WASHINGTON (AP) — In a recent closed-door meeting with leaders of the agency’s counterterrorism center, the CIA’s No. 2 official made clear that fighting al-Qaida and other extremist groups would remain a priority — but that the agency’s money and resources would be increasingly shifted to focusing on China.

One year after ending the war in Afghanistan, President Joe Biden and top national security officials speak less about counterterrorism and more about the political, economic and military threats posed by China as well as Russia. There’s been a quiet pivot within intelligence agencies, which are moving hundreds of officers to China-focused positions, including some who were previously working on terrorism.

Intelligence officials stress that the counterterrorism fight is hardly being ignored. Just a week ago, it was revealed that a CIA drone attack killed al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri in Kabul. But days later, China staged large-scale military exercises and threatened to cut off contacts with the U.S. over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. It underscored the message CIA deputy director David Cohen had delivered at that meeting weeks ago: The agency’s top priority is trying to understand and counter Beijing.

The U.S. has long been alarmed by China’s growing political and economic ambitions. China has tried to influence foreign elections, mounted campaigns of cyber and corporate espionage, and detained millions of minority Uyghurs in camps. Some experts also think Beijing will in coming years try to seize the self-ruled democratic island of Taiwan by force.

Intelligence officials have said they need more insights on China, including after being unable to definitively pinpoint the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic. Beijing has been accused of withholding information about the origins of the virus.

And the war in Ukraine has underscored Russia’s importance as a target. The U.S. used declassified information to expose Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war plans before the invasion and rally diplomatic support for Kyiv.

Supporters of the Biden administration approach note that the fact the U.S. was able to track and kill al-Zawahri is evidence of its capabilities to target threats in Afghanistan from abroad. Critics say the fact that al-Zawahri was living in Kabul, under the apparent protection of the Taliban, suggests there’s a resurgence of extremist groups that America is ill-equipped to counter.

The shift in priorities is supported by many former intelligence officers and lawmakers from both parties who say it’s overdue. That includes people who served in Afghanistan and other missions against al-Qaida and other terrorist groups.

Rep. Jason Crow, a former Army Ranger who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, said he believed the U.S. had been overly focused on counterterrorism over the last several years.

“A far greater existential threat is Russia and China,” said Crow, a Colorado Democrat who serves on the House Intelligence and Armed Services committees. Terrorist groups, he said, “will not destroy the American way of life … the way China can.”

CIA spokesperson Tammy Thorp noted that terrorism “remains a very real challenge.”

“Even as crises such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and strategic challenges such as that posed by the People’s Republic of China demand our attention, CIA will continue to aggressively track terrorist threats globally and work with partners to counter them,” Thorp said.

Congress has pushed the CIA and other intelligence agencies to make China a top priority, according to several people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters. Pushing resources toward China has required cuts elsewhere, including in counterterrorism. Specific figures were unavailable because intelligence budgets are classified.

In particular, lawmakers want more information about China’s development in advanced technologies. Under President Xi Jinping, China has committed trillions of dollars in investment on quantum science, artificial intelligence and other technologies that are likely to disrupt how future wars are fought and economies are structured.

As part of the shift, congressional committees are trying to better track how intelligence agencies spend their funding on China, seeking more detail about how specific programs contribute to that mission, one person familiar with the matter said.

“We are late, but it’s good that we’re finally changing our focus into that region,” said Rep. Chris Stewart, a Utah Republican who serves on the House Intelligence Committee. “That means in people, in resources, in military assets, and in diplomacy.”

The CIA last year announced it would create two new “mission centers” — one on China, one on emerging technologies — to centralize and improve intelligence collection on those issues. The CIA is also trying to recruit more Chinese speakers and reduce wait times on security clearances to hire new people faster.

Inside the agency, many officers are learning Chinese and moving into new roles focused on China, though not all of those jobs require language training, people familiar with the matter said.

Officials note that intelligence officers are trained to adapt to new challenges and that many were moved more quickly into counterterrorism roles after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Advances from counterterrorism work — including better use of data and different sources of intelligence to build networks and identify targets — are also useful in countering Russia and China, former officers said.

“It’s the analytics and targeting machine that has become extraordinary,” said Douglas Wise, a former CIA senior officer who was deputy chief of operations at the counterterrorism center.

The CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, renamed the Counterterrorism Mission Center in a 2015 reorganization, remains a point of pride for many people who credit its work for keeping Americans safe from terrorism after Sept. 11. CIA officers landed in Afghanistan on Sept. 26, 2001, and were part of operations to displace the Taliban and find and kill leaders of al-Qaida including Osama bin Laden.

And 13 years after a double agent tricked officers pursuing al-Zawahri and blew himself up, killing seven agency employees, the CIA killed him in a strike with no reported civilian casualties.

The CIA was also involved in some of the darkest moments of the fight against terrorism. It operated secret “black site” jails to hold terrorism suspects, some wrongly, and was found by a Senate investigation to have used interrogation methods that amounted to torture. Elite Afghan special operations units trained by the CIA were also accused of killing civilians and violating international law.

There’s long been a debate over whether counterterrorism pulled intelligence agencies too far away from traditional spying and whether some of the CIA’s work in targeting terrorists should instead be done by special forces under the military.

Marc Polymeropoulos is a retired CIA operations officer and former base chief in Afghanistan. He said he supports a greater focus on China and Russia but added, “There’s no reason to diminish what we had to do.”

“This notion that somehow all the CT work we did, somehow that was wrong, that we took our eye of the ball — just remember on Sept. 12 what everyone was feeling,” he said.

Re-orienting the agencies toward more of a focus on China and Russia will ultimately take years and require both patience and recognition that the agency’s culture will take time to change, Wise said.

“For decades, we have been doing counterterrorism,” Wise said. “We’ve got to have a rational plan to make this adaptation, which doesn’t take so long that our enemies can exploit a glacial process.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is holding out the CIA operation that killed al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri as a monumental strike against the global terror network responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks of 2001. But there’s a downside, too.

The drone strike also is putting into stark relief the mounting evidence that after 20 years of America’s military presence — and then sudden departure — Afghanistan has once again become an active staging ground for Islamic terror groups looking to attack the West.

The operation, carried out over the weekend after at least six months spent monitoring movements by al-Zawahri and his family, came just weeks before the one-year anniversary of the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from the country.

The Biden administration is making the case that the operation shows Americans at home and allies abroad that the United States hasn’t lost focus — or the ability to strike terrorists in the region — and validates its decision to end two decades of fighting in Afghanistan with its withdrawal.

Announcing the strike from the White House, President Joe Biden said Monday night that “justice” had been exacted on a leader who in recent weeks had recorded videos calling for his followers to attack the United States and allies. And the White House on Tuesday framed the operation as an enormous counterterrorism win.

“The president has made good on his word when we left,” National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on NBC’s “Today” show. “After 20 years of war to keep this country safe, he said we would be able to continue to target and take out terrorists in Afghanistan without troops on the ground.”

But as details of the operation continue to emerge, the administration has also revealed troubling evidence of al-Qaida’s presence and of the Taliban once again offering refuge to the group that was behind the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

White House officials believe that senior members of the Haqqani Network, an Islamist terror group with strong ties to the Taliban, were aware that al-Zawahri was in Kabul. Sullivan said that while al-Zawahri wasn’t involved in day-to-day planning at the time of his killing, he continued to play an active role in directing al-Qaida and posed “a severe threat” against the U.S. and American citizens.

On Tuesday, the State Department updated its Worldwide Caution, warning U.S. citizens traveling abroad that “there is a higher potential for anti-American violence given the death of Ayman al-Zawahri.”

Concerns about al-Qaida efforts to regroup inside Taliban-controlled Afghanistan are hardly new.

Before the strike, U.S. military officials, including Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had said al-Qaida was trying to reconstitute in Afghanistan, where it faces limited threats from the now-ruling Taliban. Military leaders have warned that the group still aspired to attack the U.S.

Al-Qaida leadership has reportedly played an advisory role since the Taliban returned to power in the leadup up to the U.S. withdrawal, according to a U.N. Security Council report last month.

The U.N. report also noted that ISIS-K — the group that carried out a massive attack that killed 13 U.S. troops and dozens of Afghans near the Kabul International Airport just days before the U.S. completed its withdrawal last year — has become increasingly active in northern and eastern Afghanistan. That’s a worry for the West though ISIS-K and the Taliban espouse different ideologies and interests, with ISIS-K carrying out a bloody insurgency against the Taliban and religious minorities across Afghanistan.

“Zawahri’s presence in post-withdrawal Afghanistan suggests that, as feared, the Taliban is once more granting safe haven to the leaders of al-Qaida – a group with which it has never broken,” said Nathan Sales, ambassador-at-large and coordinator for counterterrorism during the Trump administration who is now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

Frank McKenzie, the retired Marine general who until earlier this year was the top American military officer in the Middle East, said the U.S. has noted an effort by al-Qaida to restore training camps in Afghanistan.

“I see nothing happening in Afghanistan now that tells me that the Taliban are determined to prevent that from happening,” he said in an interview.

Since the American troop withdrawal, U.S. military leaders have said America’s ability to monitor and strike a target in the country would be difficult but not impossible.

The strike on Zawahri proved both, said McKenzie, who is now executive director of the Global and National Security Institute at the University of South Florida.

But he cautioned not to draw broad conclusions from this one drone strike.

“This was a unique circumstance,” he said. “You had a target that didn’t move, and they had the opportunity to get a good look at pattern of life. That’s not always going to be the case. In fact, typically, that is not the case.”

That al-Zawahri was living in a Kabul neighborhood and not in rural Afghanistan as previously believed, “tells you that he got really comfortable” under the protection of the Taliban, said Colin Clarke, director of research at The Soufan Group, a global intelligence and security firm.

“These entities work hand in glove,” Clarke said of the Taliban and al-Qaida.

The Taliban had promised in the 2020 Doha Agreement on the terms of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan that they would not harbor al-Qaida members or those seeking to attack the U.S.

The Taliban were quick to condemn the U.S. strike as a “a clear violation of international principles and the Doha Agreement,” though they did not acknowledge that al-Zawahri was killed. The U.S. gave no forewarning to the Taliban government, which the United States does not recognize, that it was carrying out the operation.

“Such actions are a repetition of the failed experiences of the past 20 years and are against the interests of the United States of America, Afghanistan, and the region,” the Taliban statement said.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby declined to comment on how, or if, the U.S. would hold the Taliban responsible for sheltering al-Zawahri.

“The Taliban have a choice now,” Kirby said. “And that is they can comply with their agreement under the Doha agreement … or they can choose to be going down a different path. And if they go down a different path, it’s going to lead to consequences not just from the United States but from the international community.”

Kirby said the U.S. had already engaged with the Taliban about al-Zawahri’s presence following Sunday’s strike.

The Taliban remain sanctioned by the U.S. government for their role harboring al-Qaida before the 9/11 attacks. After the collapse of the U.S.-backed government in Kabul last summer, the Biden administration froze billions of dollars in assets belonging to Afghanistan’s central bank to prevent the assets from falling under Taliban control. Some of that money has since been freed for humanitarian aid to address the country’s dire hunger crisis.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell was quick to congratulate Biden on the operation, but also made the case that it “further indicates that Afghanistan is again becoming a major thicket of terrorist activity following the president’s decision to withdraw U.S. forces.”

“Killing al-Zawahri is a success, but the underlying resurgence of al-Qaida terrorists into Afghanistan is a growing threat that was foreseeable and avoidable,” McConnell said. “The administration needs a comprehensive plan to rebuild our capacity to combat it.”

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LONDON (AP) — Britain’s Foreign Office abandoned many of the nation’s allies in Afghanistan and left them to the mercy of the Taliban during the fall of the capital, Kabul, because of a dysfunctional and arbitrary evacuation effort, a whistleblower alleged Tuesday.

In devastating evidence to a parliamentary committee, Raphael Marshall said thousands of pleas for help via email were unread between Aug. 21 and Aug. 25. The former Foreign Office employee estimated that only 5% of Afghan nationals who applied to flee under one U.K. program received help. He said that at one point, he was the only person monitoring the inbox.

“There were usually over 5,000 unread emails in the inbox at any given moment, including many unread emails dating from early in August,” he wrote to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, which is investigating Britain’s chaotic departure from Afghanistan. “These emails were desperate and urgent. I was struck by many titles including phrases such as ‘please save my children’.”

Marshall said some of those left behind had been killed by the Taliban.

One of Marshall’s most explosive allegations is a claim that British officials spent time and energy arranging the evacuation of almost 200 dogs and cats from a Kabul animal shelter run by Nowzad, a charity founded by former Royal Marine Pen Farthing.

Marshall claimed Foreign Office staff had “received an instruction from the Prime Minister to use considerable capacity to transport Nowzad’s animals.” He claimed British soldiers were put at risk to get the animals out of Kabul.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s spokesman, Max Blain, said the allegation was “entirely untrue” and neither Johnson nor his wife Carrie, an animal-welfare advocate, had been involved in helping the animals leave.

He said Farthing and his animals left Afghanistan on a privately chartered plane which was given clearance by British officials.

“We are confident that at no point clearance for that charter plane interrupted our capability to evacuate people,” Blain said.

As the Taliban took power in August, the United States, the U.K. and other countries rushed to evacuate Afghans who had worked with Western forces and others at risk of violent reprisals.

Britain managed to airlift 15,000 people out of the country in two weeks, and the government says it has since helped more than 3,000 others leave Afghanistan.

But an Afghan Resettlement Scheme announced by the government in August with the goal of bringing another 20,000 people to Britain has yet to get underway.

Former Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who was moved from the Foreign Office to become Justice Secretary after the crisis, defended his actions.

“Some of the criticism seems rather dislocated from the facts on the ground, the operational pressures that with the takeover of the Taliban, unexpected around the world,” he told the BBC. “I do think that not enough recognition has been given to quite how difficult it was.”

Tom Tugendhat, a Conservative lawmaker who heads the foreign affairs committee, said Marshall’s testimony “raises serious questions about the leadership of the Foreign Office.” The committee is due to quiz senior Foreign Office civil servants later Tuesday.

The Taliban stormed across Afghanistan in late summer, capturing all major cities in a matter of days, as Afghan security forces trained and equipped by the U.S. and its allies melted away. The Taliban took over Kabul on Aug. 15.

Tens of thousands of Afghans attempted to leave by air or land, fearing the country could descend into chaos or that the Taliban would reimpose the harsh interpretation of Islamic law that they relied on when they ran Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. At the time, women had to wear the all-encompassing burqa and be accompanied by a male relative whenever they went outside. The Taliban banned music, cut off the hands of thieves and stoned adulterers.

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“For months, my staff and I have joined an unprecedented community-wide effort to bring this family and these kids home,” Issa said in a statement. “Today, we can say that they are for certain on their way back to us.

“There are so many people to thank for making this possible,” he said. The father of the family — who Issa’s office said must remain anonymous due to the danger to other relatives still in Afghanistan — was home in San Diego County when Kabul fell to the Taliban. The mother and their four children were forced into hiding and moved from several safehouses as they eluded the Taliban for several months.

“I’m so very thankful to Congressman Issa and his staff who did so much to help bring my family home,” the family’s father said in a statement released by Issa’s office. “We cannot wait to all be together again.” On Aug. 31, the U.S. military officially withdrew from Afghanistan, ending a 20-year conflict that started shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Issa was first contacted by David Miyashiro, the superintendent of the Cajon Valley Union School District, in August, and was told several families that included schoolchildren were unable to escape Afghanistan.

“From the day David first called me, our lives were changed, and we embarked on a daily mission to rescue these families,” Issa said. “David and the team he brought together has led from the start and tirelessly worked to bring everyone home.”

Issa’s office has helped evacuate more than 40 members of his congressional district from Afghanistan since the Taliban regained power.

“We are very appreciative of Congressman Issa and his staff for their support throughout this process,” said Miyashiro.

In October, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a plan for Afghan refugee housing and resettlement.

Supporting a proposal by Supervisor Joel Anderson, the board also directed the county to work with Congress to utilize frozen Taliban assets to pay for Afghan refugee resettlement activities. The U.S. Treasury Department froze the majority of $9.5 billion in Afghanistan government assets.

According to Anderson’s office, an estimated 58,000 Afghans are expected to arrive in the U.S., many of whom were forced to leave their homes without their possessions.

While the exact number of Afghans resettling in California is unknown, it is likely that they will settle in communities where they have friends and families, according to Anderson’s office.

While the county doesn’t have a direct role in determining how many Afghan refugees will resettle in the county,

Anderson said it is critical to be ready — through its Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs — to handle the incoming refugees.

Board chairman Nathan Fletcher, a Marine who was deployed to Iraq in 2004, said it was important for the U.S. government to keep its word to the Afghans who helped U.S. forces for 20 years.

He added that before they step on U.S. soil, Afghans are vetted by numerous U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and later screened again by U.S. Customs officials.

Issa said his office continued to work.

“Even as we know these missing schoolchildren are coming home, we are reminded that there are so many more — perhaps several hundred more

—

from California that are still trapped in Afghanistan,” said Issa. “Our work is not yet close to complete.”

CNS | Contributed

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The fighting in Lebanon had been going on for years. I arrived in Beirut in early December 1983. As a newly assigned member of the Marine Security Guard Detachment at the U.S. Embassy, I was motivated to be there. The embassy detachment was small but was as technically and tactically proficient as any unit in the Corps. Many of the detachment Marines had served in other embassies and diplomatic missions. Terrorist car bombings were practically an everyday occurrence, as were sporadic daily gun battles and artillery fire. It seemed the factions were all fighting each other, the Lebanese Army was fighting the factions, and on the edges of this chaos were the Iranians and Syrians firing on the Marines. The marines were on a “Peacekeeping Mission” and were stuck in the middle. We were augmented outside the embassy by “Foxtrot Co. 2nd Bn 8th Marines and had one mission; To protect the embassy personnel; to safeguard classified materials, and to protect government property.

There are similar circumstances between the evacuation in Beirut 1984 and the one recently conducted in Afghanistan 2021: terrorism, humanitarian issues, warring factions fighting each other, partisan congressional decisions, lack of diplomatic progress, and politicians who ignore the intelligence reports from the operators in the field.

The first time I ever heard the rule of the 7 P’s was in the Marine Corps, and I believe it was taught to me by Gunnery Sergeant Randy Sears. Sears explained, that “Regardless of the task if it required planning, the 7 Ps were applicable. “Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance”! In February 1984, the fighting in Lebanon was so severe that decision-makers in Washington D.C. decided to close the American Embassy. And simultaneously, they decided to build a new U.S. embassy annex in East Beirut. Unlike Afghanistan, we did not have 20 years to develop a contingency plan. It seemed to be an almost instant decision! A rapid, shoot from the hip type plan, which would require applying the 7 P’s.

The process to evacuate was tedious. Perimeters were set and entryways were established with barricades covered in concertina and razor wire. There was no climbing over or diverting the entry process. The implementation was organized and peaceful, largely because those wishing to do us harm did not know we were leaving. The rules were simple. Evacuees needed proper identification and were allowed two suitcases each. The explosive detection canines would sniff the individual and their suitcases, before coming inside the perimeter checkpoint. Once inside, the individuals and their suitcases were searched for weapons or contraband. Once cleared, the evacuees with their suitcases were escorted to a staging point to await the helicopters for transport. The evacuees were moved to U.S. naval vessels somewhere out in the Mediterranean.

The first to evacuate were the State Department’s nonessential personnel and their families. These were clerks, advisors, political attaches, agriculture advisors, consulate officers, and others. Practically everyone except the ambassador, Deputy chief of mission, and the State Department Regional Security Officer (RSO) and his security personnel. Next, American civilians and immigrant “green card” holders were evacuated. The next group to evacuate were those Lebanese citizens who had worked at the embassy or perhaps were in the process of applying for an immigrant visa. There were other diplomats from Japan, South Korea, and others. The British and Italians were also evacuating. The fighting in war-torn Beirut had spread like today’s pandemic. The time to evacuate had come.

“With only a few hours’ notice, over 400 Americans were evacuated without incident… According to the flight manifests, there were 410 Americans, Lebanese, and Diplomats from Egypt, Japan, and South Korea, airlifted out of West Beirut via marine helicopters. Another group of 110 American citizens and others from “friendly nations” left by ship from Jounieh Harbor, North of East Beirut.” — The New York Times

The Beirut evacuation was substantially smaller in numbers compared to Afghanistan. However, the success of the Beirut evacuation was attributed to successfully applying the 7 P’s. A stark contrast to the evacuation from Afghanistan! In Beirut, there were no prior media reporting our departure, and due to this, chaos and panic did not occur and therefore allowed time for the State Department to reach out to our allies in and around Beirut, to include them in the evacuation. The most valuable lesson in comparison to this point? The enemy did not know what our plans were. “Loose lips do sink ships!”

In 2001, when the United States went into Afghanistan, the U.S. solicited help from the local nationals to assist us in our operations as interpreters and translators. The Afghans who stepped up to help did so at great personal risk of death from the Taliban. In appreciation for their help, the U.S. government promised assistance in obtaining Special Immigrant Visas (SIV), to migrate to the United States.

To all appearances, the Afghanistan evacuation seemed to be a rolling snowball of chaos and mismanagement. The Beirut evacuation had an organized process to prioritize the evacuees and maintained identifying passenger manifests. This did not appear to be the case in the Afghanistan evacuation. In Afghanistan, the Biden administration ordered the evacuation of military personnel and Afghan refugees first, ahead of American citizens and ahead of the Afghans who helped us, despite the promises from our government. The Biden administration failed on so many levels in timely planning and execution. They began flying refugees who were unvetted and undocumented, many of whom did not stand up and assist us with the war effort. But when the collapse of the elected Afghan government was imminent and the takeover by the Taliban inevitable, they wanted to be the first ones out. It is obvious there was little to no planning in the Afghanistan evacuation until the last minute. President Biden and top military personnel knew the evacuation would be leaving Americans behind.

The decisions made to announce our departure created media buzz and told the enemy what our plans were. By all military sense, this is perhaps the biggest breach of Operation Security (OPSEC) there is. The decision to vacate and surrender Bagram Air Base eliminated our ability to maintain a secure operating base for any operation, including the final evacuation. Strategically, this eliminated an operating airbase with a decent proximity to the entire region. This also provided access to stockpiles of weapons, equipment, aircraft, and vehicles to the Taliban. Finally, to recognize the hostile overthrow of the Afghan Government by the Taliban, and to negotiate with, let alone trust, the Taliban, reveals the absolute worst decision-making from the United States government and our military. The decisions made by President Biden and his administration, and the chaos and panic it created, provided the perfect cover and opportunity for a terrorist to detonate a bomb at the Kabul Airport, killing thirteen American military personnel and hundreds of civilians, and wounding many others, with zero accountability from the decision-makers. But then again, this is nothing new.

Following the successful evacuations from West Beirut, U.S. Ambassador Reginald Bartholomew’s insistence to open the Annex before the completion of the facility, (i.e., unfinished security safeguards being in place), provided an opportunity for a Muslim extremist to drive a car bomb into the Annex, killing dozens of people and wounding many others. Again, like the bad decisions that fed the war in Afghanistan for twenty years, there has been no accountability for the deadly decisions made. In my opinion, the Beirut evacuation was well thought out, orderly, and successful. Quite the contrary to the evacuation of Afghanistan. Of my lessons learned, I would conclude that “Good leaders and good planning are crucial.” It is going to be dangerous times for the Americans and our allies left behind in Afghanistan. All things considered, I am thankful the War on Terror seems to be coming to an end in Afghanistan; Or has it?

Larry Gill | Columnist

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Americans trying to evacuate hundreds of Afghans and American citizens — including one Afghan who worked as a U.S. military translator and says he is anticipating his beheading by the Taliban — pleaded for action from the Biden administration to get the would-be evacuees aboard charter flights that are standing by to fly them from Afghanistan.

“Unfortunately we are left behind now,” the former translator said quietly in the pre-dawn darkness Wednesday in Afghanistan. “No one heard our voice.”

The man, whose identity The Associated Press withheld for his security, said he was running out of money to keep his family housed in a hotel in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif, after waiting a week for Taliban permission for the chartered evacuation flights to leave the airport there.

U.S. Army veterans working to help the man, an interpreter for U.S. forces for 15 years, called the effort more grinding than their months of deployment in Afghanistan. They tried and failed to get their old interpreter on the earlier airlifts that ended with the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan Aug. 30.

“I hope we can help them out, and get them out of this mess,” said a retired Army colonel, Thomas McGrath, one of the veterans trying to help his former interpreter.

Hundreds of vulnerable Afghans are waiting for permission from Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers to board prearranged charter flights standing by at the airport in Mazar-e-Sharif.

The group includes dozens of American citizens and green card holders and their families, the Afghans and their American advocates say.

“We think we are in some kind of jail,” said one Afghan woman among the would-be evacuees gathered at one large hotel in Mazar-e-Sharif.

She described the Americans and green-card holders in their group as elderly parents of Afghan-American citizens in the United States.

Taliban leaders, who named a new Cabinet Tuesday in the wake of their lightning takeover of most of the country last month, say they will allow people with proper documents to leave the country. Taliban officials insist they are currently going through the manifests, and passenger documents, for the charter flights at Mazar-e-Sharif.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday the U.S. was working with the Taliban to resolve the standoff over the charter flights.

He rejected an assertion from a Republican lawmaker, Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, over the weekend that the standoff at Mazar-e-Sharif was turning into a “hostage situation” for American citizens in the group.

“We’ve been assured all American citizens and Afghan citizens with valid travel documents will be allowed to leave,” Blinken said in Doha, Qatar, a major transit point for last month’s frantic U.S. military-led evacuations from Afghanistan.

Later Tuesday, 12 Democratic lawmakers added to the pressure for evacuees, in a letter urging the administration to disclose its plans for getting out all of the hundreds of at-risk people remaining in Afghanistan, and not just American citizens.

“Our staff have been working around the clock responding to urgent pleas from constituents whose families and colleagues are seeking to flee Afghanistan, and they urgently require timely, post-withdrawal guidance to best assist those in need,” Reps. Jerrold Nadler, Zoe Lofgren, Gerald Connolly and nine other lawmakers from President Joe Biden’s party wrote.

Blinken, in Doha, said the Taliban had told U.S. officials that the problem in Mazar-e-Sharif was that passengers with valid travel documents were mixed in with those without the right travel papers.

The Afghan woman contacted at the hotel — an employee of a U.S.-based nonprofit, Ascend, that works with Afghan women and girls — also spoke Tuesday on condition of anonymity for her security. She said those in her group have proper passports and visas, but the Taliban are blocking them from entering the airport.

Like the interpreter, she said she has been waiting for eight days.

At one point last week, alarm spread through the women’s side of her hotel in the city when warnings came that the Taliban were searching the would-be evacuees on the men’s side, and had taken some away.

“I am scared if they split us and not let us leave,” she said. “If we can’t get out of here, something wrong will happen. And I am afraid of that.”

The former U.S. military interpreter, at the hotel with his family of eight children and wife, said he would expect beheading by the Taliban given his work with the U.S. military, and based on what rights groups say are past Taliban attacks on Afghan civilians who have worked with U.S. forces.

“They’ll probably kill him,” McGrath agreed, expressing fear for the man’s children as well.

The interpreter had always told his American comrades that he believed his work with them was in service of his own country, the retired colonel said. “He put a lot on the line by lining up with us,” McGrath said.

An array of Americans — many of them with some past experience in Afghanistan, or other ties — have been working for weeks to try to help evacuate at-risk Afghans. Much of that effort is focused now on the planes in Mazar-e-Sharif.

Some of those Americans pushing for U.S. action said Tuesday they fear the Biden administration will help out American citizens and leave behind green card holders, Afghans who used to work with Americans, and others whose work has left them vulnerable, including journalists, women’s advocates and rights workers.

“The game changed partway through,” said Marina LeGree, the American head of Ascend.

Private organizers of the flights complain the State Department and other U.S. agencies have been slow or outright unresponsive to pleas for help despite assurances that Washington would work with the Taliban and others to get people out.

On Monday, the State Department said it had helped a family of four U.S. citizens escape Afghanistan via a land route.

Alex Plitsas, a representative of a group called Digital Dunkirk, which is serving as an umbrella group for several organizations arranging the private evacuation efforts since the completion of the U.S. military withdrawal, welcomed Blinken’s words.

“Our men and women in uniform and diplomats on the ground in Kabul did a fantastic job” with the military-run evacuation last month, Plitsas said. “Now it’s time to bring the last remaining folks home.”

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Twenty-four hours after the last American C-17 cargo plane roared off from Kabul, Biden spoke to the nation and vigorously defended his decision to end America’s longest war and withdraw all U.S. troops ahead of an Aug. 31 deadline.

“I was not going to extend this forever war,” Biden declared Tuesday from the White House. “And I was not going to extend a forever exit.”

Biden has faced tough questions about the way the U.S. went about leaving Afghanistan — a chaotic evacuation with spasms of violence, including a suicide bombing last week that killed 13 American service members and 169 Afghans.

He is under heavy criticism, particularly from Republicans, for his handling of the evacuation. But he said it was inevitable that the final departure from two decades of war, first negotiated with the Taliban for May 1 by former President Donald Trump, would have been difficult, with likely violence, no matter when it was planned and conducted.

“To those asking for a third decade of war in Afghanistan, I ask, ‘What is the vital national interest?’” Biden said. He added, “I simply do not believe that the safety and security of America is enhanced by continuing to deploy thousands of American troops and spending billions of dollars in Afghanistan.”

Asked after the speech about Biden sounding angry at some criticism, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the president had simply offered his “forceful assessment.”

Biden scoffed at Republicans — and some Democrats — who contend the U.S. would have been better served maintaining a small military footprint in Afghanistan. Before Thursday’s attack, the U.S. military had not suffered a combat casualty since February 2020 — around the time the Trump administration brokered its deal with the Taliban to end the war by May of this year.

Biden said breaking the Trump deal would have restarted a shooting war. He said those who favor remaining at war also fail to recognize the weight of deployment, with a scourge of PTSD, financial struggles, divorce and other problems for U.S. troops.

“When I hear that we could’ve, should’ve continued the so-called low-grade effort in Afghanistan at low risk to our service members, at low cost, I don’t think enough people understand how much we’ve asked of the 1% of this country to put that uniform on,” Biden said.

In addition to all the questions at home, Biden is also adjusting to a new relationship with the Taliban, the Islamist militant group the U.S. toppled after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in America, and that is now once again in power in Afghanistan.

Biden has tasked Secretary of State Antony Blinken to coordinate with international partners to hold the Taliban to their promise of safe passage for Americans and others who want to leave in the days ahead. “We don’t take them by their word alone, but by their actions,” Biden said. “We have leverage to make sure those commitments are met.”

Biden also pushed back against criticism that he fell short of his pledge to get all Americans out of the country ahead of the U.S. military withdrawal. He said many of the Americans left behind are dual citizens, some with deep family roots that are complicating their ability to leave Afghanistan.

“The bottom line: 90% of Americans in Afghanistan who wanted to leave were able to leave,” Biden said. “For those remaining Americans, there is no deadline. We remain committed to get them out, if they want to come out.” Biden repeated his argument that ending the Afghanistan war was a crucial step for recalibrating American foreign policy toward growing challenges posed by China and Russia — and counterterrorism concerns that pose a more potent threat to the U.S.

“There’s nothing China or Russia would rather have, want more in this competition, than the United States to be bogged down another decade in Afghanistan,” he said

In Biden’s view the war could have ended 10 years ago with the U.S. killing of Osama bin Laden, whose al-Qaida extremist network planned and executed the 9/11 plot from an Afghanistan sanctuary. Al-Qaida has been vastly diminished, preventing it thus far from again attacking the United States. The president lamented an estimated $2 trillion of taxpayer money that was spent fighting the war.

“What have we lost as a consequence in terms of opportunities?” Biden asked. Congressional committees, whose interest in the war waned over the years, are expected to hold public hearings on what went wrong in the final months of the U.S. withdrawal.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., on Tuesday described the Biden administration’s handling of the evacuation as “probably the biggest failure in American government on a military stage in my lifetime” and promised that Republicans would press the White House for answers.

Meanwhile, the Senate met briefly Tuesday, with Vice President Kamala Harris presiding over the chamber, to pass by unanimous consent a bill that increases spending for temporary assistance to U.S. citizens and their dependents returning from another country because of illness, war or other crisis. Biden quickly signed the legislation, which raises funding for the program from $1 million to $10 million.

A group of Republican lawmakers gathered on the House floor Tuesday morning and participated in a moment of silence for the 13 service members who were killed in the suicide bomber attack.

They also sought a House vote on legislation from Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., which among other things would require the administration to submit a report on how many Americans remain in Afghanistan as well as the number of Afghans who had applied for a category of visas reserved for those employed by or on behalf of the U.S. government.

The GOP lawmakers objected as Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., gaveled the House into adjournment. They then gathered for a press conference to denounce the administration.

For many U.S. commanders and troops who served in Afghanistan, it was a day of mixed emotions.

“All of us are conflicted with feelings of pain and anger, sorrow and sadness, combined with pride and resilience,” said Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He commanded troops in Afghanistan earlier in his career. “But one thing I am certain of, for any soldier, sailor, airman or Marine and their families, your service mattered. It was not in vain.”

—-

Associated Press writers Robert Burns and Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.

AAMER MADHANI and KEVIN FREKING | AP NEWS

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SAN DIEGO (AP) — More than 30 California children are stuck in Afghanistan after they traveled to the country to see their relatives weeks before the Taliban seized power and were unable to get out before U.S. forces left, according to school districts where the kids are enrolled.

Officials with three school districts — one in the San Diego area and two in Sacramento — said Wednesday that they have been in contact with the families who fear they have been forgotten by the U.S. government. The officials said that some of the children were born in the United States and are U.S. citizens.

Nearly all of the children returned to Afghanistan with one or both parents in the spring or early summer to visit relatives. The families traveled on their own to the country and were not part of any organized trips.

Many of the families arrived in the U.S. years ago after obtaining special immigrant visas granted to Afghans who had worked for the U.S. government or U.S. military over the past two decades.

Some of the families told school district officials that they had made attempts to get on planes at the airport in Kabul but were unable get through Taliban checkpoints or through the throngs of Afghans surrounding the airport over the past two weeks. The U.S. ended its evacuation efforts and withdrew its forces on Monday.

In Sacramento, the San Juan Union School District said it had identified 27 students from 19 families enrolled in the district who said they have been unable to get out of Afghanistan and return home.

“These numbers continue to change rapidly,” Raj Rai, a district spokeswoman said in an email to The Associated Press on Wednesday. “We believe that some of these families may be in transit out of Afghanistan, as we have not been able to reach many of them in the last few days.”

Rai said the district was working with elected officials to help the families leave the country.

“San Juan Unified stands with our Afghan community and all those whose loved ones are currently in Afghanistan,” she said. “We sincerely hope for their speedy and safe return back to the U.S. and back to our school communities.”

The nearby Sacramento City Unified School District said an Afghan immigrant family with three children enrolled at Ethel I. Baker Elementary had contacted the district to ask for help in getting out of the country.

“The only word I can say is heartbreaking,” said district spokeswoman Tara Gallegos.

In the Cajon Valley Union School District in a San Diego suburb with a large refugee population, eight families reached out to their children’s schools before classes started Aug. 17 to report that they were having trouble leaving Afghanistan.

Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California worked with the district and U.S. government officials and seven of the families have since made it out of Afghanistan. Most are now back home in the city of El Cajon and some of the students returned to class on Monday.

But one family is still stuck in Afghanistan, said Cajon Valley Union School District spokesman Howard Shen.

District officials were in contact with family members, he said, and trying to help them get out.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Addressing the nation, a defensive President Joe Biden on Tuesday called the U.S. airlift to extract more than 120,000 Afghans, Americans and other allies to end a 20-year war an “extraordinary success,” though more than 100 Americans and thousands of Afghans remain behind.

Twenty-four hours after the last American C-17 cargo plane roared off from Kabul, Biden vigorously defended his decision to end America’s longest war and withdraw all U.S. troops ahead of an Aug. 31 deadline.

“I was not going to extend this forever war,” Biden declared from the White House. “And I was not going to extend a forever exit.”

Biden has faced tough questions about the way the U.S. went about leaving Afghanistan — a chaotic evacuation with spasms of violence including a suicide bombing last week that killed 13 American service members and 169 Afghans.

He is under heavy criticism, particularly from Republicans, for his handling of the evacuation. But he said it was inevitable that the final departure from two decades of war, first negotiated with the Taliban for May 1 by former President Donald Trump, would have been difficult with likely violence, no matter when it was planned and conducted.

“To those asking for a third decade of war in Afghanistan, I ask, ‘What is the vital national interest?’” Biden said. He added, “I simply do not believe that the safety and security of America is enhanced by continuing to deploy thousands of American troops and spending billions of dollars in Afghanistan.”

Asked after the speech about Biden sounding angry at some criticism, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that the president had offered his “forceful assessment.”

In addition to all the questions at home, Biden is also adjusting to a new relationship with the Taliban, the Islamist militant group that the U.S. toppled after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and that is now once again in power in Afghanistan.

The last Air Force transport plane departed Kabul one minute before midnight Monday, raising questions about why Biden didn’t continue the airlift for at least another day. He had set Tuesday as a deadline for ending the evacuation and pulling out remaining troops after the Taliban took over the country.

In a written statement Monday, Biden said military commanders unanimously favored ending the airlift instead of extending it. He said he asked Secretary of State Antony Blinken to coordinate with international partners to hold the Taliban to their promise of safe passage for Americans and others who want to leave in the days ahead.

“We don’t take them by their word alone, but by their actions,” Biden said. “We have leverage to make sure those commitments are met.”

Blinken put the number of Americans still in Afghanistan at under 200, “likely closer to 100,” and said the State Department would keep working to get them out. He said the U.S. diplomatic presence would shift to Doha, Qatar.

Biden repeated his argument that ending the Afghanistan war was a crucial step for recalibrating American foreign policy toward growing challenges posed by China and Russia — and counterterrorism concerns that pose a more potent threat to the U.S.

“There’s nothing China or Russia would rather have, want more in this competition, than the United States to be bogged down another decade in Afghanistan,” he said

The closing hours of the evacuation were marked by extraordinary drama. American troops faced the daunting task of getting final evacuees onto planes while also getting themselves and some of their equipment out, even as they monitored repeated threats — and at least two actual attacks — by the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate.

The final pullout fulfilled Biden’s pledge to end what he called a “forever war” that began in response to the 9/11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and rural Pennsylvania. His decision, and Trump’s, came amid a national weariness of the Afghanistan conflict.

In Biden’s view the war could have ended 10 years ago with the U.S. killing of Osama bin Laden, whose al-Qaida extremist network planned and executed the 9/11 plot from an Afghanistan sanctuary. Al-Qaida has been vastly diminished, preventing it thus far from again attacking the United States. He lamented an estimated $2 trillion of taxpayer money that was spent fighting the war.

“What have we lost as a consequence in terms of opportunities?” Biden asked.

Congressional committees, whose interest in the war waned over the years, are expected to hold public hearings on what went wrong in the final months of the U.S. withdrawal. Why, for example, did the administration not begin earlier the evacuation of American citizens as well as Afghans who had helped the U.S. war effort?

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., on Tuesday described the Biden administration’s handling of the evacuation as “probably the biggest failure in American government on a military stage in my lifetime” and promised that Republicans would press the White House for answers on what went wrong.

“We can never make this mistake again,” McCarthy said.

A group of Republican lawmakers gathered on the House floor on Tuesday morning and participated in a moment of silence for the 13 service members who were killed in the suicide bomber attack.

They also sought a House vote on legislation from Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., which among other things, would require the administration to submit a report on how many Americans remain in Afghanistan as well as the number of Afghans who had applied for a category of visas reserved for those employed by or on behalf of the U.S. government.

The GOP lawmakers objected as Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., gaveled the House into adjournment and then gathered for a press conference to denounce the administration.

Biden scoffed at Republicans — and some Democrats — who contend the U.S. would have been better served maintaining a small military footprint in Afghanistan. Before Thursday’s attack, the U.S. military had not suffered a combat casualty since February 2020 — around the time the Trump administration brokered its deal with the Taliban to end the war by May of this year.

Biden said breaking the Trump deal would have restarted a shooting war. He said those who favor remaining at war also fail to recognize the weight of deployment has come with a scourge of PTSD, financial struggles, divorce and other problems for U.S. troops

“When I hear that we could’ve, should’ve continued the so-called low-grade effort in Afghanistan at low risk to our service members, at low cost, I don’t think enough people understand how much we’ve asked of the 1% of this country to put that uniform on,” Biden said.

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Now things have changed. Last night on Capitol Hill:

Tensions rose as lawmakers returned for the evening session and a band of moderate lawmakers threatened to withhold their votes for the $3.5 trillion plan. They were demanding the House first approve a $1 trillion package of road, power grid, broadband and other infrastructure projects that’s already passed the Senate.

But as the evening dragged on the chamber came to a standstill and plans were thrown into flux as leaders and lawmakers huddled privately at the Capitol trying to broker an agreement.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi implored Democrats during a private caucus not to bog down and miss this chance to deliver on the promises Biden and the party have made to Americans.

The $1-trillion “infrastructure” bill, along with its Bernie Sanders–crafted $3.5-trillion “reconciliation” bill, are falling apart fast. The Associated Press is making no bones about it. Nancy Pelosi is begging her own moderates to play ball, and time is running out. Nine Democrats are vowing to withhold votes, likely because they are hearing from voters, and Pelosi can afford to lose only three. These Democrats seem to be OK with passing the $1-trillion “infrastructure” stimulus but are balking at attaching the $3.5-trillion rider, which is all about pork — free education, a Green New Deal, amnesty for illegals, election-rigging, and metering cars to tax them on how far they drive among the goodies, and taxpayers or the monetary presses left to pay the bills. Might that sudden hesitation be because of Biden’s failure in Afghanistan? It’s as good a guess as any. Nobody likes to be associated with a loser, and Joe Biden’s popularity with the public has taken on water fast. The media fawning is vanishing. Why attach your name to this pig of a bill as voters are rejecting Biden as incompetent? The recalcitrant Democrats, numbering nine, are likely hearing from voters who have had enough and can see the guided missile this pork bill has in store for the economy and the American way of life. For one thing, the oversized pork bill should bankrupt America at a time of high inflation, leaving the country in a sea of Argentina-like debt with no cash for a national security emergency, as Sen. Joe Manchin has pointed out. Think we might get some national security challenges now that tens of thousands of Afghani refugees are being let in with uncertain vetting, and China and Russia are licking their chops? Beyond that, the amnesty should encourage millions more border-crossers as if there weren’t already enough with Joe’s open border. Those are just a couple of things, and potential for greenie corruption in this bill is bound to be amazing.

The Democrats had been docile under Pelosi’s thumb, right up until the Afghanistan catastrophe. Apparently, some are waking up, not out of a sudden concern for fiscal discipline, but more likely a desire to keep their congressional seats. They know that a red wave is coming with this Afghanistan fiasco, and it’s going to get big soon. The so-called moderate Democrats resemble rats now, fleeing a sinking ship, although to be fair, the big ‘rats are staying behind. Nancy Pelosi is holding fat-cat fundraisers where only dark-skinned servants wear masks in tony Napa County, California. On the Senate side, Chuck Schumer is hoofing around to gangsta rap with Stephen Colbert in New York’s Central Park, both fiddling while Afghanistan burns.

It seems that for Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, who continuously tell us all’s well in Afghanistan and Joe’s the hero, reality is coming to bite them. The Taliban have a clarifying effect on voters. Joe’s signature accomplishment bill is now collapsing. Afghanistan’s eating Joe’s and Nancy’s pork.

Monica Showalter | Columnist

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