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A grave and specific ISIS terror threat is hanging over the frantic endgame of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, with time fast running out to rescue up to 1,500 Americans and the fate of fleeing Afghans looking darker by the hour.
President Joe Biden is so far sticking to his Tuesday deadline for the final exit from a 20-year war in Afghanistan, after an initially chaotic drawdown that has since evolved into a mammoth and daring airlift of more than 82,000 people out of Kabul.
But in an alarming sign of the deteriorating security environment, US diplomats in Kabul early Thursday local time suddenly warned American citizens to “immediately” leave several gates into the airport, citing security threats.
The warning came hours after a US defense official had told CNN that officials were alarmed by a “very specific threat stream” about the ISIS affiliate in Afghanistan, which planned to attack crowds outside the airfield.
Inside, thousands of troops are braving testing conditions and intense heat to fill cargo aircraft with US citizens and Afghans who helped American troops and officials and fear gruesome punishment by the Taliban.
The question now is how long the Pentagon will give the evacuation operation before it transitions to a mission to extract thousands of troops and materiel, which could take several days and curtail the departures of noncombatants.