Taliban claim they will soon declare Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan after President Ghani said to have fled live

British prime minister Boris Johnson gave a live television interview earlier in which he called for a unified western front in not recognising a Taliban regime as a legitimate government of Afghanistan and a joint effort to ensure that the country does not once again become a breeding ground for international terrorism.

Here’s the video clip.

The prime minister said he didn’t want the gains made by the efforts of international allies in the country in the last 20 years to be lost.

“This has caught you by surprise, hasn’t it?” Sky’s News’s pool reporter Sam Coates asked the PM.

Johnson said it “was very clear” from his recent statements that the situation in Afghanistan “was going to change”.

He acknowledged that the US decision to pull out has “accelerated things”. But he insisted: “We’ve known for a long time that this was the way things were going.”

This despite there being so many unanswered questions about the Taliban’s lightning blitz across the country and into Kabul today and reports of “pandemonium” at the airport there, with commercial flights out abruptly halted a little while ago and only military aircraft coming and going at present, according to wire reports.

The United Nations Security Council, which is based in New York, is expected to meet tomorrow morning to discuss the political emergency in Afghanistan.

In its own words:

The Security Council has primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. It has 15 Members, and each Member has one vote. Under the Charter of the United Nations, all Member States are obligated to comply with Council decisions.

The Security Council takes the lead in determining the existence of a threat to the peace or act of aggression. It calls upon the parties to a dispute to settle it by peaceful means and recommends methods of adjustment or terms of settlement. In some cases, the Security Council can resort to imposing sanctions or even authorize the use of force to maintain or restore international peace and security.

The security council has five permanent membersâ€"China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, collectively known as the P5. Any one of them can veto a resolution, the Council on Foreign Relations notes.

The body seeks to address threats to international security. Its five permanent members were chosen in the wake of World War II.

The security council fosters negotiations, imposes sanctions, and authorizes the use of force, including the deployment of peacekeeping missions. Critics say the council’s structure is outdated and that it fails to represent many regions of the world, spurring calls for reforms, CFR notes.

It adds: The security council, the United Nations’ principal crisis-management body, is empowered to impose binding obligations on the 193 UN member states to maintain peace. The council’s five permanent and ten elected members meet regularly to assess threats to international security, including civil wars, natural disasters, arms proliferation, and terrorism.

If the Taliban soon declares it has taken power and created an “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan”, that will be the same name the extremist regime gave itself before it was ousted by the US and western allies’ invasion following the terrorist attacks on the US on 11 September 2001.

The Associated Press echoes Britain’s Press Association in saying this is now the prospect in the country, following a reported declaration by senior Taliban commanders that the insurgency had taken control of the presidential palace in Kabul earlier today following the flight of the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani.

AP has this multi-point and useful latest summary of the situation, where a Taliban blitz has taken large swaths of territory just weeks before the final pullout of American and Nato troops, including entering the capital, Kabul, earlier today. It’s now 10.30pm local time in Afghanistan.

A Taliban official says the group will soon declare the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan from the presidential palace in the capital, Kabul.

That was the name of the country under the Taliban government ousted by U.S.-led forces after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief media.

The US Embassy in Kabul has suspended all operations and told Americans to shelter in place, saying it has received reports of gunfire at the international airport.

The U.S. is racing to airlift diplomats and citizens out of Afghanistan after the Taliban overran most of the country and entered the capital early Sunday.

“The security situation in Kabul is changing quickly and the situation at the airport is deteriorating rapidly,” the embassy said in a statement.

“There are reports of the airport taking fire and we are instructing U.S. citizens to shelter in place. The U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan has suspended consular operations effective immediately. Do not come to the Embassy or airport at this time.”

France is relocating its embassy in Kabul to the airport to evacuate all citizens still in Afghanistan, initially transferring them to Abu Dhabi.

Afghan leaders have created a coordination council to meet with the Taliban, including former president Hamid Karzai, and manage the transfer of the power, after the religious militia’s lightning offensive.

The United Nations refugee agency says more than 550,000 people in Afghanistan have fled their homes due to the conflict since the start of this year.

German military aircraft are heading to Kabul to evacuate Germans and Afghan support staff as soon as possible.

Abdullah Abdullah, the head of the Afghan National Reconciliation Council, confirmed Ghani had left. Ghani did not announce his departure, having previously pledged to stick it out and try to arrange a peaceful transition.

“He left Afghanistan in a hard time, God hold him accountable,” Abdullah said. Ghani’s whereabouts and destination are currently unknown.

Canada has suspended diplomatic operations in Afghanistan and Canadian personnel are on their way back to Canada.

Turkey says its embassy in Kabul continues to operate.

The British prime minister, Boris Johnson, said a short while ago in a live television interview after emergency meetings of his senior security personnel in London that Britain had the means “at the moment” to bring remaining Britons out of Afghanistan.

Johnson said Britain had already brought out a large number of Afghan nationals who assisted the western efforts in Afghanistan in the last 20 years and “we are working very fast on all the UK nationals, all the consulate cases and they are coming forward in numbers at the moment. But I do appeal to all those who have yet to make themselves known to us at the airport to come forward but we certainly have the means at the moment to get them out. It’s just a question of making sure they are able to do it over the next few days.”

Johnson was asked by the pool reporter Sam Coates on behalf of the British media whether he was afraid that a hostage situation could arise where the Taliban keep Britons and eligible Afghans who are awaiting evacuation in the country.

The PM said he thought the UK teams working at the airport to get people away were “doing an outstanding job in pretty difficult circumstances, with clearly a change of regime now happening in Afghanistan that has implications for the UK presence, for the platform that we’ve had there for some years.”

He added: “But don’t forget, all our viewers know that the British presence has been substantially reduced since 2014. The numbers of UK nationals there are not enormous and the vast bulk of the embassy staff and officials there are now outside Afghanistan.”

He then said, somewhat ominously, presumably in relation to further numbers of Afghan nationals who’ve worked with the British teams in Afghanistan and now appealing to the UK for evacuation, that: “We will keep going with teams that we have to process as many applications as we have in the time available.”

Here’s Johnson on the need to prevent a new threat of international terrorism:

A Nato official has said all commercial flights have been suspended from the airport in Kabul and only military aircraft are currently allowed to operate, according to the Reuters news agency.

Foreign governments have been flying their embassy staff out and trying to plan to get all their nationals in Afghanistan out of the country as soon as possible.

Boris Johnson said in a television interview a few moments ago that the UK was in the process of bringing Britons home. “We have the means to get them out,” he said.

The American ambassador to Afghanistan, Ross Wilson, has reportedly now left the country. He is understood to have been transported to the airport in Kabul from the embassy in the last hour.

Yalda Hakim (@BBCYaldaHakim)

The American ambassador has left Kabul

August 15, 2021

The US government has not confirmed that the American embassy has ceased all operations but CNN and other media are reporting that the embassy’s evacuation has been completed and the only Americans left there are a handful of security contractors who will be leaving soon.

Once the flag comes down, which media reports say it has, that marks the formal departure of the US government from its diplomatic base in Afghanistan.

The precise location of the British ambassador to Afghanistan, Sir Laurie Bristow, is not clear at this moment, but he is understood still to be in Kabul.

Here is more from Boris Johnson’s television interview from Downing Street a few moments ago.

“It’s very important that the west collectively should work together to get over to that new government, be it by the Taliban or anybody else: nobody wants Afghanistan once again to be a breeding ground for terror and we don’t think it’s in the interests of Afghanistan that it should lapse back into that state that pre-2001 state.

“And so what the UK will be doing is working with its partners in the UN [United Nations] security council, in the … Nato … to get that message over. We don’t want anyone bilaterally recognising the Taliban, we want a united position among all the like-minded, as far as we can get one, so that we can do whatever we can to prevent Afghanistan lapsing back into being a breeding ground for terror.”

Johnson was then asked if that is his No 1 priority and, if so, what about the human rights situation. (Many in Afghanistan now fear slaughter at worst, oppression at best if there is total control by a fundamentalist theocracy, which is the Taliban’s raison d’être.) The interview with the prime minister was conducted by Sam Coates of Sky, on behalf of the duty reporting pool â€" ie it was shared across the media and, in this case, live directly to the public, too.

Sam Coates Sky (@SamCoatesSky)

Boris Johnson pool interview on Afghanistan
- says there will be a new government in Afghanistan but can’t say the makeup will be
- says priority for international community will be to make sure it doesn’t become a terrorist training ground

August 15, 2021

Johnson was asked if he is going to throw human rights “out of the window”. NB: most expert commentators do not expect 2021’s Taliban to be any less ruthless in its doctrines or methods than the pre-2001 leadership.

“I think we need to see, of course we continue to attach huge importance to human rights, to equalities, think of everything that the UK has helped to achieve in the last 20 years, the sacrifice of that mission, a lot of women and girls were educated thanks to the efforts of the UK, and rights and equalities were promoted and protected in a way that Afghanistan hadn’t seen before,” said Johnson.

“Of course we don’t want to see that thrown away, and what we are trying to do now is to concert the rest of the like-minded around the world, of whom there are a great many, to make sure that we don’t prematurely, bilaterally, recognise a new government in Kabul without forming a common view and setting the same conditions for how that government should behave.

The Taliban, who have rampaged across Afghanistan in recent days and earlier today entered the capital, Kabul, are on the verge of declaring that they have taken control of the country and that it is now the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, according to Press Association reports citing a Taliban official.

The declaration is expected to be made from the presidential palace in Kabul following the departure of Afghanistan’s president, Ashraf Ghani, earlier, who apparently fled, initially to Tajikistan. His current location is unconfirmed.

Senior Taliban commanders announced within the last two hours that they had taken control of the palace, according to news wire reports. More details and further confirmation are awaited.

PA Media (@PA)

#Breaking A Taliban official says they will soon declare the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan from the presidential palace in Kabul

August 15, 2021

Boris Johnson is interviewed live on television. He says: “Nobody wants Afghanistan to be a breeding ground for terror … or to lapse back into the pre-2001 situation.”

But the prime minister acknowledges: “There is clearly a change of regime now happening” in Afghanistan. He adds: “We don’t know exactly what kind of regime that will be.”

He appeals to the United Nations and Nato powers to unite, saying: “We do not want anyone bilaterally recognising the Taliban.”

Johnson, like the US’s Antony Blinken, is trying to give every impression that the Taliban takeover in this way is not a shock, despite it contradicting what leaders said just last month.

Johnson’s interview and our livestream of same have just finished. We’ll bring you a little more of what was said by Johnson and, simultaneously on the other side of the Atlantic, by Blinken, the US secretary of state, who was being interviewed on CNN, in more posts here as soon as possible.

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, is on TV right now talking about the big-picture arguments for the US pulling out of Afghanistan, but not yet addressing the particulars of the current chaos of the Taliban taking over with a speed few anticipated.

Blinken said: “We were in Afghanistan for one overriding purpose â€" to deal with the folks who attacked us on 9/11.”

Meanwhile, here’s Boris Johnson, live.

The American flag at the US embassy in Kabul has been removed, according to numerous media reports. The US ambassador and the flag are reported now to be at the airport in Kabul, the only way out of Afghanistan with the capital surrounded by the Taliban and road crossings controlled by the extremist insurgency forces.

Ruffini (@EenaRuffini)

NEW: US AMBASSADOR HAS LEFT THE EMBASSY IN #KABUL. He and the flag are at the airport, per @CBSNews.

August 15, 2021

The last reports were that the US embassy would be closed by Tuesday and was being staffed by a skeleton-level team. The situation on the ground is not completely clear.

There is “pandemonium” at the airport, according to CNN’s reporter in Afghanistan, Clarissa Ward, just now. The road to the airport is choked with traffic as Afghan people desperately try to reach it to take or seek a flight out.

This could account for the so-far unconfirmed and isolated reports of gunfire â€" ie chaos in the approach to the airport and frustration boiling over.

Boris Johnson’s public appearance to give a statement after an emergency meeting is delayed. He was due to talk 10 minutes ago, and there is no word yet on the new schedule. We’ll keep you informed and will stream the PM live, here.

Reports are coming out from US embassy staff in Afghanistan that Kabul airport is taking fire. The embassy has instructed US citizens to “shelter in place” â€" ie stay put wherever you are right now and try to find a safe place to wait.

The security situation in Kabul is “changing quickly, including at the airport”, according to a report from Reuters.

Meanwhile, the Taliban have taken control of Afghanistan’s presidential palace, two senior Taliban commanders present in Kabul told Reuters a little earlier, after the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, left the country.

There was no confirmation from the Afghan government about the Taliban’s claim. Government officials were not immediately contactable

The British prime minister, Boris Johnson, is due to make a statement at the top of this hour after emergency meetings in London.

We will carry this live, here.

Johnson is attending a meeting of the civil contingencies committee that gathers to discuss matters of national emergency for the UK or major disruption to government.

It coordinates different departments of the British government in response to matters regarded as emergencies and meets at Cobra, the acronym for the Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms, located in the Cabinet Office on Whitehall in London, the street dominated by government offices off which the cul-de-sac of Downing Street is located.

Taliban commanders are saying they have taken control of the Afghan presidential palace. There is no confirmation of this from what remains of the Afghan government at this point, Reuters is reporting.

The Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, has, by all accounts so far, fled the country earlier today.

Taliban leaders had been understood to be at the 19th-century palace in Kabul for negotiations but now claim to have taken it over.

Hello to all our live blog readers around the world on this dramatic international news day. The Guardian US team is now taking the blog baton from London. I’m Joanna Walters and will keep you up to date with developments as they unfold in Afghanistan and related commentary.

If you are on the ground in Afghanistan or in the region and/or spot anything vital that we’re missing in our Guardian coverage, please do ping me on Twitter: @JoannaWalters13.

Here are the key recent events:

Afghan officials told the Associated Press news agency a short while ago, and most major news outlets have been reporting in the last few hours, that the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, left the country, and the Taliban announced they would move further into the capital, Kabul, as the government there unravels.

Abdullah Abdullah, the head of Afghanistan’s High Council for National Reconciliation, who has been leading talks between the crumbling Afghan government and the Taliban, posted a video to Facebook earlier confirming that Ghani had left.

Taliban fighters have penetrated not just the outskirts of Kabul but the capital city proper. Kabul covers about 400 sq miles and its population has been swelling from around 4 million towards 5 million as Afghans have been fleeing there trying to stay ahead of the Taliban advance.

Some foreign leaders are resorting to what appear to be futile tweets. The British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, posted: “It is critical that the international community is united in telling the Taliban that the violence must end.”

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has said the US embassy in Kabul has in effect transferred to the airport there. The majority of US embassy personnel have now left the embassy. The Taliban controls all road crossings, so the only way out of the country is by air from Kabul.

A Kabul hospital has tweeted that “more than 40 people” have been wounded in clashes on the outskirts of the Afghan capital and admitted for treatment.

The UK Foreign Office says “we are doing all we can to enable remaining British nationals who want to leave Afghanistan to do so”.

Our deputy political editor, Rowena Mason, reports the British ambassador to Kabul remains in post despite reports to the contrary.

Rowena Mason (@rowenamason)

FCDO says British ambassador to Kabul remains despite reports he was airlifted last night. “We have reduced our diplomatic presence in response to the situation, but our ambassador remains in Kabul and UK Govt staff continue to work to [assist] British nationals and Afghan staff"

August 15, 2021

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