Afghanistan Vice-President Says He is Caretaker President

Afghanistan Vice-President Says He is Caretaker President – The Afghan vice-president, Amrullah Saleh, said on Twitter on Tuesday he is in Afghanistan and is the “legitimate caretaker president”.

Afghanistan Vice-President Says He is Caretaker President

Saleh had said after a security meeting chaired by the then president, Ashraf Ghani, last week that he was proud of the armed forces and the government would do all it could to strengthen resistance to the Taliban. President Ghani earlier left the country amid the Taliban advance and his whereabouts remain unknown.

US, UK and other western forces have helped to secure Kabul’s international airport, allowing the RAF to begin mass airlifts out of the Afghan capital, the commander of Britain’s evacuation effort has said, Dan Sabbagh, the Guardian’s defence and security editor, reports.

V-Adm Ben Key, the commander of joint operations, said there was now “considerably greater stability” on the ground, ending the “distressing scenes” of Monday when some desperate Afghans clung to military aircraft as they took off.

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The plan was to “create capacity” for “around 1,000 outward passengers every day,” he added, in the hope of evacuating an estimated 3,000 Britons and dual nationals still the country, plus a further 3,000 Afghans eligible for resettlement in the UK.

But the British commander acknowledged that the Taliban could close the airport at any time, and said: “We may well find that the security situation on the ground may make it untenable to continue to evacuate other people.”