The Taliban have strengthened their measures of entry and management across the Kabul airport, the Pentagon has stated.
The Hamid Karzai International Airport is the one entry level for the worldwide neighborhood to achieve out to individuals in Afghanistan, a land locked nation.
“The Taliban have bolstered their own security at their checkpoints and have gotten involved in crowd control…every day is a different day, and yesterday we estimated that crowds were about half the size they had been the previous days,” Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby advised reporters at a press convention on Wednesday.
“We still haven’t seen them rise to the level they were in the early days of this. But yes, part of the reason is, certainly that the Taliban have strengthened their measures of access and control around the field,” he stated.
Responding to questions from reporters, Kirby stated after August 31, it might not be the accountability of the US to handle the Kabul airport.
He stated the US embassy is presently operating from the airport. The Taliban are accountable for operating an airport that’s in a metropolis that they’re now the titular heads of presidency there, Kirby stated.
There’s no army property guarding the embassy compound. The US embassy is working out of the Hamid Karzai International Airport and “as for the Turks, they are still on the ground at the airport assisting in this security mission that we have there”, he stated.
“I won’t speak for their intentions one way or another going forward, but there’s not going to be when the mission is over and when we are leaving the airport, the airport will not be the US’ responsibility anymore. How it gets managed going forward will be something that the Taliban…will have to manage on their own with — and I assume with, you know, with the international community. But that won’t be an American responsibility,” Kirby stated.
The US, he stated, is in day by day communication with Taliban commanders about who they need to see get in and what the credentials are, what they seem like, what’s legitimate.
“That communication happens literally every day. We have been nothing but open with the Taliban about who we expect them to let in. Again, fully recognise that not every step of this process is in our firm control and that there are going to be incidences where it doesn’t work as advertised,” Kirby stated.
