President Biden received questions from reporters Friday for the first time since Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, outside of an interview on Wednesday on ABC News, promising that the U.S. will get any American home that wants to return home. The president’s address comes as tens of thousands of American citizens, legal residents and their families and vulnerable Afghans struggle to flee the country.
The president began his speech by announcing what the United States has done so far: evacuating 18,000 people in recent weeks and 5,700 people in the last 24 hours. Biden said the U.S. will do “everything, everything possible” to evacuate as many Afghans as the U.S. has helped. The Pentagon has said it can fly 5,000 to 9,000 people a day outside of Kabul, but that depends on multiple factors.
“But make it clear. Any American who wants to come home, we’ll take him home,” Biden told reporters in the East Room of the White House.
However, CBS News and other outlets have reported that some Americans have difficulty getting to the airport and that the United States currently does not provide transportation or guarantee a safe passage to the airport. During his speech, Mr. Biden said the U.S. has “no indication” that the Americans will not be able to get to the airport, noting that the United States has an “agreement” with the Taliban to let the Americans through. But moments later, in a briefing with House lawmakers, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the Taliban had beaten Americans in Kabul and considered it “unacceptable,” CBS News learned.
“It’s a volatile situation on the ground,” the White House said in response to the apparent contradiction. “We are working to facilitate the safe passage of U.S. citizens and SIV applicants and their families to the airport and aircraft. There will be reports of challenges and chaos at the airport. Secretary Austin has referred to that in today’s Hill briefing. But we will get Americans to get into HKIA and on planes. ”
In a briefing Friday afternoon, when Pentagon press secretary John Kirby was asked about the Taliban beating Americans, he said he was aware of the report.
“We have communicated to the Taliban that this is absolutely unacceptable and we want a free pass through these checkpoints for documented Americans,” Kirby said, adding that “in general, this is happening.”
State Department spokesman Ned Price said the United States has received “only a small number of reports from U.S. citizens indicating that its access has been blocked in some way.” ‘has faced’ difficulties or resistance ‘, but added that the State Department is being taken seriously.
The president did not answer directly whether the U.S. will send troops to help the Americans get to Kabul airport. Although the president pledged to remove the Americans, he did not explicitly pledge to extend the mission to Afghanistan beyond Aug. 31, saying he believes the United States will be able to complete the mission by then. ” , but we will make that judgment as we move forward. ”
“There will be plenty of time to criticize and guess when this operation is over,” Biden said, adding that now is not the time.
The president’s speech was not well received by everyone. Paul O’Brien, executive director of Amnesty International USA, urged the Biden administration to evacuate the most vulnerable Afghans more quickly.
“Vulnerable Afghans at risk sought reassurance from President Biden. They did not succeed,” O’Brien said. “They want to know that they will be processed for departure regardless of their eligibility for narrow and complicated visa programs. They want to know that they will be able to get to the airport safely. They want to know that the United States will keep running evacuations until they and his family have had a chance to escape the danger. President Biden could have used his speech to reassure them, but he did not. “
On Friday, the U.S. military was forced to do so stops its evacuation flights from Kabul because Qatar’s processing plant reached its capacity. The United States hopes to open a new flight option to Bahrain soon. Biden acknowledged the “few hours” pause, attributing it to ensuring that “we can prosecute evacuees arriving at transit points.”
“Our commander in Kabul has already given the order to resume the outbound flights,” he added.
The State Department and the Pentagon have not revealed how many Americans remained in Afghanistan when the Taliban took control of the country, but earlier this week, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki , estimated that there were about 11,000 self-identified Americans.
In Doha, Qatar, where evacuees are being prosecuted, sources described the situation at the facility as hot, increasingly tense and as a “developing humanitarian crisis.”
During an interview earlier this week with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, the president defended his decision to withdraw from Afghanistan and suggested that last week’s chaos was inevitable.
“No, I think it couldn’t have been handled in a way that we’ll look back and look at, but the idea that somehow there’s a way out without chaos, I don’t know how it goes. that, ”the president he told Stephanopoulos.
He also said during the interview that U.S. troops could remain in Afghanistan more than August 31 if necessary to remove the Americans from the country, but stressed that the goal is to do so by the end of August 31st.
The Pentagon said this week that it is working with the Taliban to ensure the safe passage of Americans to the airport, admitting that the military could not leave and extract a large number of people who could not reach the airport themselves or that they are afraid to do so. .
“I don’t have the capacity to go out and extend operations currently in Kabul,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Wednesday.
The president was scheduled to leave for his home in Wilmington, Delaware, on Friday afternoon after his speech, but the White House announced at noon that his schedule had changed and instead said he would stay in Washington, DC, Friday night.
– CBS News’ Weijia Jiang, Christina Ruffini and Zachary Hudak contributed to the information.