During a press briefing at the Pentagon yesterday afternoon in which he announced that the last American military flight had left Kabul, General Kenneth McKenzie, the commander of US Central Command, characterized the Taliban as having been “significantly helpful” in enabling the airlift that brought out more than 120,000 evacuees from Aug. 14 to Aug. 30. While explaining how the operation developed from the initial planning through the changes in the security environment, McKenzie confirmed the agreement with the Taliban leadership in Doha pretty much as reported in the Washington Post on Aug. 28. “On August the 15th, in a meeting with Taliban senior leadership in Doha, I delivered a message on behalf of the President that our mission in Kabul was now the evacuation of Americans and our partners, that we would not tolerate interference and that we would forcefully defend our forces and the evacuees if necessary,” he said. “The Taliban’s response in that meeting was in line with what they’ve said publicly: While they stated their intent to enter and occupy Kabul, they also offered to work with us on a deconfliction mechanism to prevent miscalculation while our forces operated in close quarters. Finally, they promised not to interfere with our withdrawal.”
Up until that time, McKenzie explained, the US expectation was to work with the Afghan security forces in securing the airport, an expectation that vanished when Afghan President Ashraf Ghani suddenly flew out. “We had gone from cooperating on security with a longtime partner and ally to initiating a pragmatic relationship of necessity with a longtime enemy,” he said.
Later, McKenzie indicated that the Taliban maintained their end of the agreement right up until the last C-17’s took off. “They established a firm perimeter outside of the airfield to prevent people from coming on the airfield during our departure,” he said. “And we — we’ve worked that with them for a number of days. They did not have direct knowledge of our time of departure. We chose to keep that information very restricted. But they were actually very helpful and useful to us as we closed down operations.”
