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U.S. Intercepts Rockets at Kabul Airport as Withdrawal Deadline Nears

Ahead of tomorrow’s deadline for the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the United States has stepped up efforts to prevent attacks on the Kabul airport.

Ahead of tomorrow’s deadline for the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the United States has stepped up efforts to prevent attacks on the Kabul airport. A U.S. official said antimissile defense systems intercepted rockets (Reuters) that were fired at the airport early today. In response to a bombing at the airport on Thursday that was claimed by the Islamic State in Khorasan, U.S. forces said they killed two Islamic State militants (NYT) in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar Province and carried out a drone strike in Kabul that reportedly killed ten civilians (WaPo).
 
The U.S. State Department said yesterday that some 250 Americans remain in the country. The United States joined dozens of countries in announcing (State Department) that they had received assurances from the Taliban that Afghans who wish to depart Afghanistan after August 31 can do so.
Analysis

“It won’t be simple—or cheap—to build the kind of remote counterterror operation the pullout will require. [Afghanistan is] a landlocked country in a neighborhood dominated by America’s adversaries, and although the U.S. still has allies inside Afghanistan, such as its armed forces, those allies are constrained in operating without significant U.S. assistance,” Stanford University’s Asfandyar Mir and the Soufan Group’s Colin P. Clarke write for Politico.
 
“For years, U.S. Forces Afghanistan have provided little to no transparency in responding to claims of civilian casualties and have outright rejected well-documented claims for no specified reason. It’s a level unlike anything else I’ve seen in a U.S. war zone,” Columbia University’s Azmat Khan tweets.

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