations at Kabul airport, the Guardian reported, citing unidentified defense sources. President Biden on Tuesday reaffirmed his intent for U.S. forces, which are a critical guarantor of the airport’s security, to leave Afghanistan by Aug. 31.

British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab would not give a precise departure timeline when asked by reporters on Wednesday morning, but he told BBC’s “Breakfast” that “it’s clear that the troops will be withdrawn by the end of the month.”

Britain has evacuated 10,291 people since Aug. 13, including 1,833 people in the past 24 hours, London said Wednesday. (Since Aug. 14, the United States has helped 70,700 people leave.)

“Almost all” single-nationality British citizens have managed to leave Afghanistan, Raab told Sky News. “What remains are rather complex cases, large family units where one or other may be documented or may be clearly a national, but it’s not clear whether the rest of them are.”

In a virtual meeting of leaders of the Group of Seven nations on Tuesday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson failed in his bid to persuade Biden to delay the U.S. withdrawal to allow for more evacuations. Speaking at the meeting, Biden said that any extension of the August deadline risked terrorist attacks, with the Taliban warning it wouldn’t tolerate foreign forces in the country beyond that date.

The Biden administration’s refusal to extend the deadline reportedly prompted significant anger among British legislators, with one unidentified lawmaker telling the Guardian that relations between London and Washington “are about to enter their lowest point” in over half a century.

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