The report acknowledged that there have been numerous reports that the Taliban turned away Americans with passports from the airport. The Biden Administration has faced weeks of intense backlash over its disastrous handling of the situation in Afghanistan. “Hundreds” of Americans remain trapped inside Afghanistan, despite Biden telling ABC News that he would leave U.S. troops on the ground until all Americans who wanted to leave were evacuated. More disastrous, an ISIS terrorist detonated a 25 pound suicide vest last week at the Abbey Gate, killing roughly 200 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members. A report leaked by the U.S. to Politico pinned blame for the Abbey Gate remaining open on the British, claiming that the U.S. had to leave it open because the British were in the process of evacuating some of their people. Dominic Raab, Britain’s Foreign Secretary and First Secretary of State, forcefully pushed back on the claim, saying, “it’s just not true to suggest that other than securing our civilians staff inside the airport that we were pushing to leave the gate open.” “In fact, and let me just be clear about this, we were issuing changes of travel advice before the bomb attack took place and saying to people in the crowd, which is what I was particularly concerned that certainly UK nationals and anyone else should leave because of the risk,” Raab added.

 

The United States is now reportedly considering giving direct financial aid and economic assistance to the Taliban, despite international sanctions placed on the group over its material support for radical Islamic terrorism, and despite nearly two decades of considering the Taliban a sworn enemy.

Biden National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos that the U.S. is considering aid.“There is an important dimension of humanitarian assistance that should go directly to the people of Afghanistan,” Sullivan began. “They need help with respect to health, and food aid, and other forms of subsistence, and we do intend to continue that.”

“Secondly, when it comes to our economic and development assistance relationship with the Taliban, that will be about the Taliban’s actions,” he continued. “That will be about whether they follow through on their commitments to safe passage for Americans and Afghan allies, their commitment to not allow Afghanistan a base from which terrorists can attack the United States or any other country, their commitments with respect to upholding their international obligations.”

“Its going to be up to them,” Sullivan said. “And we will wait and see, by their actions, how we end up responding.”Sullivan’s comments mean that the Biden Administration has not taken direct aid to the Taliban government off the table, even though the United States designates the Taliban a “terrorist” entity.

“The Taliban are designated as a terrorist group by the United States. The sanctions freeze any U.S. assets of the group and bars Americans from dealing with them, including the contribution of funds, goods or services,” Reuters noted earlier in August.

The Biden administration has spoke favorably about providing aid to the Afghan people, but that is complicated by the Taliban now being in control of the government, which is largely responsible for disbursing that aid. WLS Chicago previously reported that the Taliban “siphoned off” nearly 50% of all aid poured into Afghanistan since the beginning of the war; that aid effectively enabled the Taliban to begin its military offensive — an offensive that led to the U.S.’s premature and arguably disastrous withdrawal.

“Congress has said that most of the aid the US has sent in the past several years, didn’t end up with the people who need it already, but they figured that about 50% of American aid to Afghanistan in the past several years, has been siphoned off to warlords or to corruption or to fraud,” a Northwestern University political science professor told the outlet. “And so with the change in government in Afghanistan I think the odds of using American money to influence events and improve people’s lives are pretty slim.”

It is likely that the Biden administration views economic aid as the “leverage” it has often referred to in discussions over how the administration plans to extract the “hundreds” of Americans who wanted to evacuate but were left behind when the U.S. pulled out on Monday.

The administration, for example, “might try to use foreign aid as leverage to persuade the Taliban to uphold human rights, particularly with respect to allowing refugees to leave the country and allowing women and girls to continue to pursue education and work opportunities outside the home,” the Hill reported.