Joe Biden’s new Taliban friends do not appear to be in an accommodating frame of mind. They are intent on celebrating the twentieth anniversary of 9/11 in their own style. They therefore want the United States to have completed its exit by the date certain of August 31. According to this BBC update this morning:
The Taliban will not extend the 31 August deadline for the current evacuation mission, a spokesman has said.
The 31st was a red line, Suhail Shaheen said. He said President Biden had said troops would be out by that date, and extending it meant extending Afghanistan’s occupation. He warned of consequences if that were to change.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson had been expected to use an emergency G7 meeting on Tuesday to ask President Biden to delay the US troop withdrawal to allow more time for evacuations from Kabul airport.
Thousands of Afghans and foreign nationals are still scrambling to get on flights out of the country.
And the Taliban don’t want to take any chance the materiel we left behind falls back into American hands.
Shaheen’s Twitter feed, by the way, is accessible here. Shaheen self-identifies as “Member of Negotiations Team and Polit. Office Spokesman for International Media.” President Trump is still sidelined from the platform.
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