US has ‘received assurances’ from Taliban that foreign nationals can continue to leave after withdrawal

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday that ‘there are very significant expectations of the Taliban’

The Taliban has given assurances that it will continue letting foreigners and Afghans with the correct documents to leave the country after the 31 August deadline for American troop withdrawal, according to a joint statement issued Sunday by the US and nearly 100 other countries.

At the same time, Secretary of State Antony Blinken also said Sunday that the US will “not likely” maintain a diplomatic presence in Afghanistan after ending its 20-year military involvement.

“In terms of having an on-the-ground diplomatic presence on September 1, that’s not likely to happen,” Blinken told NBC’s Meet the Press. “But what is going to happen is that our commitment to continue to help people leave Afghanistan – who want to leave and who are not out by September 1 – that endures.

“There’s no deadline on that effort, and we have ways, and we have mechanisms, to help facilitate the ongoing departure of people from Afghanistan if they choose to leave.”

Much of that strategy, however, seems to depend on cooperation from the Taliban – as evidenced by the joint statement released Sunday from the US, UK and nearly 100 other nations.

“We are all committed to ensuring that our citizens, nationals and residents, employees, Afghans who have worked with us and those who are at risk can continue to travel freely to destinations outside Afghanistan,” the statement read. “We have received assurances from the Taliban that all foreign nationals and any Afghan citizen with travel authorization from our countries will be allowed to proceed in a safe and orderly manner to points of departure and travel outside the country.

“We will continue issuing travel documentation to designated Afghans, and we have the clear expectation of and commitment from the Taliban that they can travel to our respective countries.  We note the public statements of the Taliban confirming this understanding.”

Blinken doubled down Sunday on the Taliban’s responsibility to honour any agreements.

“Nothing has been promised to the Taliban ... there are very significant expectations of the Taliban going forward,” he told Meet the Press.

As of Sunday, the US had safely gotten 5,500 American citizens out of Afghanistan following the fall of Kabul on 14 August. The capital was the latest Afghan city to fall after the Taliban systematically resumed control of the country ahead of America’s military withdrawal after a 20-year presence sparked by the 9/11 attacks.

The State Department said Sunday that 50 Americans had been evacuated in the previous day; 250 more were still waiting to get out of Afghanistan.

An ISIS-K suicide attack on Kabul airport on Thursday killed 13 US service members and 170 others, most of them desperate Afghans trying to flee.

The remains of the US service members arrived Sunday at Dover Air Force Base, where President Joe Biden and his wife honoured the fallen and met with their families.

One day after the deadly suicide attack, a US drone strike killed two “high-profile” ISIS-K members in a hit that meant the group had “lost some capability to plan and to conduct missions,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Saturday.

“Do we believe we hit valid targets, bad guys who can do bad things and can plan bad missions? Absolutely,” he said. “And do we think that will have some impact on their ability going forward? Absolutely.”

Mr Kirby added that the Taliban had “security checkpoints around the airport in a loose perimeter ... but they are not manning gates. They are not at the airport doing security roles or anything like that.”

On Sunday, Sec Blinken continued to deny reports that the US had handed names of citizens and visa holders over to the Taliban in a move that, according to critics, would essentially turn it into a “kill list.”

“The idea that we shared lists of Americans or others with the Taliban is simply wrong,” he told Meet the Press.

His comments were echoed more forcefully by White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, also speaking Sunday to CNN’s State of the Union.

“We’ve aggressively, decisively disputed that report,” Sullivan said. “We’ve given no list of all the American [Special Immigrant Visa] holders to the Taliban or any other kind of big list.”