At least five people were killed at Kabul airport as people tried to flee, Reuters reported.
Videos showed the chaotic scene as people tried to leave as the Taliban took over the capital.
US troops fired into the air earlier in the day. It’s not clear if gunshots caused the deaths.
At least five people have been killed at Kabul airport as hundreds of people were trying to force their way onto planes out of Afghanistan, Reuters reported Monday, citing witnesses.
The rush out of Afghanistan came after the Taliban stormed the capital city on Sunday, causing gridlock and chaos at the airport. All commercial flights out of the airport have been suspended.
A US official told Reuters earlier on Monday that American troops, who had taken control of the airport, fired into the air to scatter the crowd.
It was not clear whether the deaths were caused by gunshots or a stampede, Reuters reported.
“The crowd was out of control,” the official told Reuters by phone. “The firing was only done to defuse the chaos.”
The Department of Defense did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
These videos below shows a crowd of people running as gunshots are heard:
US troops secured the airport on Monday, allowing the US and other countries to evacuate its own personnel.
But the suspension of commerical flights leaves Afghans and other people stranded under Taliban rule.
Many of those include Afghans that aided the US military and activists for issues like women’s rights, who now fear punishment from the Taliban.
Rakhshanda Jilali, a human-rights activist trying to leave the country, told Reuters: “How can [the Americans] hold the airport and dictate terms and conditions to Afghans?”
“This is our airport but we are seeing diplomats being evacuated while we wait in complete uncertainty.”
So I’m left again to ask of those who argue that we should stay: How many more generations of America’s daughters and sons would you have me send to fight Afghanistan’s civil war when Afghan troops will not? How many more lives, American lives, is it worth, how many endless rows of headstones at Arlington National Cemetery? I’m clear on my answer: I will not repeat the mistakes we’ve made in the past. The mistake of staying and fighting indefinitely in a conflict that is not in the national interest of the United States, of doubling down on a civil war in a foreign country, of attempting to remake a country through the endless military deployments of U.S. forces. Those are the mistakes we cannot continue to repeat because we have significant vital interest in the world that we cannot afford to ignore.
I also want to acknowledge how painful this is to so many of us. The scenes that we’re seeing in Afghanistan, they’re gut-wrenching, particularly for our veterans, our diplomats, humanitarian workers — for anyone who has spent time on the ground working to support the Afghan people. For those who have lost loved ones in Afghanistan, and for Americans who have fought and served our country in Afghanistan, this is deeply, deeply personal. It is for me as well.
I’ve worked on these issues as long as anyone. I’ve been throughout Afghanistan during this war, while the war was going on, from Kabul to Kandahar, to the Kunar Valley. I’ve traveled there on four different occasions. I’ve met with the people. I’ve spoken with the leaders. I spent time with our troops, and I came to understand firsthand what was and was not possible in Afghanistan. So now we’re focused on what is possible.
We will continue to support the Afghan people. We will lead with our diplomacy, our international influence and our humanitarian aid. We’ll continue to push for regional diplomacy and engagement to prevent violence and instability. We’ll continue to speak out for the basic rights of the Afghan people, of women and girls, just as we speak out all over the world.
I’ve been clear, the human rights must be the center of our foreign policy, not the periphery. But the way to do it is not through endless military deployments. It’s with our diplomacy, our economic tools and rallying the world to join us.
Let me lay out the current mission in Afghanistan: I was asked to authorize, and I did, 6,000 U.S. troops to deploy to Afghanistan for the purpose of assisting in the departure of U.S. and allied civilian personnel from Afghanistan, and to evacuate our Afghan allies and vulnerable Afghans to safety outside of Afghanistan. Our troops are working to secure the airfield and ensure continued operation on both the civilian and military flights. We’re taking over air traffic control. We have safely shut down our embassy and transferred our diplomats. Our diplomatic presence is now consolidated at the airport as well.
Over the coming days we intend to transport out thousands of American citizens who have been living and working in Afghanistan. We’ll also continue to support the safe departure of civilian personnel — the civilian personnel of our allies who are still serving in Afghanistan. Operation Allies Refuge, which I announced back in July, has already moved 2,000 Afghans who are eligible for special immigration visas and their families to the United States. In the coming days, the U.S. military will provide assistance to move more S.I.V.-eligible Afghans and their families out of Afghanistan.
President Biden defended the decision to move forward with the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, saying Monday he stands “squarely behind” it. Mr. Biden’s remarks came after a chaotic day at the Kabul airport as evacuations were halted for several hours after at least two people died.
“How many more generations of America’s daughters and sons would you have me send to fight Afghanistan’s civil war when Afghan troops will not?” said Mr. Biden, in remarks from the East Room of the White House. “How many more lives, American lives, is it worth, how many endless rows of headstones at Arlington National Cemetery?”
Mr. Biden conceded the Taliban had taken over more quickly than anticipated, but he insisted “there was never a good time to withdraw.”
The Taliban took control of the capital, Kabul, on Sunday, with the U.S. military holding on to the airport for evacuations. Shocked Americans watched from home as scenes unfolded that were eerily reminiscent of the evacuation of Saigon in 1975.
The U.S. is continuing to process visas for Afghans and their families who aided U.S. troops. Roughly 100 U.S. embassy staffers remain at the airport —they will be the last ones out.
Gunfire rang out at the airport earlier Monday as Afghans flooded the tarmac. A U.S. military official later told CBS News’ David Martin that U.S. troops had killed two armed Afghans who were part of the huge crowd that breached the airport perimeter. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby confirmed two people died.
Still image from video obtained from social media shows a horde of people running toward the Kabul Airport terminal on August 16, 2021 in the wake of Taliban insurgents regaining power in Afghanistan.
Tropical Storm Fred is steaming northward over the Gulf of Mexico toward an expected late Monday afternoon landfall in the Florida Panhandle near Panama City, not far from where category 5 Hurricane Michael came ashore in 2018. Fred was bringing heavy rains to coastal portions of the Florida Panhandle early Monday afternoon, and a tornado watch was up in the region.
At 11 a.m. EDT Monday, Fred was located about 55 miles southwest of Apalachicola, Florida, moving north at 10 mph. An Air Force hurricane hunter aircraft found that Fred had intensified to 60 mph winds, with a central pressure of 993 mb. NOAA buoy 42039, located about 130 miles south-southeast of Pensacola, Florida, reported sustained winds of 56 mph and gusts as high as 60 mph late Monday morning.
Radar and satellite imagery showed that Fred had grown more organized on Monday, with heavy thunderstorms wrapping most of the way around an inner core. However, strong upper-level winds out of the southwest were creating 15-20 knots of wind shear, and this wind shear was pushing dry air into the core of the storm, keeping Fred from developing a complete eyewall.
Figure 1. Visible satellite image of Tropical Storm Fred over the Gulf of Mexico at 11 a.m. EDT August 16, 2021. (Image credit: NOAA/RAMMB/Colorado State University )
Forecast for Fred
Fred is on the west side of the Bermuda-Azores High, and the clockwise flow of air around the high will take Fred to the north over the next two days. This steering flow will result in Fred’s making landfall in the western Florida Panhandle late Monday afternoon, then pushing inland into Georgia by Tuesday afternoon.
Some modest intensification of Fred is likely before landfall, aided by a moist atmosphere and very warm sea surface temperatures of 30 degrees Celsius (86°F). Hindering development will be 15-20 knots of wind shear. This shear will keep the bulk of Fred’s heavy rains to the east of the center; areas to the west of Fred’s center will see few impacts from the storm. Given the shear, it is unlikely that Fred will be stronger than a 70-mph tropical storm at landfall in Florida.
Figure 2. Predicted rainfall from Fred for the three-day period ending at 8 a.m. EDT Thursday, August 19. (Image credit: National Hurricane Center)
The main threat from Fred in Florida will be flooding from its heavy rains of 4-8 inches. Tallahassee radar showed that Fred had already dumped 2-5 inches of rain near Apalachicola, Florida, as of 11:30 a.m. EDT Monday. Fred also has the potential to spawn a few tornadoes and bring a storm surge of 3-5 feet to the right of its landfall location. Fred’s heavy rains will also be a problem farther inland, with 4-7 inches of rain expected in the western Carolinas. On the plus side, the rains should help quench some abnormal dryness evident on the latest U.S. Drought Monitor in parts of the Appalachians.
Figure 3. Storm total rainfall from Fred estimated by the Tallahassee, Florida, radar as of 11:31 a.m. EDT August 16, 2021. (Image credit: Weather Underground, an IBM company)
Fred will be the fourth U.S. landfalling storm of 2021
Fred’s landfall in Florida will make it the fourth named storm to make landfall in the U.S. this year,following Elsa (landfall on July 7 with 65 mph winds in Florida, killing one and causing $775 million in damage); Danny (landfall in South Carolina on June 28 with 45 mph winds, no deaths or damages reported), and Claudette (landfall on June 19 in Louisiana, killing 14 and causing $350 million in damage).
Last year had a record 11 named storms make landfall in the contiguous U.S., beating the old record of nine set in 1916. The fourth U.S. landfall of 2020 (Hanna in Texas) occurred on July 25. The record-earliest fourth landfall in the U.S. is held by Hurricane Four of 1886, which hit Florida on July 19.
Over the 71-year period 1950-2020, the U.S. averaged three landfalling tropical storms (with one being a hurricane) per year, according to the website Tropical Storm Risk, so 2021 has already had more than an average season’s worth of landfalling storms. On average, over 75% of the Atlantic’s named storms occur after August 16; the average peak date of the season (September 10) is over three weeks away.
Figure 4. Visible satellite image of Tropical Grace making landfall over the southern Dominican Republic’s Barahona Peninsula at 11 a.m. EDT August 16, 2021. (Image credit: NOAA/RAMMB/Colorado State University )
Disorganized Tropical Depression Grace a dangerous rainfall threat for the Dominican Republic and Haiti
Tropical Depression Grace continues to refuse to behave as expected. Its track continues to push south of predictions, and its forward speed refuses to slow as forecast.
At 11 a.m. EDT Monday, Grace was making landfall over the Dominican Republic’s Barahona Peninsula, about 85 miles southeast of the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. Grace was still a weak and disorganized tropical depression, with top winds of 35 mph and a central pressure of 1007 mb, moving west at 15 mph. Moderate wind shear of 10-15 knots was pushing dry air into the core of Grace, keeping it disorganized. Satellite imagery showed Grace’s heavy thunderstorms were in clumps surrounding the center, a sign of a disorganization.
Devastating rains likely in Haiti’s earthquake zone
Despite Grace’s current disorganization, the storm will be capable of bringing torrential rains of 5-10 inches to southern portions of Haiti and the Dominican Republic on Monday and Tuesday. Unfortunately, Grace’s more southerly track will bring the center of the depression over the southwestern portion of Haiti, which was hit by a devastating magnitude 7.2 earthquake on Saturday morning that killed an estimated 1,300 people. Grace’s rains in the earthquake zone are likely to begin Monday evening and extend through much of Tuesday. The 6Z Monday run of NOAA’s experimental HAFS-B model predicted over 10 inches of rain from Grace in the earthquake zone, which would be capable of causing devastating flooding.
Forecast for Grace
A broad ridge of high pressure over the western Atlantic is steering Grace. The ridge is expected to grow stronger, keeping the storm on a much more southerly path than expected. Grace is now predicted to clip the south side of the mountainous island of Hispaniola and pass well south of Cuba. It is unlikely that the amount of land interaction Grace encounters will be able to destroy its circulation, as happened to Tropical Storm Fred.
With a large expanse of warm waters of 29-30 degrees Celsius (84-86°F) ahead of it, a reasonably moist atmosphere, and light-to-moderate wind shear of 5-15 knots, Grace will have the opportunity to undergo significant strengthening once it moves away from Hispaniola on Tuesday morning. Land interaction with Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula will potentially cause significant disruption of Grace on Wednesday night, however. Grace’s final landfall in Mexico, expected to occur well south of the Texas border on Friday night or Saturday, could be as a hurricane.
Figure 5. GeoColor visible satellite image of Tropical Depression Eight southeast of Bermuda (outlined in yellow) at 1420Z (10:20 a.m. EDT) Monday, August 16, 2021. (Image credit: RAMMB/CIRA/CSU)
Tropical Storm Henri expected to form near Bermuda
A tropical depression spinning near Bermuda on Monday morning was on the verge of becoming Tropical Storm Henri. At 11 a.m. EDT Monday, August 16, NHC pegged the maximum winds of Tropical Depression Eight (TD 8) at 35 mph, just below tropical storm strength. TD 8 was centered about 135 miles east-southeast of Bermuda, heading south at 9 mph. Given the predicted imminent strengthening of TD 8 into Henri, a tropical storm watch was in effect for Bermuda.
ASCAT scatterometer data showed TD 8’s circulation to be well defined but weak, and the central pressure was a relatively high 1012 mb. Winds at the L.F. Wade International Airport in Hamilton, Bermuda, were only 15 mph at 10:55 a.m. EDT. Weak bands of showers and thunderstorms were pushing across the island, well away from the compact convective core of TD 8.
Assuming TD 8 becomes Henri as predicted, it will likely persist as a tropical storm for several days, making a clockwise loop around Bermuda but probably not moving directly over the island. Forecast models agree on the general looping pattern that will culminate in the system’s recurvature, but they disagree on how far south and west it might stray before looping back northeast. Among the 0Z Monday runs of our top three track models, the European has the westernmost solution, hauling TD 8 more than halfway from Bermuda to the U.S. East Coast before the system races back northeast.
While TD 8 is carving out the southward end of its loop on Monday and Tuesday, it will pass over warm sea surface temperatures of around 28-29 degrees Celsius (82-84°F), with only moderate wind shear of about 10 knots, so some strengthening can be expected. The midlevel atmospheric humidity will be only around 50%, though, so TD 8 is unlikely to intensify dramatically. (The HWRF model has been a persistent outlier, projecting that TD 8 could become a powerful Hurricane Henri.) From Wednesday onward, the jet stream will be dipping toward Bermuda, increasing shear to the 20-30 mph range and likely putting a cap on any further strengthening.
Website visitors can comment on “Eye on the Storm” posts. Please read our Comments Policy prior to posting. Comments are generally open for 30 days from date posted. Sign up to receive email announcements of new postings here. Twitter: @DrJeffMasters and @bhensonweather
Thanks to efforts to reconfigure the Humboldt Bay Generating Station so that it can operate in “island mode,” the overwhelming majority of Humboldt power users no longer have to worry about PG&E’s wildfire-related Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) events. But the Humboldt County Office of Emergency Services announced today that a handful of the county’s far-flung communities may be subject to planned outages starting early Wednesday.
Read the OES statement below:
Due to forecasted weather conditions causing a potential for wildfire, PG&E has informed us that Southeast Humboldt County is in the scope for a possible Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) beginning Wednesday, August 18 at 2 a.m.
The following communities may be impacted by this outage:
Alderpoint, Blocksburg, Bridgeville, Dinsmore, Mad River, Myers Flat, Redcrest, Redway (approx. 2 impacted customers), Weott.
Estimated time of restoration is currently August 19 at 10 a.m.
The scope of this event is rapidly changing/evolving. Impacted areas may change in the coming hours/days depending on weather conditions and potential for fire ignition.
PG&E will be opening an outdoor Community Resource Center at the Bridgeville Community Center, located at 38717 Kneeland Road, providing impacted residents with an ADA-accessible restroom and hand-washing station, medical equipment charging, device charging, Wi-Fi, bottled water and snacks.
For more information about the upcoming PSPS or to see if your residence will be impacted, visit: pge.com/pspsupdates.
A prominent US cardinal who criticized the vaccine is now on a ventilator after getting COVID-19.
Raymond L. Burke, 73, is being treated in a Wisconsin hospital just days after confirming he had tested positive for the virus.
“Cardinal Burke has been admitted to the hospital with COVID-19 and is being assisted by a ventilator. Doctors are encouraged by his progress,” a tweet from his account said on Saturday.
Four days prior, Burke had tweeted: “Praised be Jesus Christ! I wish to inform you that I have recently tested positive for the COVID-19 virus. Thanks be to God, I am resting comfortably and receiving excellent medical care. Please pray for me as I begin my recovery. Let us trust in Divine Providence.”
Throughout the pandemic, Burke has been skeptical of the vaccine and the lockdown measures introduced to stop the spread of the virus.
Regarding lockdowns and possible vaccine mandates, Cardinal Burke said, “Whatever the state proposes must respect God and His Law.”Andrew Medichini/AP
He claimed last year that any potential vaccine mandates introduced by US states “violates the integrity of its citizens.”
“While the state can provide reasonable regulations for the safeguarding of health, it is not the ultimate provider of health. God is. Whatever the state proposes must respect God and His Law,” he said at a Rome Life Forum in Italy in May last year.
At one point during the forum, Burke referenced how the J&J shot was produced using a cell line derived from an aborted fetus, saying: “It must be clear that it is never morally justified to develop a vaccine through the use of the cell lines of aborted fetuses.
Cardinal Raymond Burke said COVID-19 was used by certain forces “to advance their evil agenda.”Alessandra Tarantino/AP
“The thought of the introduction of such a vaccine into one’s body is rightly abhorrent.”
J&J did use fetal cell lines in the development of its vaccine, but this is not the same as fetal tissue or DNA — and the vaccine itself does not contain any aborted fetal cells, according to Reuters.
Fetal cell lines are derived from decades-old fetal cells — not recent abortions — which then replicate over decades in laboratory settings. Fetal cell lines are thousands of times removed from the original fetus cells.
Burke said the virus had been “used by certain forces, inimical to families and to the freedom of nations, to advance their evil agenda.”
While he criticized the COVID-19 vaccine, it’s unclear whether Cardinal Burke received the shot.Gregorio Borgia/AP
He added: “These forces tell us that we are now the subjects of the so-called ‘Great Reset,’ the ‘new normal,’ which is dictated to us by their manipulation of citizens and nations through ignorance and fear.”
He criticized some churchgoers for not believing that Jesus could protect them from COVID.
It is not clear if Burke — who is a former archbishop of St. Louis — ended up receiving the COVID-19 vaccine.
President Biden is returning to the White House on Monday afternoon from Camp David. Here he arrives last week at an East Room event.
Alex Wong/Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Alex Wong/Getty Images
President Biden is returning to the White House on Monday afternoon from Camp David. Here he arrives last week at an East Room event.
Alex Wong/Getty Images
President Biden will address the nation on Monday as more U.S. forces are on their way to Afghanistan to help with the evacuation of American personnel and allies.
It will be the first time Biden has spoken publicly since the Taliban moved into Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital.
The president, who has been following the crisis overseas from Camp David, is returning to the White House on Monday afternoon. He is planning to address the public from the East Room at 3:45 p.m.
Biden’s remarks come as his top allies defend the administration in the face of increasing criticism — from both parties — over how the crisis has unfolded.
Republican lawmakers and some Democrats have criticized the administration’s withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
“This is President Biden’s Saigon moment,” House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., said Sunday on CBS’ Face the Nation, referring to the chaotic departure from Vietnam in 1975. “And, unfortunately, it was very predictable. It seems like many in President Biden’s intelligence community got this devastatingly wrong.”
Republicans have also criticized Biden for remaining at Camp David, out of public view and away from reporters.
On Monday morning, national security adviser Jake Sullivan argued that the United States succeeded in its mission to hold those responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and that remaining in the country was not sustainable.
“Despite the fact that we spent 20 years and tens of billions of dollars to give the best equipment, the best training and the best capacity to the Afghan national security forces, we could not give them the will,” Sullivan said on NBC. “And they ultimately decided that they would not fight for Kabul and they would not fight for the country.”
Major international airlines are scrambling to reroute flights away from Afghan airspace as the country falls to the Taliban, disrupting passenger services to India, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates.
On Monday, United Airlines
(UAL), Virgin Atlantic, Emirates and Flydubai all announced changes to flights to or over Afghanistan, saying that they would monitor the situation as chaotic scenes unfolded at the main airport in Kabul, the nation’s capital.
“Due to the dynamic nature of the situation, we have begun routing affected flights around Afghanistan airspace,” a United Airlines spokesperson said in a statement early Monday morning local time, adding that it would continue to work closely with authorities to “determine how we continue service to markets impacted.”
Virgin Atlantic also said that it would reroute its upcoming services to India and Pakistan after “the latest situation reports in Afghanistan.” Starting Monday, the carrier’s flights to the cities of Islamabad, Lahore, Mumbai and New Delhi, which usually fly over Afghanistan, will be diverted to avoid the country’s airspace.
“The health, safety and security of our customers and people always comes first,” a Virgin Atlantic spokesperson said in a statement.
Lufthansa
(DLAKY), the German airline, also said that it was “rerouting flights to avoid Afghan airspace until further notice.”
“As a result, the flight time to India and other destinations will be extended by up to one hour,” a spokesperson told CNN Business.
Cut off
Former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country Sunday, hours before Taliban fighters took control of the presidential palace in Kabul.
A growing number of countries are now working to evacuate their citizens from Afghanistan, including the United States, South Korea and New Zealand.
On Monday, the Afghanistan Civil Aviation Authority announced that commercial flights had been canceled out of Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. The civilian side of the airport is closed, according to a notice to airmen. Evacuation flights organized by foreign governments were still taking off.
Several carriers had already announced plans to cancel services. Both Emirates and Flydubai — a government-owned budget carrier — said that services to and from Kabul had been suspended.
There were scenes of pandemonium early Monday at the airport, where hundreds of people flooded the tarmac and large crowds were seen attempting to board aircraft.
Air India was one of the few remaining airlines still running a regular service to and from Kabul prior to the announcement of the suspension of all commercial flights.
Hours earlier, the carrier had said that it was trying to operate its scheduled flights for Afghanistan, “situation permitting.” But an Air India flight scheduled to depart to Kabul at 12:30 p.m. local time, or 3 am E.T. on Monday, was canceled just shortly before takeoff.
The plane was due to leave from New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport and pick up passengers in Kabul before returning to India, an airline spokesperson told CNN Business.
US airlines were already operating under new restrictions imposed by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in July, which prohibited them from operating at certain altitudes in Afghanistan, “with the exception of operations into and out of Hamid Karzai International Airport.”
— CNN’s Manveena Suri, Angus Watson and Jonny Hallam contributed to this report.
The most hazardous part of the storm is likely to be rain, with its potential to cause flash floods and landslides, said Ken Graham, director of the National Hurricane Center. The most immediate rain threat is to the Dominican Republic, he said, followed by Haiti.
Earthquakes have been wreaking havoc in Haiti since at least the 18th century, when the city of Port-au-Prince was destroyed twice in 19 years. Saturday’s powerful quake killed hundreds and injured thousands more. Eleven years earlier a temblor killed tens of thousands of people, if not hundreds of thousands.
Haiti sits near the intersection of two tectonic plates that make up the Earth’s crust. Earthquakes can occur when those plates move against each other and create friction. Haiti is also densely populated. Plus, many of its buildings are designed to withstand hurricanes — not earthquakes. Those buildings can survive strong winds but are vulnerable to collapse when the ground shakes.
___
WHAT MAKES HAITI PRONE TO EARTHQUAKES?
The Earth’s crust is made up of tectonic plates that move. And Haiti sits near the intersection of two of them — the North American plate and the Caribbean plate.
Multiple fault lines between those plates cut through or near the island of Hispaniola, which Haiti shares with the Dominican Republic. What’s worse, not all of those fault lines behave the same way.
“Hispaniola sits in a place where plates transition from smashing together to sliding past one another,” said Rich Briggs, a research geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Geologic Hazards Science Center.
“It’s like a rock stuck in the track of a sliding glass door,” he said. “It just does not want to move smoothly because it’s got so many different forces on it.”
___
WHAT CAUSED THE MOST RECENT QUAKE?
Saturday’s magnitude 7.2 earthquake likely occurred along the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault zone, which cuts across Haiti’s southwestern Tiburon Peninsula, according to the USGS.
It’s the same fault zone along which the devastating 2010 earthquake occurred. And it’s likely the source of three other big earthquakes in Haiti between 1751 and 1860, two of which destroyed Port-au-Prince.
Earthquakes are the result of the tectonic plates slowly moving against each other and creating friction over time, said Gavin Hayes, senior science adviser for earthquake and geologic hazards at USGS.
“That friction builds up and builds up and eventually the strain that’s stored there overcomes the friction,” Hayes said. “And that’s when the fault moves suddenly. That’s what an earthquake is.”
___
WHY CAN EARTHQUAKES IN HAITI BE SO DEVASTATING?
It’s a combination of factors that include a seismically active area, a high population density of 11 million people and buildings that are often designed to withstand hurricanes — not earthquakes.
Typical concrete and cinder block buildings can survive strong winds but are vulnerable to damage or collapse when the ground shakes. Poor building practices can also play a role.
The 2010 quake hit closer to densely populated Port-au-Prince and caused widespread destruction. Haiti’s government put the death toll at more than 300,000, while a report commissioned by the U.S. government placed it between 46,000 and 85,000.
“I think it’s important to recognize that there’s no such thing as a natural disaster,” said Wendy Bohon, a geologist with Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology. “What you have is a natural hazard that overlaps with a vulnerable system.”
___
WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD?
Geologists say they cannot predict the next earthquake.
“But we do know that earthquakes like this can cause similar-sized earthquakes on the next portion of the fault,” said Hayes of USGS. “And it’s quite a significant hazard in places that don’t have the construction practices to withstand the shaking.”
Construction of more earthquake-resistant buildings remains a challenge in Haiti, which is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.
Before Saturday’s quake, Haiti was still recovering from the 2010 earthquake as well as Hurricane Matthew in 2016. Its president was assassinated last month, sending the country into political chaos.
And while there have been some success stories of Haitians building more earthquake-resistant structures, the country has lacked a centralized effort to do so, said Mark Schuller, a professor of anthropology and nonprofit and NGO studies at Northern Illinois University.
Haiti’s government has become increasingly weak, while non-governmental organizations focus on their own compartmentalized projects.
“There is technical knowledge in Haiti. There are trained architects. There are city planners. That’s not the problem,” Schuller said. “The problem is a lack of funding for coordination, and lack of political will from donors (to organizations providing aid).”
Thousands of Afghans have amassed on the tarmac at Kabul’s international airport in the hours following the Taliban’s breach of the capital city.
The chaotic scenes at Hamid Karzai International Airport Monday captured by news crews and cell phones convey a terror and desperate rush to escape the country, which is now overrun by Taliban militants in the lead-up to the complete departure of U.S. forces.
A video shared on Twitter appears to shows large crowds of people, including children, moving toward passenger aircraft on the tarmac. There does not appear to be security or law enforcement in the area.
“No one can really leave,” Kamal Alam, a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and senior adviser to the Massoud Foundation, told CNBC in a phone interview. At the time of writing, Alam was stuck in Afghanistan, his flight out of the country cancelled. “If you don’t have a visa or passport, which the majority of Afghans don’t, you’re not going.”
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country on Sunday evening, reportedly to Tajikistan, as the Taliban entered the presidential palace and declared the war “over.” Ghani said he fled to prevent “a flood of bloodshed.”
“The Taliban have won with the judgment of their swords and guns, and are now responsible for the honor, property and self-preservation of their countrymen,” Ghani said.
The rapid departure of high-ranking Afghan officials — along with substantial amounts of cash — in recent days is what initially prompted the rush to leave and a flood of anger at the Afghan government, Alam said. He was at Hamid Karzai International Airport a few days ago.
“All the VIPs were being allowed to fly out first, all their cash was being transported first … whether on commercial airlines or private jets from [an] unnamed Gulf country,” he said, not specifying the country due to the sensitive nature of the issue.
“So people were seeing this, there was a lot of resentment and anger from the airport security, and that is really where the rot started. That’s when people started saying this government and this president is not worth defending, let’s get out of here.”
Another video posted to social media appears shows people struggling to board a plane.
The panic is unfolding as around 5,000 U.S. troops return to the country to evacuate Western diplomats. The forces were tasked, according to the State Department, with the “very narrowly focused mission” of evacuating embassy staff in Kabul. As of late Sunday, the U.S. embassy was moved into the airport.
Prior to Sunday, Kabul was the last major city to have been spared takeover by the militants.
A Taliban spokesperson said the fighters intended to negotiate a “peaceful surrender” of the city.
Since President Joe Biden’s April decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan before Sept. 11, the Taliban have made stunning battlefield advances with now the entirety of the nation of 38 million people under their control.
The rapid disintegration of Afghan security forces and the country’s government have shocked the world and led many to question how a collapse could happen so quickly after two decades of American nation-building and training efforts.
With Tropical Storm Fred gaining strength on the way to the Florida Panhandle, many schools in the area are closed Monday to brace for its impact.
Still about 175 miles south of Panama City, Florida, as of early Monday morning, Tropical Storm Fred maintained maximum sustained winds of 50 mph while moving toward the state at 6 mph, with an expected landfall in the western Panhandle Monday afternoon or early evening, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Fred had been downgraded but regained its tropical storm status Sunday morning over the Gulf of Mexico, and is forecast to gradually increase in strength as it tracks through the warm waters of the gulf Monday.
The storm is expected to bring dangerous storm surge, river flooding and possible tornadoes when it reaches the US coast, and will then begin to quickly weaken after landfall, according to the NHC.
Fred is one of three Atlantic storms currently being monitored by the NHC. Tropical Depression Grace is headed toward Haiti and Tropical Depression Eight formed northeast of Bermuda Sunday night, according to the NHC.
Tropical Depression Eight is moving south at 8 mph with maximum sustained winds at 35 mph and is forecast to possibly reach tropical storm strength.
A Tropical Storm Warningfor Fred is in effect for the coast of the Florida Panhandle from Navarre to the Wakulla-Jefferson County line.
Schools in Bay County, Okaloosa County, Walton County and Santa Rosa County announced all classes were canceled Monday, as were after school activities.
Classes are expected to resume Tuesday, according to posts on each school district’s website.
The storm is expected to bring isolated maximum rainfall totals of 12 inches to the Florida Big Bend and Panhandle through Tuesday, according to the NHC. And heavy rainfall can be expected through parts of southeast Alabama, portions of Georgia and the western Carolinas.
Storm surge is forecast to be highest from Indian Pass to the Steinhatchee River in Florida where a surge of 3 to 5 feet is possible. A storm surge of 1 to 3 feet is forecast Monday from the Alabama-Florida border to Indian Pass, including Pensacola Bay, Choctawhatchee Bay and Saint Andrew Bay.
Tropical Depression Grace takes aim at still recovering Haiti
Meanwhile, Tropical Depression Grace is tracking through the Caribbean toward Haiti, potentially affecting recovery efforts following a major 7.2-magnitude earthquake that struck Saturday.
Grace weakened from a storm to a tropical depression Sunday, with maximum sustained winds of 35 mph.
A tropical storm watch is in effect for the entire coast of Haiti and the entire coast of the Dominican Republic in advance of Grace, which was located 90 miles south-southeast of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, early Monday morning.
The current forecast from the National Hurricane Center has Grace traveling over Hispaniola Monday and near or over eastern Cuba Tuesday, with expected wind speeds at 35 mph.
The center of the storm may pass just north of where the earthquake struck Haiti, but there will still be impacts that can hamper aid and rescue efforts. Gusty winds and heavy rain are the main threats associated with this storm for Haiti.
Grace is forecast to bring 3 to 6 inches of rain to Puerto Rico with isolated totals of up to 8 inches possible, which could lead to flash flooding and mudslides.
For Haiti and the Dominican Republic, widespread rainfall of 4 to 8 inches is forecast, with isolated amounts of up to 15 inches that could also lead to flash flooding and mudslides on Monday and Tuesday.
The intensity and the track of Grace after passing Hispaniola remains uncertain at this time. The NHC currently has the storm tracking south of Florida and into the Gulf of Mexico by the end of the week.
CNN’s Haley Brink, Tyler Mauldin, Jackson Dill and Gene Norman contributed to this report.
President JOE BIDEN, July 8: “The Taliban is not … the North Vietnamese army. … There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of … the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable.”
Today, the fall of Kabul appears imminent.Taliban forces have effectively seized control after entering the capital city. They seek a full and unconditional surrender of the government. Afghan President ASHRAF GHANI has reportedly fled the country. In Kabul, “helicopters buzzed overhead to evacuate personnel from the U.S. Embassy, while smoke rose near the compound as staff destroyed important documents,” theAP reports from the ground, while “civilians fearing that the Taliban could reimpose the kind of brutal rule that all but eliminated women’s rights rushed to leave the country, lining up at cash machines to withdraw their life savings.”
And amid all of that, the White House is caught between its desire to spin what’s happening and a reality on the ground that is so clear that it’s hard to spin.And everything coming out of the administration this morning shows the difficult place they’re in.
— TALKING POINT 1: “This is not Saigon.”
That’s something Secretary of State ANTONY BLINKEN repeated on multiple TV hits this morning. Even top Democrats aren’t going along with that. “It does feel like [the fall of Saigon] today,” Rep. DEBBIE DINGELL (D-Mich.) said in an MSNBC hit this morning. “I’m not going to lie.” If seasoned, mainstream Democrats from the establishment wing of the party aren’t even going along with the White House on this, their message has a real credibility problem.
A sharp response to Blinken came from Reuters foreign correspondent @idreesali114: “Secretary Blinken is correct. The airlift from Saigon did not happen until two years after a peace deal was signed. The evacuation from Kabul is happening with two weeks still left under Biden’s own timeline for an end to the mission.”
— TALKING POINT 2: The White House was prepared for this.
“This is a contingency that we planned for,” a White House official told Playbook this morning. “There were no good solutions. … The U.S. government and the president are going to continue to hold their ground. We have been there for 20 years. One more year or five more years wouldn’t have made a difference if the Afghan people and their government can’t hold its own country.”
It’s an argument Blinken echoed in his many TV appearances this morning. One big problem: If this is what things going according to plan looks like, then perhaps the plan wasn’t very well-thought out.
“One can disagree with me & think the Biden administration was right to pull out all US troops from Afghanistan … but it is impossible to argue that it has gone about it in the right way,” writes Council on Foreign Relations President @RichardHaass. “This looks to be both a major intelligence & policy failure with tragic consequences.”
— TALKING POINT 3: We couldn’t wait any longer.
The Biden administration intimated that they had no choice but to pull out immediately because of the agreed-upon May 1 withdrawal date the Trump administration struck with the Taliban. There was no renegotiating with the Taliban, the Biden administration maintains.
It’s a point that some in the foreign policy community see as thin.
“Blinken said we couldn’t stay for another five, 10 years. But you could stay for another five, 10 months,” said BRETT BRUEN, NSC director of global engagement under the Obama administration.
“If we negotiated [with the Taliban] and said, ‘We’ve just taken over for [DONALD] TRUMP, we’re going to hit certain milestones but we’re going to need another 10 months,’ the Taliban wouldn’t want to risk their troops and the possibility that America would stay longer.”
If the administration had stayed even just five months longer, they would have had more time to remove personnel and process special immigration visas, foreign policy experts point out — instead of having to send 5,000 troops back to the country to evacuate an embassy while staffers quickly destroy all sensitive materials.
— TALKING POINT 4: This is all Trump’s fault.
“We inherited a deal that was cut by our predecessor,” a White House official told Playbook this morning. “It’s not finger-pointing; that’s just facts. … It’s not about blaming the Trump administration; it’s about what we inherited.”
“We had to put in place an entire system to deal with this,” Blinken said on ABC’s “This Week.” “Unfortunately none of that work was done when we came in.”
There are a few problems with this. First, Biden is the one who decided to pull out U.S. forces by the upcoming 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. That was his call, not Trump’s. Second, part of Biden’s appeal as a presidential candidate was his vast experience and foreign policy credentials. Third, this argument undercuts the other ones. You can’t say both that this is what you’d planned for, and that it’s also a catastrophe that isn’t what you’d planned on. If this is Trump’s fault, that suggests that the situation is bad enough you’re trying to blame someone else for it; but if the situation is bad and this is also what you’d planned for, then that begs the question of whether the plan was good.
You can’t argue both that pulling out was good and the right thing to do, and that Trump gave you no choice but to pull out.
However, that’s not to say that the Trump administration will come away from the fall of Kabul without a share of the blame. That point was made on ABC’s “This Week” by Rep. LIZ CHENEY (R-Wyo.). “Absolutely President Biden bears responsibility for making this decision. But there is no question that President Trump, his administration, Secretary [MIKE] POMPEO, they also bear very significant responsibility for this. They walked down this path of legitimizing the Taliban, of perpetuating this fantasy; of telling the American people that the Taliban were a partner for peace.”
Until now, Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan has generally earned widespread public support. Many Americans surely agree with Biden that we needed to pull out of Afghanistan. Many agree that Trump’s prior negotiating with the Taliban crippled this admin’s leverage. But the haphazard pace and nature of the withdrawal is on Biden, no matter how the White House would like to spin it.
— In the last 12 months, MACKENZIE SCOTT has given away $8.6 billion — more than the combined annual grants awarded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Ford Foundation, according to a Bloomberg analysis. (Fun anecdote: “One email about a $15 million gift, suspected of phishing, sat unopened for a month.”)
— Transportation Secretary PETE BUTTIGIEG “has become one of the White House’s favorite cabinet secretaries, since he does what he’s asked.” That, and much more, in this WaPo deep-dive into Buttigieg.
— Airmail’s Alessandra Stanley dives in on Justice STEPHEN BREYER for his 83rd birthday: “When Breyer said ‘health’ would be a determinant, he certainly didn’t mean the health of the nation; he meant his own. He also said he didn’t want politics to influence his decision, which is like an aging hedge-fund manager saying he dates women 30 years younger because age discrimination is against the law.”
— How “Stan” culture — once the province of BEYONCÉ obsessives and K-Pop fans — has colonized American politics, by POLITICO Magazine’s Derek Robertson.
MORE SUNDAY BEST …
— Rep. MICHAEL MCCAUL (R-Texas) on the Biden administration’s handling of Afghanistan, on CNN’s “State of the Union”: “They totally blew this one. They completely underestimated the strength of the Taliban. And … they didn’t listen to the intelligence community, because every time I got an I.C. briefing assessment, it was probably the grimmest assessment I have ever heard on Afghanistan. And yet they — the State Department, Secretary Blinken, the politicos in the White House — wanted to paint this rosy picture that somehow these peace talks in Doha were going to deliver a rabbit out of the hat at the eleventh hour. Well, guess what? That didn’t happen. And now they’re sending 5,000 troops in to try to save our embassy personnel.”
— NIH Director FRANCIS COLLINS on what he expects next from the Delta variant, on “Fox News Sunday”: “We can’t really predict that; all we can say is that this is going very steeply upward with no signs of having peaked out, so I will be surprised if we don’t cross 200,000 cases a day in the next couple of weeks. And that’s heartbreaking considering we never thought we would be back in that space again.”
BIDEN’S SUNDAY — The president is at Camp David and has nothing on his public schedule.
VP KAMALA HARRIS’ SUNDAY — The VP has nothing on her public schedule.
PLAYBOOK READS
CONGRESS
THE DEMOCRATIC TWO-STEP — Which will come first in the House, a vote on the Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure bill or a vote on the budget resolution to open the door for Democrats’ $3.5 trillion spending package? It’s the question confounding both progressives and moderates. In a letter to colleagues this morning, Speaker NANCY PELOSI announced that she’d try to do both at once: “I have requested that the Rules Committee explore the possibility of a rule that advances both the budget resolution and the bipartisan infrastructure package.”
NOT GIVING UP — “Hope fades for Congress to strike police reform deal, but negotiations continue,”by NBC’s Leigh Ann Caldwell: “Bipartisan negotiators aren’t giving up, but they are increasingly talking about abandoning thornier issues and moving forward with a slimmed-down bill that would accomplish the pieces of police reform that already have consensus.
“The Senate left town for its August recess Wednesday morning, and two lead negotiators on police reform, Sens. TIM SCOTT, R-S.C., and CORY BOOKER, D-N.J., missed another self-imposed deadline after five months of talks failed to reach a deal. Reflecting the frustration after months of intense haggling without substantial progress, Scott last month laid down a new marker: If they hadn’t reached a deal by the August recess, there was no point in keeping on talking. As recently as last week, Scott refused to commit more time to negotiations.
“But now that the deadline has arrived, he isn’t willing to give up, and lawmakers are considering leaving the most contentious parts of the bill for another day, an idea likely to cause consternation.”
POLICY CORNER
IMMIGRATION FILES — “Biden Administration Ordered to Reinstate Trump’s Remain in Mexico Policy,”by WSJ’s Michelle Hackman: “The program, which DHS under Trump introduced in 2019 at the height of a surge in Central American families coming to the U.S. border, was wound down by Biden soon after he took office. In a ruling late Friday, U.S. Judge MATTHEW J. KACSMARYK of the Northern District of Texas said the elimination of the policy was arbitrary and violated federal law because the administration didn’t properly consider the benefits of the program. He also wrote that ending it has contributed to the current border surge.”
— “Diversity Visa Winners Risk Losing Chance to Come to U.S.,”by WSJ’s Ava Sasani: “Tens of thousands of families around the world are at risk of losing a rare opportunity to immigrate to the United States. For the past three decades, the Diversity Visa Program has awarded a path to legal permanent residence to about 55,000 people each year from countries with low levels of immigration to the U.S. Each applicant has a less than 1% chance of winning a green card.
“The U.S. government must process the applications of lottery winners before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, or else the winners will lose their shot at a green card. As of June 2021, because of what the Biden administration says are Covid-19-related restraints, the State Department had only processed about 3% of the total 55,000 visa applications. Several ongoing federal lawsuits ask the State Department to reserve diversity visas to be processed after the coming deadline.”
TRY AND TRY AGAIN — “Appeals court asked to block Biden’s retooled eviction ban,” by Josh Gerstein and Katy O’Donnell: “Opponents of the federal government’s pandemic-related eviction ban asked a federal appeals court Saturday to block the latest version of the policy, which the Biden administration rolled out under pressure last week after allowing an earlier version to expire.
“Landlords and two chapters of the National Association of Realtors asked the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals for ‘immediate’ action to prevent enforcement of the moratorium issued by the CDC. The dispute, which seems certain to be resolved by the Supreme Court, looks likely to get a ruling from the D.C. Circuit by the end of this week.”
PANDEMIC
MAJOR INVESTIGATION — “Inside America’s Covid-reporting breakdown,”by Erin Banco: “[T]he coronavirus exposed a patchwork system in which state officials struggled to control the spread of Covid-19 because their outdated surveillance systems did not allow them to collect and analyze data in real-time, according to a six-month POLITICO investigation … Faced with underfunded and understaffed health departments, many state officials said they were not able to adequately identify and contain outbreaks during surge periods. …
“On a national level, the delays in receiving lab reports and broken chains of transmission impeded the federal government’s understanding of Covid-19’s spread throughout the country. … The same problems may be even more threatening in the next act of the Covid drama.”
CASES ON THE RISE — “‘This is starting to look really ominous in the South,’ expert says, as U.S. is among nations with highest rate of new Covid-19 cases,” by CNN’s Aya Elamroussi: “The US remains among nations with the highest rate of new Covid-19 cases, driven mostly by a surge in the South, where many states are lagging in getting people vaccinated against the coronavirus. … In the month of August, the US has so far reported more than 1.5 million new cases of Covid-19, more than three times the numbers for Iran and India — which now hold second and third place, JHU data shows. And the seven-day average has topped more than 135,000 cases, well ahead of other nations. On a state-by-state comparison, Louisiana has the highest rate of new cases per capita, followed by Florida.”
A HOT MASK MANDATE SUMMER — “‘I feel defeated’: Mask and vaccine mandates cause new divides as officials try to head off virus surge,” by WaPo’s Dan Diamond, Kim Mueller, Alex Baumhardt and April Capochino Myers: “The summer of 2021 is a season of mandates, with rules requiring masks and vaccines reemerging as the pandemic’s latest cultural and political flash point. In many parts of the country — including states hit hardest by a resurgence of the virus — the mandates are pitting blue cities against red governors, sparking protests and placing new burdens on already harried workers.”
— “Texas takes its ban on school mask mandates to the state Supreme Court,”by NYT’s Andrea Kannapell: “Gov. GREG ABBOTT of Texas, whose statewide ban on mask mandates has drawn federal criticism — and in some Covid-stricken areas, fury — is taking his battle against one of the country’s most basic pandemic precautions to the state’s highest court. Late on Friday, after Mr. Abbott’s ban suffered at least three legal setbacks, the state’s attorney general, KEN PAXTON, said he was asking the State Supreme Court to consider Mr. Abbott’s policies. ‘The rule of law will decide,’ he wrote in a tweet.”
POLITICS ROUNDUP
COTTON’S TAKE — “Sen. Tom Cotton: Laxalt key to GOP flipping the U.S. Senate,”by AP’s Sam Metz: “Cotton, who wouldn’t say whether he planned to try the fries, compared Nevada to Arizona, Georgia and New Hampshire and said, with ADAM LAXALT as a candidate, it was perhaps the Republicans’ best chance to flip a U.S. Senate seat. Laxalt has not yet announced plans to run for office.
“‘Adam, I guess he’s not supposed to say that he’s going to be your next United States Senator. There’s some campaign finance rules against it. But what do I care about some stupid rules like that? Adam Laxalt is going to the United States Senate for the Battle Born state in 2022,’ Cotton said, speaking on a platform built atop hay bales with the vistas of the Sierra Nevadas as a backdrop.”
IT’S GETTING HOT IN HERE — “Crews battle largest U.S. wildfire, threats grow across West,”by AP’s Eugene Garcia and Daisy Nguyen: “Firefighters faced ‘another critical day’ as thunderstorms pushed flames closer to two towns not far from where the Dixie Fire destroyed much of Greenville last week. The thunderstorms, which began Friday, didn’t produce much rain but whipped up wind and created lightning strikes, forcing crews to focus on using bulldozers to build lines and keep the blaze from reaching Westwood, a town of about 1,700 people. Westwood was placed under evacuation orders Aug. 5.
“The fire was among more than 100 large wildfires burning in more than a dozen states in the West seared by drought and hot, bone-dry weather that turned forests, brushlands, meadows and pastures into tinder. The U.S. Forest Service said Friday it’s operating in crisis mode, fully deploying firefighters and maxing out its support system.”
AMERICA AND THE WORLD
O CANADA — “Trudeau launches Canadians into summer election campaign,”by Andy Blatchford in Ottawa: “JUSTIN TRUDEAU triggered an election campaign Sunday as he looks to regain the strong hold on power his Liberals lost nearly two years ago. … He announced that Canadians will vote Sept. 20. …
“Trudeau will look to capitalize on strong polling and his government’s record in handling the health and economic crises of the pandemic. The summer election campaign carries risk for Trudeau. Polls suggest that a majority mandate is not a lock, and the pandemic’s uncertainty threatens to create unexpected campaign conditions.”
MEDIA MOVE — Jenna McLaughlin will be cybersecurity correspondent for NPR. She most recently was an investigative national security reporter for Yahoo News. Announcement
HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Justice Stephen Breyer … Reps. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and Elaine Luria (D-Va.) … Devin O’Malley … Allen Weisselberg … Melinda Gates … NBC’s Leigh Ann Caldwell and Rich Hudock … Maggie Mulvaney … Annie Wolf and Bart Reising of House Minority Whip Steve Scalise’s (R-La.) office … Meg Joseph of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s (D-Ariz.) office … Dara Cohen of Sen. Jacky Rosen’s (D-Nev.) office … Hannah Salem of Salem Strategies … Karen Finney … Linda Ellerbee … Cindy Hamilton of the Progressive Turnout Project … Dave Price … McClatchy’s Kevin Hall … Patrice Woods Wildgoose … Peggy Binzel … Susanne Salkind … Jarrett Lewis of Public Opinion Strategies … Jon Black … Patrick Gleason of Americans for Tax Reform … Kathryn Potter … Jennifer Holdsworth Karp … Mary Elizabeth Taylor … Elise Labott … Billy Pitts … Stephanie Lesser … Dentons’ Eric Tanenblatt … Brett Doyle … ABC’s Mariam Khan … Tom Best … former Reps. Robert Pittenger (R-N.C.) and Judy Biggert (R-Ill.) … Larry Cohen … Christopher Loring … Zahava Urecki
Send Playbookers tips to [email protected]. Playbook couldn’t happen without our editor Mike Zapler, deputy editor Zack Stanton and producers Allie Bice, Eli Okun and Garrett Ross.
All day Sunday the White House fended off a firestorm of criticism — rushing Secretary of State Antony Blinken onto Sunday cable shows to attempt damage control. Then Blinken, Defense Sec. Lloyd Austin and Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley briefed Hill lawmakers, some of whom railed against what they called a lack of preparedness by the Biden administration. Overwhelmed by pleas from those attempting to exit the country safely and the need for expedited visas, the Pentagon announced an emergency deployment of additional troops, soon to total 6,000 on the ground in Afghanistan.
Heart-rending images of desperate Afghans trying to board flights out of the airport in Kabul flooded social media, while Taliban militants broadcast live from the presidential palace amid reports of al Qaeda and other extremist prisoners breaking loose from government facilities.
“The White House was clearly blindsided and unprepared for the speed of Afghanistan’s collapse. Even Biden allies will not try to claim this as a job well done or say this is what they had planned. After all, nobody would have planned for a last-minute evacuation that was just thrown together out of necessity,” said Brian Klaas, a political analyst and expert on democracies who now teaches at University College London.
For months, Biden’s advisers had been downplaying the likely political impact of the U.S. exit, pointing to polls showing that voters were tired of war and just wanted to bring the troops home. And they noted that it was Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, who approved the peace agreement with the Taliban in his final year in office.
It’s the execution of the withdrawal policy, however, that’s under assault — a particular failure given it happened under a president who since the presidential primary boasted he stood out from the pack because of his four decades serving on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee and his time on the global stage as vice president.
“Whether the policy was right or wrong,” Klaas said, “the execution was clearly botched.”
That sentiment was echoed by Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), a Marine who served four tours in Iraq. “The time to debate whether we stay in Afghanistan has passed, but there is still time to debate how we manage our retreat,” Moulton said in a lengthy statement Sunday. “For months, I have been calling on the Administration to evacuate our allies immediately,” he continued. “The fact that, at this hour, we have not even secured the civilian half of the Kabul airport is testament to our moral and operational failure.”
The end of America’s longest war was supposed to happen quietly. But the chaotic American departure from Kabul suggests that Biden will forever own what is undoubtedly a humiliating coda for a doomed nation-building effort that began shortly after 9/11 and will end shortly before the 20-year anniversary of that tragedy.
Perhaps the most damning moment for Biden were his own words at a July 8 news conference, when he explicitly declared there would be no parallels between the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the fall of Saigon, when military helicopters took part in an urgent evacuation in the final days of the Vietnam War.
“There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy,” Biden said then. “It is not at all comparable.”
The whole episode hit home for Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) a Vietnamese refugee whose parents escaped the war-torn country by boat when she was an infant. Murphy said her heart breaks for those battling to leave Afghanistan and expressed disappointment in how the U.S. was departing.
“I also worked at the Department of Defense, I know what a planned drawdown looks like. I know what an orderly departure looks like. I’m disappointed that this is the way in which we are withdrawing,” Murphy said in an interview Sunday. Murphy participated in lawmakers’ call with Blinken, Austin and Milley, observing, “I think Gen. Milley’s silence on the White House call when questioned about the ‘how’ is a reflection of, he gave his best military advice and it wasn’t heeded by the politicians.”
The White House on Sunday said little as the crisis unfolded on live TV. It did relay that Biden in the morning met with Vice President Kamala Harris and his national security team in a video conference. Underscoring the sense that the U.S. was caught by surprise, the White House then released a photo of Biden on his retreat at Camp David, staring pensively at officials on a monitor, surrounded by empty seats.
Biden plans to remain at Camp David on Monday, according to his White House schedule.
Biden issued a lengthy statement on Saturday, before Kabul fell, laying out five points of action in response to the rapid takeover, which included communicating to Taliban representatives that the U.S. would swiftly retaliate to any acts that put U.S. personnel at risk.
Biden laid part of the blame for Afghanistan’s collapse on the Trump administration, saying he had inherited a situation where troops had been drawn down to just 2,500. The president also stressed that he didn’t want to pass on this “forever war” to a fifth president.
“The question is, did the Biden’s administration execute in the best way possible, given the circumstances they were given?” Murphy asked. “I think that question is for the history books.”
A man digs with a stone through the rubble of a house destroyed by the earthquake in Les Cayes, Haiti, on Sunday.
Joseph Odelyn/AP
hide caption
toggle caption
Joseph Odelyn/AP
A man digs with a stone through the rubble of a house destroyed by the earthquake in Les Cayes, Haiti, on Sunday.
Joseph Odelyn/AP
More than 1,200 people are confirmed dead after the massive earthquake that struck Haiti on Saturday. But as rescue crews dig through the rubble of countless flattened buildings, many fear the actual death toll will be much higher.
As of Sunday night, the official toll stands at 1,297 dead and 5,700 injured. The 7.2-magnitude quake damaged every kind of building, including schools, hospitals, churches and prisons. Thousands of houses have been destroyed. And the poor island nation is bracing for another battering, as Tropical Depression Grace threatens to bring heavy rains and potential mudslides on Monday.
The devastation is hampering delivery of aid
“It’s devastation throughout the region,” Margaret Lubin, Haiti’s country representative for the aid organization CORE, told NPR’s Weekend Edition. Many people are homeless.
“Hospitals are totally overwhelmed,” Lubin said. “We are in need of doctors, of medicine. And the aid needs to get to the remote areas. The roads are blocked. So, there’s a lot, a lot, a lot to do.”
Several humanitarian aid organizations have sent teams to Haiti to assess the situation. In the Nippes community of L’Asile, about half of all homes have been destroyed, said Mercy Corps communications director Lynn Hector. Major markets in the area have collapsed, leaving people without much needed supplies, she said. Damaged roads and collapsed bridges have also made it difficult to bring in supplies.
“Everywhere is agony,” said program manager Allen Joseph, who is on the ground in Nippes. “Many, many people are without homes anymore. People everywhere we went were crying, worried. Moving around is very difficult.”
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in America are supporting search and rescue operations, as well as assisting with first aid and shelter. Priorities also include guaranteeing access to water and sanitation, while also keeping people safe from COVID-19, the group said.
Aid organizations have warned that the death toll is likely to increase. “The damage is enormous and people are working with all their might to get as many people as possible out of the rubble,” the Netherlands Red Cross said earlier on Sunday. “The misery is not over yet.”
At the request of the Haitian government, the U.S. has sent a 65-person urban search and rescue team to assist in search operations, said USAID administrations Samantha Power. That team joins a U.S. earthquake disaster response team already on the ground. Several Latin American countries say they’re also preparing to send humanitarian aid to Haiti.
Individuals are trying to help as well. Richard Hervé Fourcand, a former Haitian senator, has rented a private airplane to ferry the injured from Les Cayes to Port-au-Prince. “I have 30 people in serious condition waiting for me,” he told The New York Times. “But I only have seven seats.”
And tennis star Naomi Osaka has vowed to donate any tournament prize money she might win this week to Haitian relief efforts.
A Tropical Depression could post a new threat
In an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America, Haiti’s ambassador to the U.S., Bocchit Edmond, said authorities are still trying to figure out exactly how bad the devastation is. Their top priority is getting medical attention and shelter for people who have been hurt or displaced, he said.
Edmond is also concerned that the weather will complicate relief efforts. Tropical Depression Grace, currently wending its way through the Caribbean, could bring heavy rains and flooding on Monday as it hits Haiti, potentially triggering mudslides. Many areas could see 4 to 8 inches of rain, with isolated spots of 15 inches across the south of the country, the National Hurricane Center said.
“Hopefully Grace will be graceful enough to spare us,” Edmond said.
That’s what Ford faced on the evening of April 28, 1975, and it is history repeating itself now. After 20 years of U.S. involvement, the Taliban entered the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Sunday morning, as the United States scrambled to evacuate embassy staff and accelerate the rescue and relocation of Afghans who aided the U.S. military. Helicopters began landing at the U.S. Embassy early Sunday, and armored diplomatic vehicles were seen leaving the area around the compound, the Associated Press reported. Smoke rose from the embassy’s roof as diplomats destroyed documents to keep them from falling into the Taliban’s hands, anonymous U.S. military officials told the AP.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Taliban swept into Afghanistan’s capital Sunday after the government collapsed and the embattled president joined an exodus of his fellow citizens and foreigners, signaling the end of a costly two-decade U.S. campaign to remake the country.
Heavily armed Taliban fighters fanned out across the capital, and several entered Kabul’s abandoned presidential palace. Suhail Shaheen, a Taliban spokesman and negotiator, told The Associated Press that the militants would hold talks in the coming days aimed at forming an “open, inclusive Islamic government.”
Earlier, a Taliban official said the group would announce from the palace the restoration of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the formal name of the country under Taliban rule before the militants were ousted by U.S.-led forces in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, which were orchestrated by al-Qaida while it was being sheltered by the Taliban. But that plan appeared to be on hold.
Kabul was gripped by panic. Helicopters raced overhead throughout the day to evacuate personnel from the U.S. Embassy. Smoke rose near the compound as staff destroyed important documents, and the American flag was lowered. Several other Western missions also prepared to pull their people out.
Though the Taliban had promised a peaceful transition, the U.S. Embassy suspended operations and warned Americans late in the day to shelter in place and not try to get to the airport.
Commercial flights were suspended after sporadic gunfire erupted at the Kabul airport, according to two senior U.S. military officials. Evacuations continued on military flights, but the halt to commercial traffic closed off one of the last routes available for fleeing Afghans.
Dozens of nations called on all parties involved to respect and facilitate the departure of foreigners and Afghans who wish to leave.
More than 60 nations released the joint statement distributed by the U.S. State Department late Sunday night Washington time. The statement says that those in power and authority across Afghanistan “bear responsibility — and accountability — for the protection of human life and property, and for the immediate restoration of security and civil order.”
The nations’ statement also says that roads, airports and border crossings must remain open, and that calm must be maintained.
Many people watched in disbelief as helicopters landed in the U.S. Embassy compound to take diplomats to a new outpost at the airport. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken rejected comparisons to the U.S. pullout from Vietnam.
“This is manifestly not Saigon,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”
The American ambassador was among those evacuated, officials said. He was asking to return to the embassy, but it was not clear if he would be allowed to. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing operations.
As the insurgents closed in, President Ashraf Ghani flew out of the country.
“The former president of Afghanistan left Afghanistan, leaving the country in this difficult situation,” said Abdullah Abdullah, the head of the Afghan National Reconciliation Council and a longtime rival of Ghani. “God should hold him accountable.”
Ghani later posted on Facebook that he left to avert bloodshed in the capital, without saying where he had gone.
As night fell, Taliban fighters deployed across Kabul, taking over abandoned police posts and pledging to maintain law and order during the transition. Residents reported looting in parts of the city, including in the upscale diplomatic district, and messages circulating on social media advised people to stay inside and lock their gates.
In a stunning rout, the Taliban seized nearly all of Afghanistan in just over a week, despite the billions of dollars spent by the U.S. and NATO over nearly 20 years to build up Afghan security forces. Just days earlier, an American military assessment estimated that the capital would not come under insurgent pressure for a month.
The fall of Kabul marks the final chapter of America’s longest war, which began after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. A U.S.-led invasion dislodged the Taliban and beat them back, but America lost focus on the conflict in the chaos of the Iraq war.
For years, the U.S. sought an exit from Afghanistan. Then-President Donald Trump signed a deal with the Taliban in February 2020 that limited direct military action against the insurgents. That allowed the fighters to gather strength and move quickly to seize key areas when President Joe Biden announced his plans to withdraw all American forces by the end of this month.
After the insurgents entered Kabul, Taliban negotiators discussed a transfer of power, said an Afghan official. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of the closed-door negotiations, described them as “tense.”
It remained unclear when that transfer would take place and who among the Taliban was negotiating. The negotiators on the government side included former President Hamid Karzai, leader of Hizb-e-Islami political and paramilitary group Gulbudin Hekmatyar, and Abdullah, who has been a vocal critic of Ghani.
Karzai himself appeared in a video posted online, his three young daughters around him, saying he remained in Kabul.
“We are trying to solve the issue of Afghanistan with the Taliban leadership peacefully,” he said.
Afghanistan’s acting defense minister, Bismillah Khan Mohammadi, did not hold back his criticism of the fleeing president.
“They tied our hands from behind and sold the country,” he wrote on Twitter. “Curse Ghani and his gang.”
The Taliban earlier insisted that their fighters would not enter people’s homes or interfere with businesses and said they would offer “amnesty” to those who worked with the Afghan government or foreign forces.
But there have been reports of revenge killings and other brutal tactics in areas of the country the Taliban have seized in recent days. Reports of gunfire at the airport raised the specter of more violence. One female journalist, weeping, sent voice messages to colleagues after armed men entered her apartment building and banged on her door.
“What should I do? Should I call the police or Taliban?” Getee Azami cried. It wasn’t clear what happened to her after that.
An Afghan university student described feeling betrayed as she watched the evacuation of the U.S. Embassy.
“You failed the younger generation of Afghanistan,” said Aisha Khurram, 22, who is now unsure of whether she will be able to graduate in two months. She said her generation was “hoping to build the country with their own hands. They put blood, efforts and sweat into whatever we had right now.”
Sunday began with the Taliban seizing Jalalabad, the last major city besides the capital not in their hands. Afghan officials said the militants also took the capitals of Maidan Wardak, Khost, Kapisa and Parwan provinces, as well as the country’s last government-held border post.
Later, Afghan forces at Bagram Air Base, home to a prison housing 5,000 inmates, surrendered to the Taliban, according to Bagram district chief Darwaish Raufi. The prison at the former U.S. base held both Taliban and Islamic State group fighters.
___
Akhgar and Faiez reported from Istanbul and Gambrell from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writers Kathy Gannon in Guelph, Canada; Joseph Krauss in Jerusalem; Matthew Lee in Washington; James LaPorta in Boca Raton, Florida; Aya Batrawy in Dubai; and Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.
This is a widget area - If you go to "Appearance" in your WP-Admin you can change the content of this box in "Widgets", or you can remove this box completely under "Theme Options"
