(Headline USA) In another rambling and discursive address to the American people on Friday, President Joe Biden attempted further damage control over the disaster unfolding in Afghanistan, pledging to those still trapped in the Taliban-controlled country: “We will get you home.”
The Democrat president is facing sharp criticism—even from otherwise obsequious mainstream media outlets—for a chaotic and often violent scene outside the airport and crowds struggle to reach safety inside.
He also claimed the United States would evacuate all Afghans who assisted the war effort—a potentially vast expansion of the administration’s commitments on the airlift so far, given the tens of thousands of Afghan translators and others, and their close family members, seeking to escape.
However, some of the reporter present noted that his words did not jibe with the scenes coming from the Kabul airport, where the fundamentalist Islamic faction now in control was blocking the gate to any who lacked American passports, while actively raiding the houses of known US collaborators.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan has claimed that U.S. citizens are able to reach the airport but face an obstacle in the large crowds at the airport gates.
But Republican lawmakers, including Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, reiterated that even Americans outside the airport had received harsh treatment from the Taliban.
Joe Biden said there is “no circumstance” where Americans have been blocked from the Kabul airport.
This is a lie.
My office has received reports of Americans unable to enter the airport. We have told @StateDept and nothing has been done about it. pic.twitter.com/rQbINGjT1Z
— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) August 20, 2021
The Taliban has issued an ultimatum demanding that the US finish its operations and clear the country no later than the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, roughly three weeks away.
Biden emphasized that the current undertaking—the apparent result of poor planning and/or intelligence failures—was not without risk of loss to the nearly 6,000 troops who have been redeployed, more than double the number who were there before the withdrawal.
Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., the ranking minority member of the House Armed Services Committee, slammed Biden for ignoring the reality of the situation.
“This catastrophe was completely avoidable had the Biden-Harris administration bothered to produce a plan,” he said in a response statement.
“There are thousands of Americans in Taliban-controlled territories around the country and the Biden-Harris administration cannot provide an accurate accounting of how many Americans are left,” he continued. “We are seeing heartbreaking video of parents handing off their children to American soldiers as Afghan allies, women, and children fearing for their lives are trying desperately to flee the Taliban.”
Evacuation flights at the Kabul airport had stopped for several hours on Friday because of a backup at a transit point for the refugees, a U.S. airbase in Qatar, U.S. officials said. However, flights resumed in the afternoon.
As many as three flights out of Kabul were expected in the next few hours, going to Bahrain and carrying perhaps 1,500 evacuees in all, said an official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss military.
In Washington, some veterans in Congress were calling on the Biden administration to extend a security perimeter beyond the Kabul airport so more Afghans can make it to the airport for evacuation.
They also wanted Biden to make clear an Aug. 31 deadline for withdrawing U.S. troops was not a firm one.
The deadline “is contributing to the chaos and the panic at the airport because you have Afghans who think that they have 10 days to get out of this country or that door is closing forever,” said Rep. Peter Meijer, R-Mich., who served in Iraq and also worked in Afghanistan to help aid workers provide humanitarian relief.
Tens of thousands of people remain to be evacuated ahead of the United States’ Aug. 31 deadline to withdraw its troops from the country, although the pace had picked up overnight.
A defense official said about 5,700 people, including about 250 Americans, were flown out of Kabul aboard 16 C-17 transport planes. On each of the previous two days, about 2,000 people were airlifted.
With desperate crowds thronging Kabul’s airport, and Taliban fighters ringing its perimeter, the U.S. government renewed its advisory to Americans and others that it could not guarantee safe passage for any of those desperately seeking seats on the planes inside.
The advisory captured some of the pandemonium, and what many Afghans and foreigners see as their life-and-death struggle to get inside.
It said: “We are processing people at multiple gates. Due to large crowds and security concerns, gates may open or close without notice. Please use your best judgment and attempt to enter the airport at any gate that is open.”
While Biden has previously blamed Afghans for the U.S. failure to get out more allies ahead of this month’s sudden Taliban takeover, U.S. officials told The Associated Press that American diplomats had formally urged weeks ago that the administration ramp up evacuation efforts.
In July, more than 20 diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul registered their concerns that the evacuation of Afghans who had worked for America was not proceeding quickly enough.
In a cable sent through the State Department’s dissent channel, a time-honored method for foreign service officers to register opposition to administration policies, the diplomats said the situation on the ground was dire, that the Taliban would likely seize control of the capital within months of the Aug. 31 pullout, and urged the Biden administration to immediately begin a concerted evacuation effort. That’s according to officials familiar with the document who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the internal debate.
Biden has said that the chaos that unfolded as part of the withdrawal was inevitable as the nearly 20-year war came to an end. He said he was following the advice of Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed president, Ashraf Ghani, in not earlier expanding U.S. efforts to fly out translators and other Afghans in danger for the past work with Americans. Ghani fled the country last weekend as the Taliban seized the capital.
Biden also said that many at-risk Afghan allies had not wanted to leave the country. But refugee groups point to yearslong backlogs of applications from thousands of those Afghans for visas that would let them take refuge in the United States.
The administration has also portrayed its contingency planning as successful after the Afghan government fell much faster than publicly anticipated by administration officials.
Yet the White House received clear warnings that the situation was deteriorating rapidly before the current evacuation push.
On Thursday, Taliban militants fired into the air to try to control the crowds gathered at the airport’s blast walls. Men, women and children fled. U.S. Navy fighter jets flew overhead, a standard military precaution but also a reminder to the Taliban that the U.S. has firepower to respond to a combat crisis.
Sullivan acknowledged that there is the possibility of a hostage situation or terrorist attack, and said the government is working for safe passage for U.S. citizens.
“This is a risky operation,” Sullivan told NBC Nightly News Thursday. “We can’t count on anything.”
There is no firm figure of the number of people—Americans, Afghans or others—who are in need of evacuation as the process is almost entirely self-selecting.
The State Department says that when it ordered its nonessential embassy staff to leave Kabul in April after Biden’s withdrawal announcement, fewer than 4,000 Americans had registered for security updates.
The actual number, including dual U.S.–Afghan citizens along with family members, is likely much higher, with estimates ranging from 11,000 to 15,000.
Refugee advocates estimate about 100,000 Afghan allies and family members also are appealing for seats on the U.S. airlift.
Compounding the uncertainty, the U.S. government has no way to track how many registered Americans may have left Afghanistan already.
Some may have returned to the United States but others may have gone to third countries.
Although Afghanistan had been a hotspot for the coronavirus pandemic, the State Department said Thursday that evacuees are not required to get negative COVID-19 results.
However, Afghans and the Americans trying to help them escape say the Biden administration has clung to visa requirements for would-be evacuees that involve more than a dozen steps, and can take years to complete.
Those often have included requirements that the Taliban sweep has made dangerous or impossible—such as requiring Afghans to go to a third-country to apply for a U.S. visa, and produce paperwork showing their work with Americans.
The head of a U.S. refugee organization working to get Afghans out accused Biden of ignoring repeated earlier warnings to speed up the evacuations while winding down the 20-year U.S. combat mission.
“The administration’s failure to heed the call of veterans and advocates months ago has put our nation in this unconscionable position. It cannot let innocent Afghans die by bureaucracy,” Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, said Friday.
Additional American troops continued to arrive at the airport to safeguard and run the U.S. part of the evacuation.
As of Thursday there were about 5,200, including Marines who specialize in evacuation coordination and an Air Force unit that specializes in emergency airport operations. Biden has authorized a total deployment of about 6,000.
“It’s time for the Biden-Harris administration to take ownership of their failure and do everything in their power to get every American home safely,” Rogers said. “It’s time for President Biden and Vice President Harris to stop shirking the responsibilities of the offices they occupy.”
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
