Poland stops evacuations from Kabul airport amid safety concerns

Poland on Wednesday said it has ceased evacuations from Afghanistan less than a week before the Taliban’s Aug. 31 deadline for evacuations end, The Associated Press reports.

Polish deputy foreign minister Marcin Przydacz declared that a group of people taken from Kabul to Uzbekistan would be the last to be evacuated by Poland. According to Przydacz, this decision was made after consultation with the U.S. and the U.K.

“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.

Poland has used roughly a dozen planes to evacuate hundreds of people to Warsaw who would then travel to other countries, the AP notes.

The Taliban has said it will not accept any requests to extend the deadline for evacuation operations out of Kabul and President Biden has largely maintained that the U.S. will be finished with its operations by Aug. 31.

However, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have pressed the president to extend the deadline or simply ignore the original deadline, expressing doubt that operations will be completed by then.

Biden stated on Tuesday that the U.S. was on track to be out of Afghanistan by Aug. 31, though he cautioned that this timeline is dependent upon the Taliban’s cooperation.

“Each day of operations brings added risk to our troops. But the completion by Aug. 31 depends on the Taliban continuing to cooperate and allow access to the airport for those we’re transporting out and no disruptions to our operations,” he said.

On Tuesday, Reps. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) and Peter Meijer (R-Mich.) made a secret trip to Kabul to oversee operations and called on Biden to extend the deadline.

“We came into this visit wanting, like most veterans, to push the president to extend the August 31st deadline. After talking with commanders on the ground and seeing the situation here, it is obvious that because we started the evacuation so late, that no matter what we do, we won’t get everyone out on time, even by September 11,” they said in a joint statement.