Kabul airlift is accelerating but still hampered by chaos: US President

Washington: US President Joe Biden says the hard and painful airlift of Americans and tens of thousands of others from Afghanistan’s capital is accelerating, but he would not rule out extending it beyond the August 31 deadline he set before the Taliban’s swift takeover.

In remarks at the White House on Sunday, one day after the Taliban completed their victory by capturing Kabul, Biden defended his decision to end the war and insisted that getting all Americans out of the country would have been difficult in the best of circumstances. Critics have blasted Biden for a grave error in judgment by waiting too long to begin organizing an evacuation, which became captive to the fear and panic set off by the government’s sudden collapse.

The evacuation of thousands of people from Kabul is going to be hard and painful, no matter when it started, when we began, Biden said.