ISIS attack leaves Biden with four bad options

What now?

Two explosions outside Kabul airport killed at least 13 people on Thursday. According to Fox News, at least 10 U.S. service members were also killed. A preliminary but high confidence intelligence assessment has been made that ISIS-Khorasan is responsible. More fatalities are expected.

The gates to Kabul airport have been locked shut and evacuations suspended. A government source tells me that a permanent hold on evacuations is likely. The U.S. and British governments are particularly concerned for two reasons.

First, because ISIS-Khorasan is now understood to have established a significant operational presence in Kabul. More attacks are expected against civilians and foreign personnel. ISIS-K clearly also has an explosives capability in Kabul that it can deploy at will. With thousands of civilians attempting to access the airport, its entry points cannot practically be secured against new attacks.

Second, there is an existing concern, now certain to grow, that the Taliban are enabling ISIS-K operations as a deniable means of attacking Afghan civilians and foreign personnel. While the Taliban and ISIS-K are erstwhile nemesis organizations, they share a common hatred of the United States .

With President Joe Biden committing to withdraw all U.S. forces by Aug. 31, I see the U.S. facing one of four difficult choices.

First, the U.S. and its allies could reopen the three gates at Kabul airport, risking further attacks.

Alternatively, they could keep the gates sealed, instead conducting very limited helicopter (and covert) rescue operations from other areas of Kabul. This would almost guarantee some Americans and thousands of Afghan allies being abandoned.

Third, the U.S. could seize the former Bagram air base and conduct longer-term operations out of that location. This idea has been pushed by some commentators and would be my preference for reasons of upholding a moral obligation to U.S. citizens and allies (America’s broader strategic interests also bear significant consideration here ). Bagram is considerably larger and more defensible than Kabul airport. Still, taking the airport is far from some easy, fix-all solution.

Eric Robinson, a former 101st Airbourne Division officer who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan and later served as a civilian at the National Counterterrorism Center and the Joint Special Operations Command, put it to me this way:

“It’s not certain, but highly likely, that any unilateral extension of operations at the airport in Kabul past Aug. 31 will result in open hostilities with Taliban forces … Reopening Bagram, or bases in Jalalabad or Kandahar, to facilitate additional evacuation efforts will multiply this risk. The Taliban don’t want us in those places either, and any effort to open these bases will require a forced reentry (i.e., a Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division in each spot at a minimum) and likely sustained combat against a determined enemy. It’s an entirely valid policy position to want to extend the evacuation in Kabul, or even want to open up new evacuation routes, but there’s a moral requirement to be honest about the amount of violence the U.S. would have to inflict, the casualties the U.S. will take, and the additional suffering Afghans will endure if any of those courses of action are selected.”

Robinson offers another possibility: covert ground rescues conducted on a case by case basis. While similar operations to bring people to Kabul airport have been carried out by the U.S. and by the British, in particular , a covert pipeline out of Afghanistan could also be employed. The risks would be high and the scale limited, however.

Put simply, Biden now has a most difficult choice in front of him.