Pentagon Activates Commercial Airlines to Help Afghanistan Evacuation – NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth
The US military is considering “creative ways” to evacuate Americans and others from Afghanistan to Kabul airport under “acute” security threats, Biden government officials said, and the Pentagon ordered six US commercial airlines on Sunday to help evacuate people from temporary locations outside of Afghanistan.
A week ago, since the Taliban completed their takeover in the capital, US officials expressed growing concern over the threat of evacuation from the Islamic State group. These concerns add to the obstacles to this Taliban’s mission and to bureaucratic problems facing the US government.
“The threat is real, it is acute, it is persistent and that is what we are focusing on with every tool in our arsenal,” said President Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.
He said on CNN’s State of the Union that 3,900 people have been flown out of Kabul on US military flights in the past 24 hours. A U.S. defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to reveal as-yet-unpublished details, said these people had flown a total of 23 flights – 14 from C-17 vans and nine on board C-130 cargo planes. This is an increase from 1,600 flown aboard US military aircraft in the last 24 hours.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told ABC’s This Week that Biden would recommend allowing more time to complete the evacuation operation before August 31st. Tens of thousands of Americans and others have not yet flown out of the country.
The interview was broadcast on Sunday but taped on Saturday as other US officials said heightened concerns about the security threats at Kabul Airport from Islamic State-affiliated militants. The US embassy issued a security warning on Saturday urging citizens not to travel to the airport without individual instruction from a US government representative. Officials declined to provide details on the ISIS threat, but described it as significant.
In a statement on Sunday, the State Department asked people who want to leave Afghanistan as part of an organized private evacuation not to come to Kabul airport “until they have received specific instructions from the flight organizer at the US embassy.” The notice states that others, including American citizens, who have received specific instructions from the embassy to go to the airport should do so.
Austin said the airlift would continue as long as possible.
“We’re going to do our best to get everyone, every American citizen out,” Austin said in an interview. “And we have – we continue to look for different ways to – creatively – reach and contact American citizens and help them get to the airfield.” He later said that this included non-Americans as well qualify for an evacuation, including Afghans who have applied for a special immigrant visa.
“It’s not a perfect process,” said Defense Department press secretary John Kirby on Monday. “Plans are not always perfectly predictable. You have to adapt in real time. ”
Austin found that the US military helicopted 169 Americans to the airport from a nearby hotel in the capital on Thursday. This is the only announced example of U.S. forces going beyond the airport to retrieve evacuees who are often blocked by chaos, violence and crowds at the airfield gates.
A central problem with evacuation is the handling of evacuees as soon as they reach other countries in the region and in Europe. These temporary stations, among others in Qatar, Bahrain and Germany, sometimes reach their capacities.
To mitigate this and to clear military aircraft for missions from Kabul, the Pentagon activated the civil reserve air fleet on Sunday. The Department of Defense said 18 planes from six commercial airlines are being ordered to move evacuees from stopovers. The airlines will not fly to Afghanistan.
According to the Pentagon, three aircraft each from American Airlines, Atlas Air, Delta Air Lines and Omni Air are involved in the activation; two from Hawaiian Airlines; and four from United Airlines.
It is the first time it has activated the airlines’ civil reserve system since 2003, when it was used in the Iraq war. The airliners retain their civil status, but the flights are controlled by the military’s Air Mobility Command.
Austin said he couldn’t predict how long it will take the United States to complete the evacuation, which began Aug. 14.
“In terms of what we can do in the future, you can’t – we can’t, you know, put a number on what exactly we can do, but I’ll just … say we’re going to try that Exceeding expectations, doing as much as possible, and caring for as many people as we can for as long as possible, ”he said.
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Associated Press authors Lolita C. Baldor, Hope Yen, Matthew Lee, and Darlene Superville contributed to this report.
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