President Joe Biden has said the Taliban has been cooperating with the US in terms of evacuating Americans in Afghanistan.
Since the collapse of the government in Afghanistan last week, US troops have been evacuating American citizens.
In his first interview since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, Biden told ABC News that despite the cooperation in helping get Americans out of the country, “we’re having some more difficulty” in evacuating US-aligned Afghan citizens.
He said: “They’re cooperating, letting American citizens get out, American personnel get out, embassies get out, et cetera, but we’re having some more difficulty having those who helped us when we were in there.”
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He also said troops will not leave any American behind in Afghanistan, even if it means staying in-controlled Kabul for longer than agreed.
“If there are American citizens left, we’re going to stay until we get them all out,” Biden said.
Asked if he thought the handling of the crisis could have gone better, Biden said: “No.”
“We’re gonna go back in hindsight and look … but the idea that somehow, there’s a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, I don’t know how that happens,” he said.
US lawmakers have pressed Biden to extend the August 31 deadline that he set for a final pullout.
The US said it has evacuated nearly 6,000 people from Afghanistan since Saturday but thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Afghans who want to leave the country remain and it has a slow speed of evacuation putting lives at risk.
Educated young women, former US military translators and other Afghans most at-risk from the Taliban appealed to the Biden administration to get them on evacuation flights to the United States as quickly as possible.
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