Live updates Taliban co-founder Abdul Ghani Baradar in Kabul for talks as group plots new government

Abdul Ghani Baradar, considered the Taliban’s top political leader, has arrived in the capital Kabul as the Islamist group eyes the formation of the new government.

Baradar, who served as a negotiator for peace talks in Doha, Qatar, and is the likely next leader of Afghanistan, is in the capital to consult with “his friends” about “what type of government will be in Kabul,” Taliban official Zabihullah Mujahid told The Washington Post, adding that no decision has yet been made about what form it will take.

A senior Taliban official told Agence France-Presse Baradar would meet “jihadi leaders and politicians for an inclusive government set-up.” Baradar is meeting with former government leaders, local militia commanders, policymakers and religious scholars in the country, a Taliban official told Reuters, as the outlet reported the group was planning to unveil a new model for governing the country within the next few weeks that would “protect everyone’s rights” even if not a democracy by the Western definition.

Baradar, who cofounded the Taliban in 1994 and was arrested in Pakistan in 2010 in a joint operation with the United States, has been in the country since Tuesday after the Taliban swept to power.

Meanwhile, former Afghan president Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah, a senior official in the toppled government, met the acting Taliban governor of Kabul on Saturday. Abdullah said in a tweet that the priority was “protecting the life, property & dignity of the citizens of the capital.” Karzai and Abdullah have also met other senior Taliban leaders in recent days, in what Karzai’s spokesman has previously described as a step towards negotiations with Baradar.

Key updateU.S. advises citizens to avoid Kabul airportLink copied

The United States is advising U.S. citizens in Afghanistan to avoid the Kabul airport, as security in Afghanistan deteriorates after a Taliban takeover.

Chaotic scenes unfolded over the past week as Afghans and foreign nationals converged on the airport in efforts to leave the country.

An alert from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul on Saturday advised citizens “to avoid traveling to the airport and to avoid airport gates at this time unless you receive individual instructions from a U.S. government representative to do so.” The guidance was issued in response to “potential security threats outside the gates at the Kabul airport” and came as Taliban leaders gathered in Kabul to discuss forming a new government.

“We will contact registered U.S. citizens as the security situation changes to provide further instructions,” the alert said.

One fear among U.S. officials is a terror attack by the Islamic State. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told NBC earlier this week that the government is “laser focused” on that possibility.

The United States has control over the inside of the airport, but the Taliban has been patrolling the exterior, beating and whipping some in the crowd. Some Americans were reportedly beaten by militants despite a promise of safe passage.

President Biden vowed on Friday that the administration would bring Americans home.

“Let me be clear: Any American who wants to come home, we will get you home,” he said in an address from the White House, adding that he didn’t know how many Americans were left in Afghanistan, or whether a safe return for all of them was possible.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby called the reports of Americans injured by militants “deeply troubling.”

“We have communicated to the Taliban that that’s absolutely unacceptable,” he said.

Three brothers went to war in Afghanistan. Only one returned.Link copied

Inside the kitchen drawer of his home, Beau Wise keeps two pairs of dog tags. One belonged to his older brother Ben, a Green Beret who died from gunshot wounds after a firefight in northern Afghanistan. The second pair belonged to his oldest brother, Jeremy, a former Navy SEAL-turned-CIA contractor, who was one of seven Langley operatives killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up at an agency base in southeastern Afghanistan.

These are the small but weighty totems of a sole survivor, the World War II-era designation for Beau, 37, a former Marine sergeant who also deployed to the Afghanistan war â€" but lived.

Beau’s status â€" and his family’s as one of a tiny number to lose two service members in Iraq and Afghanistan â€" has also endowed him with a distinct perspective on the cost of the longest war in U.S. history and the way it is ending.

At least 25 countries have agreed to help Afghan refugees, Blinken says Link copied

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday that 13 countries had agreed to at least temporarily host vulnerable Afghans and another 12 nations had agreed to serve as transit points for evacuees, including Americans.

In a statement, Blinken confirmed that potential Afghan refugees not already cleared for resettlement in the United States will be housed in Albania, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Mexico, Poland, Qatar, Rwanda, Ukraine and Uganda.

On Aug. 20, President Biden reaffirmed his commitment to evacuate American citizens and allies out of Afghanistan. (The Washington Post)

Countries serving as transit points include Bahrain, Britain, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Qatar, Tajikistan, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan, the Associated Press reported.

Blinken expressed gratitude to the other countries extending help to Afghans fleeing Taliban rule. “We deeply appreciate the support they have offered, and are proud to partner with them in our shared support of the Afghan people,” Blinken said.

Meanwhile, in Greece, officials erected a surveillance system and extended a 25-mile (40 km) fence along the border with Turkey in a bid to prevent Afghan refugees from entering Europe.

“We cannot wait, passively, for the possible impact,” Greece’s citizens’ protections minister, Michalis Chrisochoidis, said, adding, “our borders will remain safe and inviolable.”

Neighboring Turkey called on European countries to step up to help Afghans fleeing their homes â€" a crisis that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said may pose “a serious challenge for everyone.”

As journalists evacuate, they face a new question: How to cover Afghanistan now?Link copied

CNN reporter Clarissa Ward headed out of Afghanistan for Doha on Friday, after days of reporting on the front lines of the country’s violent conflict. On Saturday, she took to Twitter to confirm she had landed safely along with almost 300 Afghan evacuees.

“Huge thanks to all of you for your support and concern, to the US Air Force for flying us out and to Qatar for welcoming us,” she tweeted. “We are the lucky ones.”

Ward and other journalists reporting from the country have been widely hailed for their bravery in telling the stories of local Afghans attempting to flee Taliban rule. Their reporting has captured the palpable sense of the danger and uncertainty engulfing Afghanistan in the aftermath of the Taliban’s rapid takeover.

The question now is how to cover the country. American news organizations have hastened to pull their correspondents and Afghan employees and family members out of Kabul over the past few days â€" an exodus bound to create a news vacuum, with few outsiders able to bear witness to conditions inside the country. On Tuesday, a group of Washington Post employees, including Afghan staff and their families, also safely departed the Afghan capital.

At the same time, there is little expectation that the Taliban will permit anything like independent reporting from inside what the group now calls the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. The Taliban suppressed journalists in the pockets of the country it previously controlled, just as it cracked down on other basic rights.

“I didn’t want to leave Afghanistan. I felt ashamed that I was abandoning such an important job,” The Post’s Susannah George wrote as she recalled her escape.

Afghan army’s total collapse forces ‘soul-searching’ at NATO meetingLink copied

The collapse of the Afghan military after 20 years of international support and training, billions of dollars spent, and thousands of lives lost forced a sobering round of soul-searching at an emergency meeting of NATO foreign ministers on Friday, according to diplomats involved in the discussions.

In a joint statement, the 30-member alliance noted that “for the last twenty years, we have successfully denied terrorists a safe haven in Afghanistan” but in the closed session of ministers, the discussions were far less congratulatory.

“How was it possible that we invested 20 years into this country and into training and equipping police forces and army, when there was so little resistance?” said one European official, recounting a pointed question that was asked during the virtual session. “Soldiers threw away their arms or escaped into neighboring countries.”

Taliban co-founder Abdul Ghani Baradar arrives in Kabul for new government talksLink copied

Taliban co-founder Abdul Ghani Baradar has arrived in the Afghan capital of Kabul on Saturday for talks on setting up a new government.

Baradar, considered the Taliban’s top political leader and the likely next leader of Afghanistan, will meet “jihadi leaders and politicians for an inclusive government set-up,” the official told Agence France-Presse. The Associated Press and BBC confirmed the Kabul arrival of Baradar, who entered the country Tuesday for the first time in a decade to much fanfare and fireworks.

The news comes as the Taliban’s “legal, religious and foreign policy experts” are planning to unveil a new model for governing the country within the next few weeks, a Taliban official told Reuters, insisting it would “protect everyone’s rights” even if not a democracy by the Western definition. Baradar is meeting with former government leaders, local militia commanders, policymakers and religious scholars in Afghanistan, Reuters reported.

As Afghanistan’s Prime Minister Ashraf Ghani fled the country as the Taliban advanced last week, it was Baradar who addressed the nation on Sunday after the group’s lightning-fast takeover. “We have reached a victory that wasn’t expected. … We should show humility in front of Allah,” he said.

Baradar founded the extremist group in 1994 along with three other men and went on to serve as a negotiator for peace talks in Doha, Qatar. In 2010 he was arrested in Karachi in a joint operation led by the United States and Pakistan.

Baradar was released from prison in Pakistan in 2018 at the request of the U.S. government so that he could serve as the group’s leader in peace talks. Last year he spoke with former U.S. President Donald Trump, becoming the first militant leader to communicate with an American president.

Face of Afghan women’s soccer urges players to burn their jerseys, disappear amid Taliban ruleLink copied

She speaks by phone from Copenhagen in the voice of an older sister or a mother trying to protect the Afghan girls and women who found freedom and joy on soccer fields.

Khalida Popal, a founder and former captain of Afghanistan’s women’s national team, knows she is privileged to live with her mother and father in Denmark, a place of safety and freedom. Although threats of violence and messages of hate still reach her there, Popal will not be silent.

Yet silence is what she urges of the soccer-playing girls and young women now under Taliban rule. Burn the jerseys you wore with such pride, she begs them. Take down your photos. Destroy all evidence that you ever played. Disappear in every way possible.

“It is very painful,” Popal says of her message.

Here’s how the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan could affect al-Qaeda and the Islamic State Link copied

The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan was based on the conclusion that terrorist groups would no longer be able to use the country to stage attacks on the United States.

“We went to Afghanistan almost 20 years ago with clear goals: get those who attacked us on Sept. 11, 2001, and make sure al-Qaeda could not use Afghanistan as a base from which to attack us again,” President Biden said in remarks from the White House this week, defending the pullout of American forces after the Afghan government’s swift collapse over the weekend. “We did that.”

But some experts aren’t so sure. While al-Qaeda has been substantially weakened since 2001 â€" and the Taliban has committed to preventing it from attacking the United States and its allies â€" the Taliban maintains ties to the group, and al-Qaeda fighters have hailed its takeover.

The Islamic State, a more extreme rival, also retains a presence in Afghanistan. The Taliban is likely to try to root it out, experts said â€" but the Islamic State, too, could benefit from a security vacuum as the Taliban tries to consolidate power.

Here’s where the Islamic State and al-Qaeda stand in Afghanistan.

Key updateBaradar was a negotiator for peace talks in Doha. What is in the deal Trump signed with the Taliban?Link copied

As criticism of the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal continues to build, President Biden has argued that he essentially had little choice in the matter. A deal President Donald Trump cut with the Taliban last year forced Biden to choose between a withdrawal now and an escalation of the war, Biden says.

And as The Fix’s Aaron Blake notes, with the brutal Taliban regime retaking power, former Trump officials are suddenly and conspicuously scrambling to distance themselves from that deal. But when the deal was cut in Doha, Qatar, in February 2020, it wasn’t treated as huge news, because the war itself wasn’t big news. So, many people don’t actually know what’s in it.

Anti-Taliban fighters claim victories as first stirrings of armed resistance emergeLink copied

KABUL â€" Groups of armed Afghans attacked the Taliban on Friday, driving Afghanistan's new rulers out of three northern districts, the first assault against the Islamist militants since they swept into Kabul last week and seized control of the government.

Local anti-Taliban commanders claimed in interviews they had killed as many as 30 of the group’s fighters and captured 20 in the takeover of the districts in Baghlan province, just over 100 miles north of the capital. Former Afghan service members were joined in the fight, they said, by local civilians. Images shared online showed celebrations as the red, green and black Afghan national flag â€" rather than the white flag of the Taliban â€" was raised over government buildings.

“We have ignited something that is historic in Afghanistan,” said Sediqullah Shuja, 28, a former Afghan soldier who took part in Friday’s uprising. “Taliban fighters had armored vehicles, but people threw stones at Taliban fighters and drove them out.”

“As long as we are alive,” he said, “we do not accept the Taliban’s rule.”

Friday’s attack is the latest sign of defiance toward the Taliban, ranging from Afghans refusing to fly the white Taliban flag to women protesting to preserve their rights. Together, they illuminate some of the obstacles the Taliban faces as it seeks to form a government deemed acceptable by a broad spectrum of Afghans and by the international community, especially donors.

But whether Friday’s attack is a sign of an emerging new military front against the Taliban remains to be seen.

Afghan internal displacement crisis looms after Taliban takeover Link copied

As Afghanistan’s neighbors, along with other countries in the region and in the West, brace for the possibility of a large-scale refugee crisis driven by the Taliban’s rapid return to national power, the largest share of the displacement crisis is unfolding within Afghanistan’s borders, aid groups say.

As the Taliban took territory in recent weeks, waves of Afghans fled their home provinces on foot and in cars and rickshaws in search of shifting, shrinking government-controlled pockets. In the week before Kabul fell to the Islamist group, tens of thousands of people fled, many of them making their way to the capital, directly or by way of provincial capitals that did not hold out long.

“We are seeing large-scale displacement in what is now a humanitarian emergency,” Christopher Boian, a senior communications officer for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told The Washington Post.

Afghanistan already had 3.5 million internally displaced people before the Taliban took over. More than a half-million Afghan civilians have been displaced this year, the UNHCR estimates. There were 126,000 newly displaced people in the country between July 7 and Aug. 9 alone â€" numbers that don’t take into account the days of swelling movement before Kabul’s Aug. 15 fall.

The Taliban is flaunting captured U.S. weapons that may be worth billions. Can it use them? Link copied

As the Taliban swept into power across Afghanistan, it captured many millions, perhaps billions, of dollars’ worth of U.S. military equipment that had once belonged to Afghan forces.

Footage from areas captured by the militant group shows bedraggled but celebratory fighters in control of U.S.-made guns, armored vehicles and even Blackhawk helicopters and drones. Beyond the flashy hardware, experts are also concerned that the extremist group would now be in charge of sophisticated technology, including biometric devices used by the U.S. military to identify Afghans who assisted Americans and allies.

It’s an impressive haul for a group that was once dismissed as a band of rural Luddites when it emerged in the 1990s. But despite its austere interpretations of Islam and rejection of much of modern society, the Taliban has shown flexibility when it comes to technology. It is already active on the Internet and social media. And its fighters are no strangers to U.S. military equipment.

“The Taliban have already been using sophisticated military equipment that they have captured from Afghan national security forces in recent years,” said Robert Crews, an expert on Afghanistan at Stanford University. “They have used everything from night vision goggles and scopes to sniper rifles and armored vehicles and artillery.”

The treacherous journey into Kabul airport to escape Taliban-controlled AfghanistanLink copied

KABUL â€" Two days after the Taliban’s sudden takeover of Kabul, we were given a chance to escape: seats on a chartered plane to Qatar set to take off from the city’s airport within hours.

Security around the airport was crumbling, and the future of my Afghan colleagues was increasingly uncertain. They had received Taliban threats in the past, and both have young families for whom they fear the most. Reaching the airport would be the most difficult part, and it was something we decided we had to do together.

We hadn’t seen each other since the Taliban took over the capital, and the reunion â€" after so much anxiety, fear and change â€" was emotional. On a dusty gravel road lined by concrete barriers outside the airport, we embraced. It was one of the first moments of joy and relief in a long time. Everyone was in tears.

Next, we had to make a run for the military side of the airport, a part of the city quickly becoming the most dangerous. The night before, Taliban fighters had stormed a crowd waiting outside the terminal, beating men, women and children attempting to flee the country. By morning, the militants had set up checkpoints and deployed dozens of fighters to block roads leading to the airport. One of those checkpoints was a just a few hundred yards from the compound where I was staying.

“Why do you want to leave the country? What are you, traitors?” the militants screamed at a crowd forming beside one of the main airport entrances.

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