September 1 Afghanistan-Taliban news

A team of Qatari technical experts arrived in Kabul on Wednesday to discuss reopening the city’s airport, a source with knowledge of the situation tells CNN. 

The source said that the technical team traveled to Kabul on a Qatari jet at the request of the Taliban, and that while no final agreement had yet been reached, “talks are still ongoing at the level of security and operation.”

“The objective is to resume flights in and out of Kabul for humanitarian assistance and freedom of movement in a safe and secure manner.”

The United States may have withdrawn from the battlefield in Afghanistan, but the struggle for power and influence there is ongoing, CNN Political Analyst Josh Rogin explains.

“The void is being filled by a number of actors including terrorist groups such as al Qaeda and the Haqqani group, including China and Russia, including Iran and Turkey, and all of that has implications, not just for what happens inside of Afghanistan, but for what happens in the region and around the world as well,” Rogin said.

“We know from past history that for the jihadists victory equals recruitment. We know that when they have a country, that country can become a safe haven for attacks in other places in the world,” he continued. “And we know that Afghanistan is still a place where empires go to secure minerals and strategic advantage. So the game in Afghanistan is afoot.”

Rogin said that while the US won’t be involved as heavily in Afghanistan going forward “pretty much every other country in the world is still playing.” 

US President Joe Biden defended his decision to withdraw from Afghanistan on Tuesday, saying the departure indicated the end of "an era of major military operations to remake other countries."

Earlier Wednesday, CNN's Nic Robertson reported there was a lot of diplomacy underway with the Taliban and also with regional parties like Pakistan. The German and Pakistani foreign ministers met in Islamabad on Tuesday, while the Dutch foreign minister was visiting on Wednesday.

"A lot of effort is being applied to the Taliban to try to make sure that those other Afghans who were associated with NATO inside Afghanistan who want to leave, those other American citizens who are in Afghanistan who want to leave, are able to leave," Robertson said. 

He added that the next steps are dependent on the formation of the Taliban government, which is expected to be announced in the coming days.

"The longer the Taliban waits to announce that government, the more the country is in limbo, the more the economy is hurt and the greater the possibility of people wanting to flee the country."

Brigadier General Joshua Olson watches a football match organized by the Afghan children who are temporarily calling his air base home from his office window.

Ramstein is one of the largest US airbases outside America and has become a crucial hub for the evacuation from Afghanistan following the Taliban take over. Since August 20, about 106 planes have landed there -- mostly C-17s, their cargo bays crammed with hundreds of evacuees at a time. Ahead of their arrival, tents were pitched to house 10,000 people -- but they quickly filled up.

"We were maxed out and the flow kept coming. I had to close part of the base for Afghan evacuees," explains Olson. "Because you can't put them in the elements. It's 50 degrees [Fahrenheit] outside and raining. I can't put people out in that. Especially kids. So, that was one of the things that inflow and outflow. We were bringing them in faster than we could get them out. And that's hard."

As of Wednesday morning, almost 12,000 evacuees had left the airbase, while another 14,900 remained. The number of evacuees to have arrived at Ramstein so far is nearly triple the population of the German municipality that hosts the base.

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The Kabul airlift is over, but 14,000 evacuees are still waiting for flights out of this US base in Germany

As we learn of the secret arrangement between the US and Taliban to escort Americans to Kabul airport, we’re also finding out about ongoing talks between the militant group and UK officials. Representatives are holding discussions over securing safe passage out of Afghanistan for British and Afghan nationals still in the country.

A Downing Street spokesperson told CNN that a special representative for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was involved in talks with senior Taliban representatives in Doha on Tuesday.

For background: In 2019, Gass was appointed Chair of the UK's Joint Intelligence Committee, which provides ministers and senior government officials with intelligence assessments, primarily about security, defense and foreign affairs. Gass previously served as NATO’s Senior Civilian Representative to Afghanistan.

Hours after the last US troops left Afghan soil, the Taliban said it wanted to maintain good diplomatic relations with the world.

In the UK later Wednesday, UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab is due to face lawmakers over his handling of the country's withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The Japanese government has said it is going to continue communicating with the Taliban and it is willing to cooperate with the group to help those who wish to leave Afghanistan.

“Long term and continuous humanitarian support will become necessary. As well as closely watching the situation in Afghanistan in the future, we’d like to work on humanitarian support by coordinating with related countries," Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said during a presser on Tuesday.

The country's mission to evacuate Japanese nationals and others from Afghanistan amid a worsening security situation has concluded, Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi announced Tuesday.

However, the government says more than 500 Afghans hoping to leave are still in the country, according to broadcaster NHK. 

“The Japanese government will work with countries like the US to ensure the safety of other Japanese nationals, local staffers and those who helped Japan. If they wish to leave Afghanistan for legitimate reasons, we are willing to help them”, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said during a press conference on Wednesday.

The Japanese Embassy in Afghanistan is temporary closed and has been moved to Istanbul, Turkey.

For the first time in nearly two decades, on Tuesday the sun rose over Afghanistan and there were no US troops on the ground.

Here's what happened yesterday:

Biden's address: President Biden on Tuesday vigorously defended the decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan and end the war there, the longest in US history. Biden argued the US "no longer had a clear purpose in an open-ended mission in Afghanistan" and that the US' withdrawal signaled "ending an era of major military operations to remake other countries."

As of Monday, more than 122,000 people had been airlifted from Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul since July, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters. The total includes 5,400 Americans.

The US withdrawal was rocked by the Taliban's unexpectedly swift takeover of Afghanistan's capital, but Biden painted the withdrawal as an "extraordinary success."

A covert deal: The US military negotiated a secret arrangement with the Taliban that resulted in members of the Islamist group escorting Americans to the gates of Kabul airport as they sought to escape Afghanistan, according to two defense officials. One of the officials also revealed that US special operations forces set up a “secret gate” at the airport and established “call centers” to guide Americans through the evacuation process.

"It worked, it worked beautifully," one official said of the arrangement.

Americans still in Afghanistan: The President said the US government believes there are about 100 to 200 Americans remaining in Afghanistan, "with some intention to leave." Most of those that remained are dual citizens and longtime residents that had decided to remain in Afghanistan because of "family roots," Biden said.

Biden said the US is committed to getting those Americans who want to leave out and that Secretary of State Antony Blinken is leading diplomatic efforts to do so.

A murky future: What comes next for Afghanistan and the Taliban's efforts to govern the country remains unclear. The United Nations committed to staying in the country to stand "shoulder to shoulder with the Afghan people." UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that "a humanitarian catastrophe looms" as "almost half of the population of Afghanistan — 18 million people — need humanitarian assistance to survive."

President Joe Biden may have ended the "forever war" but the dangerous loose ends he left behind in Afghanistan could still thwart his attempt to throw everything at his top priority domestic goals.

In a quintessential example of an approach that might be termed "Americans First," Biden will pivot from the country's longest war to rebuilding a nation under siege at home from a new Covid-19 assault and severe weather, as more than a million people wilt without power after Hurricane Ida. The President is also eager to get on with selling a multitrillion-dollar infrastructure and social spending proposal that would rebalance the economy toward workers but still faces a complicated path through Congress.

But the messy end to the Afghan conflict, the Americans left behind when the US airlift ended and the geopolitical and national security implications of an anarchic failed state teeming with radicals mean that moving on will be far more complicated than declaring the two-decades-long conflict over.

Biden attempted to draw a firm line under the chaos, recriminations and tragedy of the last two weeks on Tuesday, defiantly defending his handling of a final US withdrawal that exposed him to searing criticism, especially after the deaths of 13 US service personnel in desperate scenes outside Kabul's airport.

He attempted to shift the focus from the questionable decision-making of the pullout to the broader point that he had ended a war that his three predecessors could not, despite indications that the US project was always going to fail.

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Analysis: Biden turns to nation building at home, but the political threats he left behind in Afghanistan could come back to haunt him

White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Tuesday praised the Afghan interpreter in hiding who helped rescue then-Sen. Joe Biden during a 2008 rescue mission as she reaffirmed the US' commitment to helping Afghan allies.

The interpreter, who is going only by his first name, Mohammed, told the Wall Street Journal that he is asking the President to "save me and my family" after US forces allowed him to enter Kabul's airport during their evacuation mission but restricted his wife and children.

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White House thanks interpreter in hiding who helped rescue Biden in 2008 and commits to evacuating Afghan partners

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke with several foreign leaders by phone Tuesday to thank them for their help in the US military’s withdrawal of troops and evacuation of at-risk Afghans and other civilians from Afghanistan.

Austin spoke with: