Hundreds of Americans remain in Afghanistan, Pentagon official says

R&I – FS

Almost two months after the U.S. withdrew all of its troops, the State Department is in touch with hundreds of Americans who want to leave Afghanistan, the Pentagon’s top policy official said Tuesday.

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of Defense for policy, told lawmakers that 196 Americans are ready to leave Afghanistan now, while another 243 either want to stay or aren’t yet ready to depart.

Republicans on the committee, including ranking member James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, took that as an admission that President Joe Biden had not lived up to his pledge to leave no American citizens behind.

But Kahl defended the administration. “Nobody was abandoned. We continue to get people out of Afghanistan, including American citizens,” he said. Since Sept. 1, the State Department has helped facilitate the departure of 240 U.S. citizens, plus an additional 157 green card holders, Kahl said. Once those who have arranged for their own exodus are counted, a total of 314 Americans and 266 lawful permanent residents have left, he said.

As the administration’s Aug. 31 deadline to withdraw approached, Americans, Afghans and other foreign nationals who wanted to leave braved Taliban checkpoints to crowd outside of Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul in hopes of catching an outbound flight. Since then, the administration has struggled to provide an accurate headcount of those who did not make it out.

There are about 28,000 Afghans in the process of applying for a special immigrant visa, or SIV, a program established by Congress to relocate interpreters and others who had helped U.S. forces and organizations and fear retribution from the Taliban as a result of their cooperation. About 8,500 SIV applicants and their families got out before Aug. 31, Kahl said, leaving almost 20,000 still in Afghanistan.