Since toppling the US-backed government in Afghanistan on August 14, the Taliban have strengthened their measures of access and control around the Kabul airport, the Pentagon has said on Wednesday.

With tensions flaring, the Hamid Karzai International Airport is the only access point for the international community to reach out to people in Afghanistan, a landlocked country.

ALSO READ | Afghan baby girl born on evacuation flight named ‘Reach’, after the aircraft

At a press conference, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby told reporters, “The Taliban have bolstered their own security at their checkpoints and have gotten involved in crowd control…every day is a different day, and yesterday we estimated that crowds were about half the size they had been the previous days,” according to PTI inputs.

“We still haven’t seen them rise to the level they were in the early days of this. But yes, part of the reason is, certainly that the Taliban have strengthened their measures of access and control around the field,” he said.

Meanwhile, responding to a question, Kirby said after August 31, the date President Joe Biden has set for the complete withdrawal of troops, it would not be the responsibility of the US to manage the Kabul airport.

The US embassy is currently running from the Hamid Karzai International Airport and “as for the Turks, they are still on the ground at the airport assisting in this security mission that we have there,” he said. However, there are no military assets guarding the embassy compound.

ALSO READ | First group refugees from Afghanistan come through Wisconsin

The Taliban are responsible for running an airport that’s in a city that they are now the titular heads of government there, Kirby said.

“I won’t speak for their intentions one way or another going forward, but there’s not going to be when the mission is over and when we are leaving the airport, the airport will not be the US’ responsibility anymore. How it gets managed going forward will be something that the Taliban…will have to manage on their own with — and I assume with, you know, with the international community. But that won’t be an American responsibility,” Kirby said.

The US, he said, is in daily communication with Taliban commanders about who they want to see get in and what the credentials are, what they look like, what’s valid.

ALSO READ | Military contractor Erik Prince charging $6500 for a flight out of Kabul: Reports

“That communication happens literally every day. We have been nothing but open with the Taliban about who we expect them to let in. Again, fully recognise that not every step of this process is in our firm control and that there are going to be incidences where it doesn’t work as advertised,” Kirby said, according to PTI inputs.