EVACUATION OF AFGHANS WHO AIDED U.S. TO BEGIN THIS MONTH

Biden administration eyes housing them at military bases

The Biden administration will begin flights later this month to evacuate interpreters and others who assisted the American war effort in Afghanistan, and it may house some Afghan nationals on military bases in the United States while their visa applications are processed, officials said Wednesday.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the Defense Department was looking at “all options” to help the thousands of Afghan nationals seeking to emigrate, including the suitability of domestic and overseas facilities, as the United States ends its 20-year mission there and the Taliban continues its push to retake lost territory and undermine the central government.

President Joe Biden has defended his decision to end the campaign by Aug. 31, despite Taliban gains and bleak assessments of Afghanistan’s security forces, saying the country must now defend itself but promising not to abandon those who were crucial to U.S. operations there. “There is a home for you in the United

States if you so choose,” Biden said last week.

A senior administration official said the evacuation flights would begin this month as part of a program officials are calling Operation Allies Refuge. The initiative will support “interested and eligible Afghan nationals and their families who have supported the United States and our partners in Afghanistan and are in the [special immigrant visa] application pipeline,” said the official, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the matter and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The flights are expected to start the last week of July and are being coordinated by officials from the departments of State, Defense and Homeland Security.

Tracey Jacobson, a former U.S. ambassador to Kosovo, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, will lead a State Department unit overseeing the effort. Deputy homeland security adviser Russell E. Travers, a longtime intelligence professional and former acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center, will coordinate the interagency policy process.

The Biden administration, facing mounting pressure from lawmakers and veterans, has been scrambling in recent weeks to respond to mounting concerns about the safety of the former U.S. employees. Many of those individuals, some whose visa applications have taken years to move through a complex and meandering process, say their lives are in jeopardy as the Taliban gains ground.

The militant group has swept across northern Afghanistan as U.S. and NATO forces have withdrawn in recent months.