The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Evacuees plead: ‘We are in some kind of jail’
Groups plead for U.S. action on a weeklong standoff preventing evacuees from boarding charter flights.
WASHINGTON >> Veterans’ groups, Democratic lawmakers and Afghans called Tuesday for urgent Biden administration action on a weeklong standoff that has left hundreds of would-be evacuees from Afghanistan desperate to board waiting charter flights out of the Taliban-ruled country.
They say several dozen Americans, along with a much larger number of U.S. green card holders and family members, are among vulnerable Afghans waiting to board pre-arranged charter flights at the airport in the northern Afghan city of Mazare-Sharif that are being prevented from leaving.
“We think we are in some kind of jail,” said one Afghan woman among the would-be evacuees gathered in Mazar-e-Sharif. She said elderly American citizens and parents of Afghan-Americans in the U.S. are among those being blocked from boarding evacuation planes.
The woman, an employee of a U.S.-based nonprofit, Ascend, that works with Afghan women and girls, spoke Tuesday on condition of anonymity for her security. She said those in her group have proper passports and visas, but that the Taliban currently are blocking them from entering the airport.
She said she has been waiting for eight days. At one point last week, alarm spread through the women’s side of her hotel in the city when warnings came that the Taliban were searching the would-be evacuees on the men’s side, and had taken some away.
“I am scared if they split us and not let us leave,” she said. “If we can’t get out of here, something wrong will happen. And I am afraid of that.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday the U.S. was working with the Taliban to resolve the matter. He rejected an assertion from a Republican lawmaker, Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, over the weekend that the standoff at Mazar-e-Sharif was turning into a “hostage situation” for American citizens in the group.
“We’ve been assured all American citizens and Afghan citizens with valid travel documents will be allowed to leave,” Blinken said in Doha, Qatar, a major transit point for last month’s frantic U.S. military-led evacuations from Afghanistan.
Later Tuesday, 12 Democratic lawmakers added to the pressure for evacuees, in a letter urging the administration to disclose its plans for getting out all of the hundreds of at-risk people remaining in Afghanistan, including American citizens.
“Our staff have been working around the clock responding to urgent pleas from constituents whose families and colleagues are seeking to flee Afghanistan, and they urgently require timely, postwithdrawal guidance to best assist those in need,” Reps. Jerrold Nadler, Zoe Lofgren, Gerald Connolly and nine other lawmakers from President Joe Biden’s party wrote.
Blinken, in Doha, said the Taliban had told U.S. officials that the problem in Mazar-e-Sharif was that passengers with valid travel documents were mixed in with those without the right travel papers. “We have to work through the different requirements, and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” Blinken added.
Taliban leaders, who named a new Cabinet Tuesday in the wake of their lightning takeover of most of the country last month, also say publicly that they will allow people with proper documents to leave the country.