Live updates Kabul airport is open for evacuations Getting there past Taliban checkpoints isnt easy

The United States and other countries operated military evacuation flights from Afghanistan throughout Tuesday, though not all seeking to leave the country were able to reach Kabul airport. The Taliban erected checkpoints throughout the capital and near the airport’s entrance, beating some Afghans who attempted to cross and intimidating others from leaving, according to reports and an eyewitness account.

The violence came as President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said the Taliban have agreed to allow “safe passage” from Afghanistan for civilians struggling to join a U.S.-directed airlift from the capital, although a timetable for completing the evacuation has yet to be worked out with the country’s new rulers. Sullivan said the United States is addressing reports of militants intimidating fleeing Afghans with the Islamist group.

Thousands of U.S. troops have been flown into Kabul to protect evacuation efforts. Washington has moved some 3,200 people out so far, with an additional 2,000 Afghans relocated to the United States as special immigrants. About 11,000 people in Afghanistan have identified themselves as American, while more than 80,000 Afghans may need to be evacuated.

Here are some significant developments

The U.S. military evacuated some 1,100 U.S. citizens, permanent residents and their families from the Kabul airport Tuesday. The pace was expected to pick up throughout the week.

Taliban co-founder and de facto leader Abdul Ghani Baradar arrived in the country for the first time in more than a decade, returning to the group’s birthplace in the southern city of Kandahar days after his fighters swept into power across the country.

The Air Force said Tuesday that it is launching an investigation into the deaths of Afghan civilians related to a U.S. C-17 flight that departed Kabul, including reports of people falling from the airborne plane and human remains found later in a wheel well.

Federal officials erase online content in bid to protect Afghans from Taliban retributionLink copied

Federal officials are deleting online content that can be used to identify Afghans who have worked with the U.S.-led coalition over the years, as fears of the Taliban enacting retributive violence grow days into the militant group’s return to national power.

The State Department has asked its staff to search, locate and remove online materials that may be used to pinpoint Afghan civilians, according to spokesman Ned Price, who said this is not standard procedure.

“The safety of our Afghan contacts is of utmost importance to us,” he said in a statement. “State Department policy is to only remove content in exceptional situations like this one. In doing so, Department personnel are following records retention requirements.”

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Department of Agriculture are taking similar action, according to the Associated Press. The two offices didn’t immediately reply to requests for comment.

U.S. officials fear that the Islamist group may use content posted on government websites or social media to target Afghan allies. The Taliban has promised a general “amnesty,” but the insurgents have a record of punishing those who cooperated with the U.S.-backed Afghan government.

Hundreds of abductions targeting people suspected of having links with the now-fallen government took place in 2016 alone, according to a December 2017 report by the European Asylum Support Office.

The website scrubbing is part of a broader U.S. policy to protect or evacuate Afghan allies who are threatened by the Taliban’s return to power. Price told reporters on Wednesday that U.S. officials are “doing as much as we can for as long as we can to relocate … vulnerable Afghans.”

The nature of the U.S. withdrawal, which led to Kabul falling much sooner than American officials had anticipated, has been heavily criticized by human rights groups, as well as international allies and Republican and Democratic lawmakers.

The Pentagon said this week that it intends to ramp up evacuation efforts to a level that will allow about 5,000 individuals to depart Afghanistan per day. Over 80,000 Afghans may need to be evacuated, The Washington Post has reported.

Taliban says it will be more tolerant toward women. Some fear otherwise.Link copied

In some parts of Afghanistan, including Kabul, a generation of girls grew up in a world completely different from the one their parents knew.

The Taliban’s return to the city and consolidation of power this week appeared to bring those nearly two decades of change, including hard-won rights for women, crashing down.

“Now every Afghan woman [is] in prison in their room. They cannot go outside. They cannot be like before,” Friba, who fled from Kunduz, a northern provincial capital, to Kabul this month, told The Washington Post.

The Taliban, wary of once again governing as an international pariah, has tried to show it has grown more tolerant of women’s rights â€" pledging at a news conference Tuesday that “there will be no discrimination against women."

Some women and their international allies fear otherwise.

British military chief warns troops may be forced to withdraw before evacuation is completeLink copied

A top British military official in charge of evacuating citizens and vulnerable Afghans has offered a gloomy warning that British troops could be forced to withdraw from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan before their mission is complete.

Vice Admiral Ben Key said that the Taliban is, for now, “happy for us to go about our business” but that the militants could “remove their consent” at any time, The Times of London reported Tuesday. In a briefing on the security situation, Key reportedly said that it was a “$64,000 question” as to how long British forces helping to secure the evacuation would remain in Afghanistan, given the Taliban’s hold over the country. The United Kingdom has deployed about 900 troops to Afghanistan to secure the evacuation.

Britain has the ability to airlift up to 1,000 people daily, Key said. There are about 3,000 British or dual-nationals seeking evacuation and a further 3,000 Afghans, including interpreters and their families, also looking to leave with Britain, according to the newspaper.

The Taliban has reportedly promised “safe passage” to fleeing civilians, but it has also established checkpoints around Kabul and near the entrance to the airport. Fighters beat some Afghans who attempted to cross and intimidated others from leaving, according to reports and an eyewitness account. Access from outside the capital, Kabul is even more fraught.

The U.K. Parliament will return from recess Wednesday to discuss the security situation in Afghanistan. Members of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s ruling Conservative Party have been critical of how the British withdrawal has been handled. Both Johnson and his foreign minister were on vacation as the Afghan crisis worsened.

On Tuesday, London also said that it would take in up to 5,000 Afghans in the first year of a resettlement program that will prioritize vulnerable groups like women and minorities.

Analysis: 4 key questions about Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal Link copied

It’s been three days since the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan took a turn for the chaotic. And the fog of war â€" or more aptly, the fog of the end of war â€" means we’re still not quite sure exactly how all of this happened.

Critics are calling for hearings into that question, with even some top Democrats saying flatly that the administration failed to adequately prepare for the withdrawal. Not only were the scenes ugly as the Taliban took control of Kabul amid the withdrawal, but there remain huge questions about how the United States will evacuate thousands of Americans still in the country and provide refuge for the many more who aided the two-decade U.S. war.

Below are a few key questions â€" both immediately and in the after-action.

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