Taliban take control, look to improve image to fearful Afghans

John Kirby, Pentagon Press Secretary: “Our commanders in the operation have had communication with Taliban leaders.”

Maj. Gen. William “Hank” Taylor, Joint Staff Director of Current Operations: “HKIA remains secure, it is currently open for military flight operations as well as limited commercial flight operations. Throughout the night, nine C-17’s arrived delivering equipment and approximately 1000 troops. Additionally, seven C-17’s departed. These flights lifted approximately 700 to 800 passengers. And we can confirm 165 of these passengers are American citizens. The rest are a mix of SIV applicants, third country nationals.”

“We have had no hostile interactions, no attack and no threat by the Taliban. We remain vigilant. We also have not experienced any additional security incidents at HKIA. We retain the security of HKIA that enables the safe, orderly evacuation of Americans and Afghans.”

John Kirby, Pentagon Press Secretary: “Commanders there at the airport are charged with securing that airport and keeping it secure and to doing what is required to keep it secure and to get operations back up and running and to be sustained. And they will and should have whatever interactions they believe are necessary to accomplish that mission.”

Maj. Gen. William “Hank” Taylor, Joint Staff Director of Current Operations: “Responding to the situation at HKIA. Our initial focus was to insert forces and equipment. As part of the force. As part of this force will concludes, the speed of evacuation will pick up. Right now, we’re looking at one aircraft per hour in and out of HKIA. We predict that our best effort could look like 5000 to 9000 passengers departing per day.”

John Kirby, Pentagon Press Secretary: “There are interactions at the airport by our commanders with Taliban leaders out in town. As I said, they are charged with making sure this is a safe and secure environment and we trust them to have the interactions they feel they need to have to ensure that in every aspect across the whole spectrum of what this mission requires of them, that they can do it safely and efficiently in an orderly manner. And I’m not going to go beyond that.”

“The mission runs through August 31st, the commander in chief made it very clear that we were going to complete this drawdown by August 31st, which now includes the drawdown of American forces, you know, the pulling out of American citizens and drawdown of our embassy personnel. So that’s what we’re focused on. That’s the timeline we’re on. And as the secretary made clear to the leaders, even as recently as this morning, that time is of the essence. And we all we all share a sense of urgency here.”