Overnight Defense: Chaos at the gates as Kabul evacs enter fifth day

Happy Thursday and welcome to Overnight Defense. I’m Ellen Mitchell, and here’s your nightly guide to the latest developments at the Pentagon, on Capitol Hill and beyond. CLICK HERE to subscribe to the newsletter.

THE TOPLINE: Violence on the road to Kabul’s airport and chaos at the gates are hampering efforts to evacuate Americans and vulnerable Afghans looking to flee the country following the Taliban takeover.

Adding to the mayhem is mixed messaging from the State Department, which is urging Americans and those with travel documents to head to the Hamid Karzai International Airport “as soon as possible” even though the U.S. Embassy alerted people that it could not guarantee safe passage.

People who make it past the gauntlet of Taliban checkpoints report being turned away amid surging crowds that U.S. forces are trying to disperse.

How many need out?: The number of Americans in Afghanistan is believed to be between 10,000 and 15,000, with more than 80,000 Afghans who likely qualify for evacuation based on their work with the U.S. military and government. 

The U.S. has so far only evacuated a fraction of those people. 

How many have already escaped?: Government officials from the National Security Council and the Department of Defense (DOD) told congressional staffers on a call Thursday that they have evacuated 6,741 individuals since Saturday, of which 1,792 are American citizens or lawful permanent residents.

“Which of course is absurd because we heard from DOD they could do up to 9,000 a day,” said one congressional staffer who spoke to The Hill after the call.

The U.S. military this week pledged to start evacuating 5,000 to 9,000 people per day.

“The latest report we heard was there are 10,000 to 15,000 American citizens in the country, so less than 20 percent are out, basically,” the aide said.

‘Conditions are awful’: The staffer relayed that administration officials expressed distress over the deteriorating conditions, with one administration official saying, “conditions are awful and we are not blind to that.”

Another congressional aide said the Biden administration is “doing their best but they’ve been overwhelmed by folks in need of help.”

Meanwhile, at the Pentagon: Even though the official goal is to evacuate 5,000 to 9,000 people per day, Pentagon officials told reporters Thursday that the pace is closer to 2,000 a day.

The main reason for the gap is people are finding it difficult to get into Hamid Karzai International Airport, with reports of Taliban fighters blocking checkpoints and assaulting Afghans, even if they have the correct documents.

The Defense Department has maintained that commanders on the ground in Kabul are continuously negotiating with the Taliban to allow people to get through, but U.S. troops “remains focused on the airport,” with no officials to verify that people on the outside are being allowed access.

Extra precautions: To keep any dangers at bay during the evacuation, the U.S. military is flying F/A-18 fighter jets over Kabul “to ensure security.”

Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor told reporters that F/A-18s from the Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group, currently based in the North Arabian Sea, “flew armed overwatch flights over Kabul to ensure enhanced security” in the past 24 hours.

Asked on Thursday if the F/A-18s are authorized to fire if U.S. troops and allies come under attack, Pentagon press spokesman John Kirby said: “As always, we have the right to defend ourselves and our people and our operations.”

 

BILLIONS IN US WEAPONRY SEIZED BY TALIBAN

Billions of dollars of U.S. weapons are now in the hands of the Taliban following the quick collapse of Afghan security forces that were trained to use the military equipment.

Among the items seized by the Taliban are Black Hawk helicopters and A-29 Super Tucano attack aircraft.

Photos have also circulated of Taliban fighters clutching U.S.-made M4 carbines and M16 rifles instead of their iconic AK-47s. And the militants have been spotted with U.S. Humvees and mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles.

‘A psychological win’: While it’s virtually impossible to operate advanced aircraft without training, seizing the hardware gives the militants a propaganda boost and underscores the amount of wasted funds on U.S. military efforts in Afghanistan over the last 20 years.

“When an armed group gets their hands on American-made weaponry, it’s sort of a status symbol. It’s a psychological win,” said Elias Yousif, deputy director of the Center for International Policy’s Security Assistance Monitor.

“Clearly, this is an indictment of the U.S. security cooperation enterprise broadly,” he added. “It really should raise a lot of concerns about what is the wider enterprise that is going on every single day, whether that’s in the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia.”

By the numbers: The United States spent an estimated $83 billion training and equipping Afghan security forces over the last two decades.

According to a 2017 Government Accountability Office report, between 2003 and 2016 the United States transferred to Afghan forces:

• 75,898 vehicles
• 599,690 weapons
• 162,643 pieces of communications equipment
• 208 aircraft
• 16,191 pieces of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance equipment

From 2017 to 2019, the United States also gave Afghan forces 7,035 machine guns, 4,702 Humvees, 20,040 hand grenades, 2,520 bombs and 1,394 grenade launchers, among other equipment, according to a report last year from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

How much do the Taliban now have?: It is unclear exactly how many weapons have fallen into the hands of the Taliban, but the Biden administration has acknowledged it’s a “fair amount.”

“We don’t have a complete picture, obviously, of where every article of defense materials has gone, but certainly a fair amount of it has fallen into the hands of the Taliban,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Tuesday. “And obviously, we don’t have a sense that they are going to readily hand it over to us at the airport.”

Lawmakers want accountability: On Wednesday, more than two dozen Republican senators demanded a “full accounting” of U.S. military equipment given to Afghan forces over the past 12 months, what’s been seized by the Taliban and what plans there are to either recapture or destroy the equipment.

“As we watched the images coming out of Afghanistan as the Taliban retook the country, we were horrified to see U.S. equipment — including UH-60 Black Hawks — in the hands of the Taliban,” the 25 senators, led by Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), wrote in a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

“It is unconscionable that high-tech military equipment paid for by U.S. taxpayers has fallen into the hands of the Taliban and their terrorist allies,” they added. “Securing U.S. assets should have been among the top priorities for the U.S. Department of Defense prior to announcing the withdrawal from Afghanistan.”

Read the full story here.

 

POLL: MOST DON’T THINK US DID ENOUGH TO QUICKLY EVACUATE

The numbers are in, and it doesn’t look good.

A majority of voters say the U.S. didn’t do enough to evacuate Americans and Afghan allies from Afghanistan before the Taliban took over, according to a new Hill-HarrisX poll.

Fifty-seven percent of registered voters in the Aug. 17-18 survey said the U.S. did not do enough to quickly evacuate Americans and Afghan allies before the Taliban swept the country, while 43 percent said the U.S. did do enough.

Nearly three quarters of surveyed Republicans and four in 10 Democratic voters — along with 56 percent of Independents — said the U.S. did not do enough before the Taliban took over. The Taliban moved into the capital city of Kabul on Sunday.

Half disapprove: Overall, 53 percent of voters said they disapprove of how the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan was carried out by the Biden administration, while 47 percent said they approve.

Seventy percent of Democrats, 52 percent of Independents and just 19 percent of Republicans said they approve of the way the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan was carried out.

Sixty-four percent of voters said they generally support the U.S. withdrawing from Afghanistan, down from 73 percent in a July poll. By contrast, 36 percent said they disapprove.

“A majority of voters have supported pulling U.S. troops out of Afghanistan for some time now, and that number today is at 64 percent,” Dritan Nesho, chief pollster and CEO of HarrisX, told Hill.TV.

 

Lawmakers demand action: A bipartisan group of 55 senators is calling on President Biden to “immediately evacuate” Afghans who helped the U.S. during its military involvement in the country.

The group, led by Sens. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), penned a letter to Biden on Wednesday asking the administration to quickly pull Afghans who are eligible for Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) from the country, along with their families.

SIVs are granted to Afghan individuals who were employed by or worked on behalf of the U.S. government during America’s operations in Afghanistan.

The senators also urged Biden to “expeditiously implement” tenets of the Afghan Allies Protection Act, which Biden signed into law last month. It calls for adding an additional 8,000 visas to the SIV program and removing a number of hurdles that made it difficult for those eligible to receive a visa.

 

ICYMI

— Biden says he doesn’t believe the Taliban have changed…

— Biden denies military commanders recommended he leave troops in Afghanistan…

— House Intel Committee to receive briefing on Afghanistan…

— US diplomats warned Blinken in July country could fall to Taliban: report…

— GOP rift opens up over resettling Afghan refugees… 

— Taliban commander rules out democracy in Afghanistan: ‘It is Sharia law and that is it’ 

— The Hill: Opinion: Afghanistan fiasco proves we didn’t leave soon enough

— The Hill: Opinion: The Powell Doctrine could have helped us avoid the Afghanistan debacle

— The Associated Press: Misread warnings helped lead to chaotic Afghan evacuation