Civil war likely in Afghanistan after US withdrawal, Gen. Milley says: LIVE UPDATES
The general emphasized that maintaining U.S. security and intelligence gathering in the region will be a more difficult task now that the U.S. has left Afghanistan to the Taliban.
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FIRST ON FOX: Americans engaged in the rescue of U.S. citizens, SIVs and green card holders left behind by President Biden in Afghanistan are horrified by what they describe as inexplicable delays from the State Department that are preventing evacuation flights from leaving the country.
The State Department's delays are recklessly endangering American lives, three different individuals involved in the private evacuation effort told Fox News.
Rick Clay, who runs the private rescue group PlanB, told Fox News that the State Department is the only thing preventing the flights he's organizing from leaving Afghanistan.
An Afghan doctor and humanitarian whose life’s work was upended by the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan is warning that his homeland could become a hive of human rights abuses following President Biden’s much-criticized withdrawal of U.S. forces.
"It was not a wise decision to leave a nation in a very, very hard situation," Dr. Wais Aria told Fox News Friday. "People deserve to have their civil rights. The women deserve to have their rights."
The leader of the National Resistance Front in Afghanistan's Panjshir valley said he is open to negotiate a settlement in the Taliban amid heavy fighting in the region.
"The NRF in principle agree to solve the current problems and put an immediate end to the fighting and continue negotiations," said NRF leader Ahmad Massoud Sunday.
"To reach a lasting peace, the NRF is ready to stop fighting on condition that Taliban also stop their attacks and military movements on Panjshir and Andarab," he added.
The openness to talks come as the Taliban mounted an offensive in the region, securing surrounding districts and entering its provincial capital.
Media outlets in Afghanistan reported that religious scholars in the country have encouraged a negotiated end to the conflict in Panjshir.
The Taliban have not yet responded to calls for negotiation.
Fox News contributor Lara Trump blasted the New York Times for softening a headline initially critical of President Biden for talking about his late son Beau when meeting with the families of troops killed in Afghanistan, noting on ‘Fox & Friends Weekend’ that her father-in-law, former President Trump, would not have enjoyed the same edit.
LARA TRUMP: I can think of a lot of headlines, a lot of stories…that were flat out wrong, reported by not just the New York Times but a slew of media outlets across America. When did they ever change those for Donald Trump? When did they ever change those for our family? I'll answer that for you: they never did.
A C-17 Globemaster takes off as Taliban fighters secure the outer perimeter of the airport
The State Department said it will hold the Taliban to its commitment to allow Americans to depart Afghanistan.
"We will hold the Taliban to its pledge to let people freely depart Afghanistan," a State Department spokesperson said Sunday. "As with all Taliban commitments, we are focused on deeds not words, but we remind the Taliban that the entire international community is focused on whether they live up to their commitments."
The statement comes as emerged Sunday that the Taliban was blocking the departure of six planes with Americans attempting to leave Afghanistan.
The statement said that "the Department is prepared to help U.S. citizens, LPRs, and at-risk Afghans to whom we have a special commitment depart the country, if they so choose."
"When it comes to charters, we facilitated the evacuation and relocation of thousands of these individuals aboard charter aircraft from HKIA during the USMIL-led operation," the statement continued.
But the State Department also warned that there was nobody currently on the ground in Afghanistan to help facilitate travel.
"We understand the concern that many people are feeling as they try to facilitate further charter and other passage out of Afghanistan," the statement said. "However, we do not have personnel on the ground, we do not have air assets in the country, we do not control the airspace – whether over Afghanistan or elsewhere in the region."
"Given these constraints, we also do not have a reliable means to confirm the basic details of charter flights, including who may be organizing them, the number of U.S. citizens and other priority groups on-board, the accuracy of the rest of the manifest, and where they plan to land, among many other issues."
After a failed evacuation attempt during the double suicide bombing last week, an Afghan mother and her five children remain stuck inside Afghanistan with little direction from the State Department on when or how they will leave.
"It's an open-air prison," an American relative of the mother told Fox News. "There's no safe way to leave the country."
The Taliban are executing female police officers and other Afghan dissidents in the country's Panjshir Valley, home to much of Afghanistan's resistance movement.
"Reports pouring in from Afghanistan - so many it is hard to keep track. Three female police officers executed in Kabul - another female police office, six months pregnant, executed by Taliban & so on. This is a moment of pure shame for every one of us if we allow this to continue," reported Fox Nation's Lara Logan on Twitter.
"Afghan friends from Pansjir family are receiving one report after another from the ground - your cousin is dead, your uncle has been shot, his brother is dead etc," Logan continued. "It has been this way all weekend - non-stop. The Afghans standing up to Terrorists massacred while the US watches."
Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, on Sunday blasted President Biden for the botched Afghanistan withdrawal, saying that he has "blood on his hands" for the 13 U.S. service members who were killed in the Kabul airport blast.
McCaul also asserted that the Taliban has blocked Americans aboard six plans at Mazar-i-Sharif International Airport from leaving Afghanistan while they make demands of the U.S.
"I've said all along this president has blood on his hands, and this week, this last week, we had 13 servicemen and women come home, flag draped coffins at Dover Air Base," McCaul said during his "Fox News Sunday" interview. "This problem is going to get worse, not better, and we have left them behind. That's the basic creed of the military."
White House chief of staff Ron Klain said Sunday there are "around" one hundred U.S. citizens left in Afghanistan and that "many of them want to stay," despite reports that Taliban fighters have been carrying out violent reprisals on Americans and Afghan allies since the U.S. military completed its withdrawal last week.
Appearing on "State of the Union" with CNN’s Dana Bash, Klain said the U.S. government has been in close contact with the Americans still left in the country who have been located.
While President Biden continued taking criticism from Republicans and other critics regarding the U.S. troop pullout from Afghanistan – and an Aug. 26 Kabul terror attack that left 13 U.S. service members and dozens of Afghans dead -- a CNN analyst on Friday praised Biden for doing a "damn good job.
"Bakari Sellers’ approval of Biden contradicted new polls that suggest increasing frustration among Americans with the president's job performance.
Sellers’ high marks for Biden also covered the president’s response to Hurricane Ida, the multi-state disaster that was linked to at least 12 deaths in Louisiana, 27 deaths in New Jersey, 16 deaths in New York and other deaths in Maryland and Pennsylvania, according to reports.
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Republicans on Friday and Saturday criticized President Biden for spending his Labor Day weekend in Delaware amid the chaos unfolding after the U.S. military's withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The president on Friday flew from Louisiana, where he surveyed devastation to New Orleans suburbs after Hurricane Ida, to his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.
The president is expected to survey hurricane damage in New York and New Jersey on Tuesday.
"American citizens are still stranded behind enemy lines in Afghanistan, and meanwhile Joe Biden is vacationing in Delaware," Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said in a Saturday tweet.
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Taliban fighter stands guard in the city of Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Sept. 4, 2021. (AP Photo/Wali Sabawoon)
A handful of domestic flights resumed at Kabul airport this weekend – all without a functioning airport radar system, the state-run airline's station manager at the airport said.
The state-run Ariana Afghan Airline flew to three provinces on Saturday and three additional flights were planned for Sunday, the official said.
"Ariana Afghan Airlines is proud to resume its domestic flights," the airline said in a statement on its Facebook page, Reuters reported.
The airport had been closed since the U.S. military left the country last week following its massive and chaotic evacuation effort.
A team of Qatari and Turkish technicians arrived in Kabul last week to help restart operations at the airport, which the U.N. says is crucial to providing the country with humanitarian assistance. It remains to be seen, however, whether any commercial airlines will be willing to offer service.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A pregnant woman named Nasria, a 25-year-old California native, flew to Afghanistan in June to visit family and get married. As of early September, she remained one of the estimated 100 to 200 Americans left behind in the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces, according to a report.
Now that the U.S. military is gone, the Taliban is "hunting Americans," she told the Voice of America. "I think to myself, ‘Am I going to make it home? Am I going to end up living here? Am I going to end up dying here? What’s going to happen?" Nasria, who asked to be referred to only by her first name for safety reasons, said.
"Apparently they’re [the Taliban] going door-to-door … trying to see if anybody has a blue passport," she said.
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In an exclusive television interview with Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin, General Mark Milley said that one of the "lessons learned" from the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan was the pitfalls realized in the Afghan security forces.
"The Army itself – the army and the police forces were a mirror image in many ways – and we created and developed forces that looked like Western forces," Milley explained. "I think one of the big lessons learned here is maybe those forces were not designed appropriately for the type of mission."
The general, who spoke to Fox News at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany, said the fall of the Afghan government occurred much sooner than officials had expected, despite thorough planning in the withdrawal of U.S. forces. "The collapse of the Afghan army happened at a much faster rate and [was] very unexpected by pretty much everybody," he said. "And then with that is the collapse of the Afghan government."
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Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley speaks during a briefing with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at the Pentagon in Washington, Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021, about the end of the war in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
In an exclusive television interview with Fox News' Jennifer Griffin in Ramstein, Germany Saturday, General Gen. Mark Milley was asked about the military operation to process 17,000 Afghan evacuees headed for the U.S.
"What they're doing as people come in, they're getting their names registered. They're doing the biometrics. They check their irises. They do their fingerprints. They take a full facial photo," he explained, referencing not only the Department of Homeland Security but officials in the FBI, USAID, the State Department, and Customs and Border Protection.
The general – who traveled to Germany to thank troops from the U.S. European Command that scrambled to set up the massive tent city on the tarmac of the largest U.S. Airbase and transport hub in Europe – said the base had already processed about 30,000 individuals.
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