Afghanistan: What We Know    

WASHINGTON - The United States aims to increase its pace of evacuating people from the airport in Kabul on Wednesday, with officials saying the goal is to fly out between 5,000 and 9,000 people per day. As of Tuesday, the operation had evacuated more than 3,200 people. 

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a Taliban co-founder and deputy leader, returned to Afghanistan from Qatar where he led the militant group’s office in Doha.  U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters that the international community expects the Taliban to live up to human rights obligations. “Like I’ve said all along, this is not about trust; this is about verifying,” he said.  A Lufthansa plane landed in Frankfurt early Wednesday, the first such flight in Germany’s effort to evacuate its nationals along with rights activists and people who worked with foreign forces during two decades of conflict.