The rapid collapse of security in Afghanistan has turned a slow-building U. S. effort to rescue men and women who have assisted the United States into a full-blown humanitarian crisis, with tens of thousands of people still seeking refuge and potentially little time to relocate them. The scramble to rescue America’s Afghan allies comes after U. S. lawmakers in both parties have pressed the Biden administration for months to move faster on the issue, and as U. S. intelligence officials assess that the capital city of Kabul could fall to the Taliban within one to three months. More than a dozen major cities fell to the Taliban in the last week as the U. S. military’s 20-year mission in Afghanistan barrels toward the Aug. 31 departure set by President Biden. The U. S. government has transported about 1,200 Afghans to the United States in recent days, State Department spokesman Ned Price said. But the Biden administration has committed to temporarily relocating another 4,000 applicants and their families to other countries while their immigration paperwork is finalized and assessed, and there are many thousand more who are earlier in the process and face a stark outlook.“I’m really upset and heartbroken,” said Ismail Khan, an Afghan who served as an interpreter for U. S. troops and now advocates for other interpreters through the nonprofit No One Left Behind. “I don’t understand. What are they waiting for? Are they waiting for everyone to be dead, and then they’ll bring them out?”Responding to the crisis, the Biden administration announced on Thursday that it was deploying 3,000 combat troops to Kabul to harden security at the airport as embassy personnel depart and the administration jump-starts its effort to evacuate Afghans aboard civilian and military aircraft. But the withdrawal at the embassy in Kabul threatens to further impair the Biden administration’s ability to evacuate vulnerable Afghans, some of whom are still waiting on paperwork to be completed so they may flee. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman held closed-door briefings with lawmakers on Thursday and informed them that a core embassy team would remain in Kabul but their status could change depending on the rapidly shifting security environment, according to three people familiar with the discussion. Like some others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity. The core team consists of the political section to coordinate with the Afghan government, the diplomatic security team and the consular affairs team, which processes the special immigrant visas (SIVs).“There is a rush to get them processed so as not to leave them,” Sherman told lawmakers, according to people familiar with her briefing. A second category of Afghans also needs assistance, a bipartisan group of about 40 members of Congress said in a letter to Biden on Friday.
All data is taken from the source: http://washingtonpost.com
Article Link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2021/08/13/afghanistan-evacuations-taliban/
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