Revenge fears grow in Afghanistan with airlift outcome uncertain

KABUL: Fears deepened on Friday that the Taliban are reneging on promises to pardon opponents and their families in Afghanistan, with thousands facing a challenge to flee the country as under-pressure US President Joe Biden said he cannot guarantee the final outcome of the chaotic airlift.

Images of small children being carried by foreign soldiers have brought home the plight of tens of thousands of Afghans who fear life under the Islamist extremists and have been trying to get out since Sunday, when the Taliban took control of the capital Kabul.

Their rapid offensive shocked the United States and its foreign allies, who were just two weeks away from completing their withdrawal from the country.

Human rights organizations called on US President Joe Biden to extend an August 31 deadline for American troops to leave Kabul, where they are securing the city's airport for the evacuation.

In a televised address Biden, facing criticism over his country's response to the Taliban takeover, said he thinks he can get all Americans out by that deadline but "we're going to make that judgment as we go."

"This is one of the largest, most difficult airlifts in history," Biden said. "I cannot promise what the final outcome will be."

The most at-risk Afghans, however, would not be able to get out before month's end unless flights from Kabul are increased, Sarah Holewinski, head of the Washington bureau at Human Rights Watch, told a news conference.

Outside the airport's concrete walls men, women and children crowd together in hope.

A US soldier fired warning shots, and footage from the NGO Rise to Peace showed tear gas hanging in the air.

About 13,000 people have left on American military aircraft in less than a week, the White House said, but Biden cautioned that the US government does not know how many of its citizens are even in Afghanistan after 20 years of war. The airlift involving Afghan allies and foreigners has also seen British, Turkish, French and other European military personnel sent in to Kabul.

But the operation remains dangerous and logistically difficult.

Evacuation flights stopped for several hours because of overcrowding at a staging base in the Gulf emirate of Qatar, but resumed after several hours, the Pentagon said on Friday.

A video viewed more than two million times on social media showed Afghans at Kabul airport lifting a crying baby above a crowd and passing it to a US soldier who pulls the child to safety over barbed wire.