Biden to Americans: ‘We will get you home’
Officials say diplomats issued warning weeks ago
WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden pledged to Americans still trapped in Afghanistan: “We will get you home.”
Biden also said Friday the United States is committed to evacuating 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 evacuation.
Biden’s comments came as the U.S. government struggles to increase a massive airlift clearing Americans and other foreigners and vulnerable Afghans through the Kabul airport, rescuing them from a Taliban takeover of the country.
Biden is facing criticism for a chaotic and often violent scene outside the airport, where crowds struggled to reach safety inside.
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. Flights resumed in the afternoon.
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 firm.
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 remained to be evacuated before Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline to withdraw its troops from the country, although the pace had picked up overnight Friday. 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 lifeand-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 said American diplomats had formally urged weeks ago that the administration raise 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 timehonored 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 an 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 U.S.
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.
The Kabul airport has been the focus of intense international efforts to get out foreigners, Afghan allies and other Afghans most at risk of reprisal from the Taliban insurgents.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that U.S. citizens were able to reach the airport, but face an obstacle in the large crowds at the airport gates.
On Thursday, Taliban militants fired into the air to try to control the crowds gathered at the airport’s blast walls. 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. The administration has committed to ensuring that all Americans can leave, even if that means staying past the August deadline.
“This is a risky operation,” Sullivan told NBC Nightly News on Thursday. “We can’t count on anything.”