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The catastrophic loss of life in a suicide bombing at Kabul's airport laid bare the challenges the U.S. military faced in an evacuation mission that relied on the Taliban to create an outside perimeter of checkpoints and forced Americans to search civilians without the security measures typically used while deployed.
A gantlet awaits those trying to reach the airport, leaving people traumatized, dehydrated and injured.
Right now, airlifts are capable of ferrying between 5,000 and 9,000 people a day.
Flights out of Afghanistan to evacuate Americans and their Afghan colleagues were once again flying empty on Wednesday, as only 1,800 left on 10 C-17 planes, with capacity for 600.
Educated young women, former U.S. military translators and other Afghans most at-risk from the Taliban appealed to the Biden administration to get them on evacuation flights as the United States struggled on Wednesday to bring order to the continuing chaos at the Kabul airport.