WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden and other top US officials were stunned on Sunday by the pace of the Taliban’s nearly complete takeover of Afghanistan, as the planned withdrawal of American forces urgently became a mission to ensure a safe evacuation.
The speed of the Afghan government’s collapse and the ensuing chaos posed the most serious test of Biden as commander in chief, and he was the subject of withering criticism from Republicans who said that he had failed.
Biden campaigned as a seasoned expert in international relations and has spent months downplaying the prospect of an ascendant Taliban while arguing that Americans of all political persuasions have tired of a 20-year war, a conflict that demonstrated the limits of money and military might to force a Western-style democracy on a society not ready or willing to embrace it.
By Sunday, though, leading figures in the administration acknowledged they were caught off guard with the utter speed of the collapse of Afghan security forces. The challenge of that effort became clear after reports of sporadic gunfire at the Kabul airport prompted Americans to shelter as they awaited flights to safety after the US Embassy was completely evacuated.
“We’ve seen that that force has been unable to defend the country, and that has happened more quickly than we anticipated,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN, referring to the Afghan military.
The turmoil in Afghanistan resets the focus in an unwelcome way for a president who has largely focused on a domestic agenda that includes emerging from the pandemic, winning congressional approval for trillions of dollars in infrastructure spending and protecting voting rights.
Biden remained at Camp David on Sunday, receiving regular briefings on Afghanistan and holding secure video conference calls with members of his national security team, according to senior White House officials. His administration released a single photo of the president alone in a conference room meeting virtually with military, diplomatic and intelligence experts. The next several days would be critical in determining whether the US is able to regain some level of control over the situation.
The Pentagon and State Department said in a joint statement Sunday that “we are completing a series of steps to secure the Hamid Karzai International Airport to enable the safe departure of US and allied personnel from Afghanistan via civilian and military flights.” Biden ordered another 1,000 troops into Kabul to secure the evacuation.
Discussions were underway for Biden to speak publicly, according to two senior administration officials who requested anonymity to discuss internal conversations. Biden, who is scheduled to remain at the presidential retreat through Wednesday, is expected to return to the White House if he decides to deliver an address.
Biden is the fourth US president to confront challenges in Afghanistan and has insisted he wouldn’t hand America’s longest war to his successor. But the president will likely have to explain how security in Afghanistan unraveled so quickly, especially since he and others in the administration have insisted it wouldn’t happen.
“The jury is still out, but the likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely,” Biden said on July 8.
As recently as last week, Biden publicly expressed hope that Afghan forces could develop the will to defend their country. But privately, administration officials warned that the military was crumbling, prompting Biden on Thursday to order thousands of American troops into the region to speed up evacuation plans.
One official said Biden was more sanguine on projections for the Afghan fighters to hold off the Taliban in part to prevent a further erosion in morale among their force. It was ultimately for naught.
Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump also yearned to leave Afghanistan, but ultimately stood down in the face of resistance from military leaders and other political concerns. Biden, on the other hand, has been steadfast in his refusal to change the Aug. 31 deadline, in part because of his belief that the American public is on his side.
A late July ABC News/Ipsos poll, for instance, showed 55 percent of Americans approving of Biden’s handling of the troop withdrawal.
Most Republicans have not pushed Biden to keep troops in Afghanistan over the long term and they also supported Trump’s own push to exit the country. Still, some in the GOP are stepping up their critique of Biden’s withdrawal strategy and said images from Sunday of American helicopters circling the US Embassy in Kabul evoked the humiliating departure of US personnel from Vietnam.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell deemed the scenes of withdrawal as “the embarrassment of a superpower laid low.”
Meanwhile, US officials are increasingly concerned about the potential for the rise in terrorist threats against the US as the situation in Afghanistan devolves, according to a person familiar with the matter who requested anonymity to discuss a sensitive security matter.
Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told senators on a briefing call Sunday that US officials are expected to alter their earlier assessments about the pace of terrorist groups reconstituting in Afghanistan, the person said. Based on the evolving situation, officials believe terror groups like Al-Qaeda may be able to grow much faster than expected.
The officials on the call told senators that the US intelligence community is currently working on forming a new timeline based on the evolving threats.
Still, there were no additional steps planned beyond the troop deployment Biden ordered to assist in the evacuations. Senior administration officials believe the US will be able to maintain security at the Kabul airport long enough to extricate Americans and their allies, but the fate of those unable to get to the airport was far from certain.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who has backed the Biden administration’s strategy, said in an interview that “the speed is a surprise” but would not characterize the situation as an intelligence failure. He said it has long been known that Afghanistan would fall to the Taliban if the United States pulled out.
“Given how much we have invested in the Afghan army, it’s not ridiculous for analysts to believe that they’d be able to put up a fight for more than a few days,” Murphy said. “You want to believe that trillions of dollars and 20 years of investment adds up to something, even if it doesn’t add up for the ability to defend the country in the long run.”
In the upper ranks of Biden’s staff, the rapid collapse in Afghanistan only confirmed the decision to leave: If the meltdown of the Afghan forces would come so quickly after nearly two decades of American presence, another six months or a year or two or more would not have changed anything.
Biden has argued for more than a decade that Afghanistan was a kind of purgatory for the United States. He found it to be corrupt, addicted to America’s largesse and an unreliable partner that should be made to fend for itself. His goal was to protect Americans from terrorist attacks, not building a country.
As vice president, he argued privately against Obama’s surge of 30,000 troops into Afghanistan in a bid to stabilize the country so that the United States and its allies could then pull back their forces.
As president, Biden said in July that he made the decision to withdraw with “clear eyes” after receiving daily battlefield updates. His judgment was that Afghanistan would be divided in a peace agreement with the Taliban, rather than falling all at once.
While Biden has prided himself on delivering plain truths to the American public, his bullish assessment of the situation just a month ago could come back to haunt him.
“There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a embassy in the — of the United States from Afghanistan,” he said in July. “The likelihood there’s going to be one unified government in Afghanistan controlling the whole country is highly unlikely.”
Biden team surprised by rapid Taliban gains in Afghanistan
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Biden team surprised by rapid Taliban gains in Afghanistan
- Unlike Obama and Trump who ultimately stood down in the face of resistance from military leaders and other political concerns against an abrupt pullout of US forces in Afghanistan, Biden has been steadfast in his refusal to change the Aug. 31 deadline
Hong Kong allows outspoken Cardinal Joseph Zen to attend Pope Francis’ funeral
- Zen have said the Vatican’s agreement with Chinese authorities on the appointment of bishops betrays pro-Vatican Chinese Catholics
- He has also criticized Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, the official charged with negotiations with Beijing, as a ‘man of little faith’
Zen, a 93-year-old retired bishop, left Hong Kong on Wednesday night after applying at a court to get back his passport, his secretary said in a text message on Thursday. Authorities confiscated his passport after his controversial arrest under a Beijing-imposed national security law in 2022.
Zen is among the critics in recent years who have said the Vatican’s agreement with Chinese authorities on the appointment of bishops betrays pro-Vatican Chinese Catholics. He has also criticized Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, the official charged with negotiations with Beijing, as a “man of little faith.”
Parolin is considered one of the main contenders to be the next pope, given his prominence in the Catholic hierarchy.
On Tuesday, media reports said Zen had issued a critique of the Vatican, questioning why pre-conclave meetings started as early as Tuesday. The AP could not independently verify the reports, but Zen reposted the reporters’ posts about his statement on his X account.
His secretary said Zen would return to Hong Kong after the late pope’s funeral, which is scheduled for Saturday. But she was unsure about his exact return date.
It was not the first time Zen had to go through the city’s court to leave Hong Kong. In 2023, he went through similar procedures to pay his respects to the late Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. He met Pope Francis in a private audience during that trip.
Zen was first arrested in 2022 on suspicion of colluding with foreign forces under the security law. His arrest sent shockwaves through the Catholic community at that time.
While Zen has not yet faced national security-related charges, he and five others were fined in 2022 after being found guilty of failing to register a now-defunct fund that aimed to help people arrested in widespread 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. A hearing on his appeal against the conviction is scheduled for December.
Separately, Hong Kong cardinal Stephen Chow will travel to the Vatican for the conclave, the city’s Catholic Social Communications Office said Thursday.
In 2023, a Beijing bishop who was installed by China’s state-controlled Catholic church as an archbishop visited Hong Kong at the invitation of Chow. It was the first-ever official visit by a Beijing bishop to the city. Experts at that time said Chow’s invitation was a symbolic gesture that could strengthen the fragile ties between China and the Vatican.
Beijing and the Vatican severed diplomatic ties following the Chinese Communist Party’s rise to power and the expulsion of foreign priests. Since the break in ties, Catholics in China have been divided between those who belong to an official, state-sanctioned church and those in an underground church loyal to the pope. The Vatican recognizes members of both as Catholics but claims the exclusive right to choose bishops.
Musk damaged Tesla’s brand in just a few months. Fixing it will likely take longer
- Sales have plunged for Tesla amid protests and boycotts over Musk’s embrace of far right-wing views
- Profits have been sliced by two-thirds so far this year, and rivals from China, Europe and the US are pouncing
NEW YORK: Elon Musk has been called a Moonshot Master, the Edison of Our Age and the Architect of the Future, but he’s got a big problem at his car company and it’s not clear he can fix it: damage to its brand.
Sales have plunged for Tesla amid protests and boycotts over Musk’s embrace of far right-wing views. Profits have been sliced by two-thirds so far this year, and rivals from China, Europe and the US are pouncing.
On Tuesday came some relief as Musk announced in an earnings call with investors that he would be scaling back his government cost-cutting job in Washington to a “day or two per week” to focus more on his old job as Tesla’s boss.
Investors pushed up Tesla’s stock 5 percent Wednesday, though there are plenty of challenges ahead.
Who wants a Tesla?
Musk seemed to downplay the role that brand damage played in the drop in first-quarter sales on the investor call. Instead, he emphasized something more fleeting — an upgrade to Tesla’s best-selling Model Y that forced a shutdown of factories and pinched both supply and demand.
While financial analysts following the company have noted that potential buyers probably held back while waiting for the upgrade, hurting results, even the most bullish among them say the brand damage is real, and more worrisome.
“This is a full blown crisis,” said Wedbush Securities’ normally upbeat Dan Ives earlier this month. In a note to its clients, JP Morgan warned of “unprecedented brand damage.”
Musk’s take on the protests
Musk dismissed the protests against Tesla on the call as the work of people angry at his leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency because “those who are receiving the waste and fraud wish it to continue.”
But the protests in Europe, thousands of miles from Washington, came after Musk supported far-right politicians there. Angry Europeans hung Musk in effigy in Milan, projected an image of him doing a straight-arm salute on a Tesla factory in Berlin and put up posters in London urging people not to buy “Swasticars” from him.
Sales in Europe have gone into a free fall in the first three months of this year — down 39 percent. In Germany, sales plunged 62 percent.
Another worrying sign: On Tuesday, Tesla backed off its earlier promise that sales would recover this year after dropping in 2024 for the first time a dozen years. Tesla said the global trade situation was too uncertain and declined to repeat the forecast.
Here come the rivals
Meanwhile, Tesla’s competition is stealing its customers.
Among its fiercest rivals now is Chinese giant BYD. Earlier this year, the EV maker announced it had developed an electric battery that can charge within minutes. And Tesla’s European rivals have begun offering new models with advanced technology that is making them real Tesla alternatives just as popular opinion has turned against Musk.
Tesla’s share of the EV market in the US has dropped from two-thirds to less than half, according to Cox Automotive.
Pinning hopes on cybercabs
Another rival, Google parent Alphabet, is already ahead of Tesla in an area that Musk has promised will help remake his company: Cybercabs.
One of the highlights of Tesla’s call Tuesday was Musk sticking with his previous prediction that it will l aunch driverless cabs without steering wheels and pedals in Austin, Texas, in June, and in other cities soon after.
But Google’s service, called Waymo, already has logged millions of driverless cybercab trips in San Francisco, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Austin as part of a partnership with ride-hailing leader Uber.
A driverless future for Tesla owners?
Musk also told analysts that this driverless capability will be available on the Tesla vehicles already on the road through software updates over the air, and put a timeline on it: “There will be millions of Teslas operating autonomously in the second half of the year.”
But he has made similar promises before, only to miss his deadlines, such as in April 2019 when he vowed full automation by the end of the next year. He repeated the prediction, moving up the date, several more times, in following years.
A big problem is federal investigators have not given the all-clear that Tesla vehicles can drive completely on their own safely. Among other probes, safety regulators are looking into Tesla’s so-called Full Self-Driving, which is only partial self-driving, for its tie to accidents in low-visibility conditions like when there is sun glare.
On the positive side
In competition with rivals in the US, Tesla currently has one clear advantage: It will get hurt by less by tariffs because most of its vehicles are built in the countries where they are sold, including those in its biggest market, the US
“Tariffs are still tough on a company where margins are still low, but we do have localized supply chains,” Musk said Tuesday. “That puts us in a strong position.”
The company also reconfirmed that a cheaper version of its best-selling vehicle, the Model Y sport utility vehicle, will be ready for customers in the first half of this year. That could help boost sales.
Another plus: The company had a blow out first quarter in its energy storage business. And Musk has promised to be producing 5,000 Optimus robots, another Tesla business, by the end of the year.
Pricey stock
Even after falling nearly 50 percent from its December highs, Tesla’s stock is still very richly valued based on the one yardstick that really matters in the long run: its earnings.
At 110 times its expected per share earnings this year, the stock is valued more than 25 times higher than General Motors. The average stock on in the S&P 500 index trades at less than 20 times earnings.
That leaves Tesla little margin for error if something goes wrong.
Drone, missile attack on Kyiv injures 21, officials say
A combined Russian missile and drone attack triggered fires in several districts of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv early on Thursday, injuring 21 people, officials said.
Mayor Vitali Klitschko, writing on Telegram, said six fires were reported in Sviatoshynskyi district west of the city center, causing serious damage. Twenty-one people were being treated in hospital, including three children.
Klitschko had earlier said residents of one dwelling were trapped under rubble.
Fires and incidents of falling metal fragments were reported in other areas.
In Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, 30 km (18 miles) from the Russian border, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said seven missiles had struck a series of targets. Windows were smashed in a high-rise apartment building, but there was no word on casualties.
Within an hour, Terekhov also reported a drone attack on the city, though there was no indication of any casualties.
India downgrades ties with Pakistan after attack on Kashmir tourists kills 26
- New Delhi suspends key water sharing treaty, and closes only land border crossing
- Pakistan prime ministers calls meeting Thursday to discuss response
SRINAGAR/NEW DELHI: India announced a raft of measures to downgrade its ties with Pakistan on Wednesday, a day after suspected militants killed 26 men at a tourist destination in Kashmir in the worst attack on civilians in the country in nearly two decades.
Diplomatic ties between the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbors were weak even before the latest measures were announced as Pakistan had expelled India’s envoy and not posted its own ambassador in New Delhi after India revoked the special status of Kashmir in 2019.
Pakistan had also halted its main train service to India and banned Indian films, seeking to exert diplomatic pressure.
Tuesday’s attack is seen as a setback to what Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party have projected as a major achievement in revoking the semi-autonomous status Jammu and Kashmir enjoyed and bringing peace and development to the long-troubled Muslim-majority region.
On Wednesday, Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri told a media briefing that the cross-border involvement in the Kashmir attack was underscored at a special security cabinet meeting, prompting it to act against Pakistan.
He said New Delhi would immediately suspend the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty “until Pakistan credibly and irrevocably abjures its support for cross-border terrorism.”
The treaty, mediated by the World Bank, split the Indus River and its tributaries between the neighbors and regulated the sharing of water. It had so far withstood even wars between the neighbors.
Pakistan is heavily dependent on water flowing downstream from this river system from Indian Kashmir for its hydropower and irrigation needs. Suspending the treaty would allow India to deny Pakistan its share of the waters.
India also closed the only open land border crossing point between the two countries and said that those who have crossed into India can return through the point before May 1.
With no direct flights operating between the two countries, the move severs all transport links between them.
Pakistani nationals will not be permitted to travel to India under special South Asian visas, all such existing visas were canceled and Pakistanis in India under such visas had 48 hours to leave, Misri said.
All defense advisers in the Pakistani mission in New Delhi were declared persona non grata and given a week to leave. India will pull out its own defense advisers in Pakistan and also reduce staff size at its mission in Islamabad to 30 from 55, Misri said.
“The CCS reviewed the overall security situation and directed all forces to maintain high vigil,” Misri, the most senior diplomat in the foreign ministry, said referring to the security cabinet.
“It resolved that the perpetrators of the attack will be brought to justice and their sponsors held to account...India will be unrelenting in the pursuit of those who have committed acts of terror, or conspired to make them possible,” he said.
There was no immediate response to the Indian announcement from Pakistan’s Foreign Office.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has called a meeting of the National Security Committee on Thursday morning to respond to the Indian government’s statement, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar posted on X.
Tourist boom
India’s response came a day after the attack in the Baisaran Valley in the Pahalgam area of the scenic, Himalayan federal territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
The region has been at the heart of India-Pakistan animosity for decades and the site of multiple wars, insurgency and diplomatic standoffs.
The dead included 25 Indians and one Nepalese national and at least 17 people were also injured in the shooting that took place on Tuesday.
It was the worst attack on civilians in India since the 2008 Mumbai shootings, and shattered the relative calm in Kashmir, where tourism has boomed as an anti-India insurgency has waned in recent years.
A little-known militant group, the “Kashmir Resistance,” claimed responsibility for the attack in a social media message. It expressed discontent that more than 85,000 “outsiders” had been settled in the region, spurring a “demographic change.”
Indian security agencies say Kashmir Resistance, also known as The Resistance Front, is a front for Pakistan-based militant organizations such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hizbul Mujahideen.
Pakistan denies accusations that it supports militant violence in Kashmir and says it only provides moral, political and diplomatic support to the insurgency there.
“We are concerned at the loss of tourists’ lives,” Pakistani foreign ministry spokesperson Shafqat Ali Khan said in a statement earlier on Wednesday. “We extend our condolences to the near ones of the deceased and wish the injured a speedy recovery.”
Setback to Modi
In Kashmir, security forces rushed to the Pahalgam area and began combing the forests there in search of the attackers.
Police also released sketches of three of the four suspected attackers, who were dressed in traditional long shirts and loose trousers and one of them was wearing a bodycam, one security source said.
There were about 1,000 tourists and about 300 local service providers and workers in the valley when the attack took place, he said.
On Wednesday, the federal territory shut down in protest against the attack on tourists, whose rising numbers have helped the local economy.
Protesters turned out in several locations shouting slogans such as “Stop killing innocents,” “Tourists are our lives,” “It is an attack on us.”
“I want to say to the people of the country that we are ashamed, Kashmir is ashamed,” former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti said. “We are standing with you in this time of crisis.”
Airlines were operating extra flights through Wednesday from Srinagar, the summer capital of the territory, as visitors were rushing out of the region, officials said.
Militant violence has afflicted Kashmir, claimed in full but ruled in part by both Hindu-majority India and Islamic Pakistan, since the anti-Indian insurgency began in 1989. Tens of thousands of people have been killed, although violence has tapered off in recent years.
A dozen states sue the Trump administration to stop tariff policy
- The suit asks the court to declare the tariffs to be illegal, and to block government agencies
NEW YORK: A dozen states sued the Trump administration in the US Court of International Trade in New York on Wednesday to stop its tariff policy, saying it is unlawful and has brought chaos to the American economy.
The lawsuit said the policy put in place by President Donald Trump has left the national trade policy subject to Trump’s “whims rather than the sound exercise of lawful authority.”
It challenged Trump’s claim that he could arbitrarily impose tariffs based on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The suit asks the court to declare the tariffs to be illegal, and to block government agencies and its officers from enforcing them.
A message sent to the Justice Department for comment was not immediately returned.
The states listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit were Oregon, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York and Vermont.
In a release, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes called Trump’s tariff scheme “insane.”
She said it was “not only economically reckless — it is illegal.”
The lawsuit maintained that only Congress has the power to impose tariffs and that the president can only invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act when an emergency presents an “unusual and extraordinary threat” from abroad.
“By claiming the authority to impose immense and ever-changing tariffs on whatever goods entering the United States he chooses, for whatever reason he finds convenient to declare an emergency, the President has upended the constitutional order and brought chaos to the American economy,” the lawsuit said.
Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, sued the Trump administration in US District Court in the Northern District of California over the tariff policy, saying his state could lose billions of dollars in revenue as the largest importer in the country.
White House spokesperson Kush Desai responded to Newsom’s lawsuit, saying the Trump administration “remains committed to addressing this national emergency that’s decimating America’s industries and leaving our workers behind with every tool at our disposal, from tariffs to negotiations.”
