No deadline in the way of evacuating U.S. citizens and Afghan partners
President Joe Biden must be held accountable for failing to prepare an orderly evacuation of vulnerable civilians as he withdrew U.S. troops from Afghanistan. What matters most for now, though, is to evacuate everyone at risk who wants to go: U.S. citizens and permanent residents, allied-country nationals, Afghans who worked with the U.S. government, and U.S. contractors and Afghans who worked as journalists, civil society activists, or public officials.
To their credit, Biden administration officials have repeatedly embraced that goal, with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin declaring Wednesday, “We’re going to get everyone that we can possibly evacuate evacuated, and I’ll do that as long as we possibly can.”
As the final clause of Mr. Austin’s statement implied, however, there is a tension between completing this immense task and the Aug. 31 deadline for getting U.S. forces out of Kabul, to which Biden is apparently still committed. There simply might not be enough time to evacuate tens of thousands of people over the coming days, even at the pace of more than 5,000 per day that U.S. officials claim to be near achieving. Leaving no one behind is a moral imperative, and essential to salvaging some U.S. credibility from this debacle. No artificial deadline, whether Aug. 31 or otherwise, should take precedence over that mission.
The United States and its partner nations have restored order at the Kabul airport, enabling about 2,000 people, including 325 U.S. citizens, to leave on 18 Air Force flights in a 24hour period from Tuesday to Wednesday. Yet on the streets of Kabul, where the Taliban holds sway, confusion and fear reign. Some Afghans heading to the airport have been stopped, sometimes violently. The United States seems to have a deal with the Taliban for safe passage of U.S. passport holders, at least for the time being. There is a certain logic to this given the top U.S. priority: to extract U.S. citizens, of which there may be as many as 15,000 in the country. Yet it also implies that, for everyone else, the time between now and Aug. 31 is shrinking, and many Afghans could be left behind if the United States quits Kabul on that date.
Violent incidents at Taliban checkpoints may deter even U.S. citizens from traveling from residential areas in the city to the airport, on Kabul’s eastern edge. The U.S. Embassy in Kabul on Wednesday reminded those who embark on the journey that “the United States government cannot ensure safe passage,” a reality that the Biden administration must change, even if it means raising military pressure on the Taliban. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said Wednesday that the State Department is “trying to work through those issues as best we can” through negotiations.
In an interview with ABC News, Biden himself for the first time hinted at flexibility on the deadline, “if there are American citizens left.” That won’t be enough: This country’s moral responsibilities begin, but do not end, with U.S. citizens. On Tuesday, Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., received and forwarded to Secretary of State Antony Blinken an appeal from the National Association of Women Judges on behalf of 250 Afghan women judges, trained by Americans and other Western countries, some of whom sentenced Taliban fighters to prison for murder or other crimes. These criminals have just been released by the Taliban. The judges have thus joined the ranks of the fearful. This country must make time for all of them.