| President Biden said his Aug. 31 deadline for U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan will have to wait if all Americans are not evacuated by then, a situation complicated by Wednesday’s admission by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that U.S. forces are unable to provide safe passage to all Americans who need to venture to the Kabul airport to flee. Biden told ABC News during a Wednesday interview that he is committed to keeping U.S. troops in Afghanistan until every American who wants to leave is evacuated. Austin told reporters the U.S. military does not have the forces and firepower in Afghanistan to expand its current mission from securing the Kabul airport to collecting Americans and at-risk Afghans elsewhere in the capital and escorting them for flights. “We don't have the capability to go out and collect large numbers of people,” Austin said. There were about 15,000 Americans in Afghanistan when the Taliban seized control on Sunday (The Associated Press). The U.S. military reported it had evacuated approximately 1,800 people on 10 flights aboard C-17s by Wednesday night, flying a total of at least 6,000 people out of the country since Saturday. The president continued to defend his decision to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan this month, denying that the exodus was possible “without chaos ensuing.” His remarks to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos appeared to depart from his assertion this week that the administration planned for every contingency as well as his comment July 8 that there would be “no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy … from Afghanistan,” a reference to the frantic airlifts of U.S. personnel from Saigon. A witness today in the Afghan city of Asadabad described Taliban fighters who fired on people waving the Afghanistan national flag at an Independence Day rally at which several people were killed. Three people were killed during a similar protest on Wednesday (Reuters). Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley (pictured below with Austin) told reporters that he knew of no U.S. intelligence that had predicted the rapid fall of the Afghan government (Fox News). “There was nothing that I or anybody else saw that indicated a collapse of this army and this government in 11 days,” Milley said. Both Austin and Milley have been asked by lawmakers to testify to Congress about U.S. intelligence failures and planning to carry out Biden’s order to end U.S. military involvement after two decades. 
© Getty Images The Hill: Afghanistan disaster puts U.S. intelligence in the spotlight. The Hill: U.S. weapons, munitions now under Taliban control. The Associated Press, The New York Times: U.S. misread warnings, made fateful decisions ahead of a foreign policy crisis. Separately, the administration is wrestling with what comes next in juggling Biden’s vows of continued U.S. diplomatic and humanitarian assistance for the Afghan people while also denying the Taliban additional U.S. resources as Afghanistan’s unelected rulers. Beginning on Sunday, the Biden administration froze Afghan government reserves held in U.S. banks, seeking to deprive the Taliban of access to billions of dollars held by U.S. institutions. Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world, is highly dependent on U.S. aid (The Washington Post). GOP lawmakers on Wednesday urged the Treasury Department to take steps to prevent the Taliban from accessing some $450 million in aid from the International Monetary Fund, which the department is doing. The IMF, with U.S. backing, is issuing billions of dollars in new “special drawing rights,” a reserve asset that can be converted to government-backed money, to aid poorer countries. A portion of those assets was scheduled to be allocated to Afghanistan next week, an event that has generated urgent pushback from Republicans on Capitol Hill (Politico). The Associated Press, The Washington Post: Taliban fighters declare independence as Afghanistan faces evolving humanitarian crisis. Meanwhile, there are reports that former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled his country on Sunday with $169 million in cash before surfacing Wednesday in exile in the United Arab Emirates (CNBC). The precarious situation in Afghanistan dominated discussions on Wednesday in international capitals. Leaders of the Group of Seven (G-7) nations will confer next week, while G-7 foreign ministers hold a videoconference today. Biden spoke on Wednesday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, while lawmakers in the United Kingdom lambasted Prime Minister Boris Johnson as well as Biden as U.S. allies scrambled to evacuate their personnel from Kabul (Reuters). Anticipating a return to draconian restrictions under strict interpretation of Sharia Islamic law, nearly two dozen nations called on the Taliban to “guarantee” protection for Afghan girls (The Hill) while at the same time, Afghan women expressed both fear and defiance (The Hill and ABC News). BBC: Iran closes its border to Afghans fleeing the Taliban. 
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