The White House on Monday said the U.S. military has “facilitated” the evacuation of about 48,000 people from Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover ten days ago.
The Pentagon said on Tuesday it has “evacuated approximately 4,000 American passport holders plus their families.” The same number of American evacuees was provided at a classified administration briefing attended by Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) on Tuesday.
In this handout provided by the U.S. Air Force, an air crew prepares to load evacuees aboard a C-17 Globemaster III aircraft in support of the Afghanistan evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport on August 21, 2021 in Kabul, Afghanistan. (Photo by Taylor Crul/U.S. Air Force via Getty Images)
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Monday that U.S. forces had “now facilitated the evacuation of more than 37,000 people out of the country since August 14th: American citizens, third-country nationals, our Afghan allies, and Afghans at risk of persecution or worse.”
“In the last 24 hours alone, 28 U.S. military flights have evacuated approximately 10,400 people from Kabul,” said Psaki, bringing the total up to about 48,000 people by the end of Monday Afghan time.
Comparing approximately 4,000 American evacuees to 48,000 total means that about 8% of the evacuees were Americans.
Psaki also told reporters that unspecified coalition aircraft had helped with another 5,900 refugees. U.S. and coalition forces have flown evacuees from Afghanistan to temporary camps at U.S. bases and allied facilities in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Italy, Spain, and Germany.
“Afghan nationals arriving in the United States will be housed at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin, Fort Lee in Virginia, Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey and Fort Bliss in Texas,” CNBC reported.
The Biden administration reportedly claimed Tuesday that the U.S. military had evacuated another 12,700 people in the 24 hours between 3 a.m. Monday and 3 a.m. Tuesday Eastern Daylight Time. The Pentagon did not clarify when identifying the 4,000 Americans if they were among the initial 48,000 or if the 12,700 evacuated through Tuesday morning were part of the total in which the Americans were counted.
In this handout provided by the U.S. Air Force, an air crew assigned to the 816th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron assists evacuees aboard a C-17 Globemaster III aircraft in support of the Afghanistan evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport on August 21, 2021 in Kabul, Afghanistan. (Photo by Taylor Crul/U.S. Air Force via Getty Images)
Biden administration officials said Monday they were considering an extension of evacuation efforts beyond the Taliban’s “red line” of August 31. The Taliban on Tuesday firmly ruled out permitting an extension for the U.S. or any other foreign evacuation operation.
An anonymous source told CNN later on Tuesday morning that President Joe Biden has decided to stay with the August 31 deadline due to mounting security risks. U.K. Defense Minister Ben Wallace also said Tuesday that an extension of the August 31 deadline was “unlikely.”
“As we get closer [to the deadline] it’s correct to say the security risk goes up, it gets more and more dangerous,” Wallace said.
U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Tuesday afternoon that the Group of Seven nations (G7) will demand an extension from the Taliban.
“The number one condition we’re setting as G7 is that they’ve got to guarantee right the way through, through August 31 and beyond, safe passage for those who want to come out,” Johnson said.
“Some of them will say that they don’t accept that, some of them I hope will see the sense of that, because the G7 has very considerable leverage, economic, diplomatic and political,” he added, suggesting Afghanistan’s funds in foreign banks could be frozen if the Taliban does not grant the extension.
The White House was extremely reluctant to estimate how many Americans were mixed in with Afghan nationals aboard these evacuation flights, or how many Americans remain in Afghanistan.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki bizarrely insisted Monday that zero Americans are “stranded” in Kabul, asserting that all of them will be evacuated soon, so it would be “irresponsible” to describe any of them as stranded. The White House doubled down on Psaki’s spin on Tuesday and said no Americans should be considered stranded in Kabul.
This image made available to AFP on August 20, 2021 by Omar Haidiri, shows a US Marine grabbing an infant over a fence of barbed wire during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. (OMAR HAIDIRI/Courtesy of Omar Haidiri/AFP via Getty Images).
“We cannot give you a precise number,” National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said more honestly Sunday, guessing that “roughly a few thousand” Americans are still trapped behind enemy lines.
“We have been working for the past few days to get fidelity on as precise a count as possible. We have reached out to thousands of Americans by phone, email, text. And we are working on plans to, as we get in touch with people, give them direction for the best and most safe and most effective way for them to get into the airport,” Sullivan said.
Earlier estimates from the Pentagon ranged from 10,000-15,000 Americans. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) said after a classified briefing Monday it was “very unlikely” they could all be evacuated by the August 31 deadline.
On Monday, Yahoo News obtained a copy of an “official use only” report sent to the White House on Sunday that provided “a more detailed picture than has been made public so far of how many Americans have managed to leave Afghanistan.”
The report said 3,376 Americans had been evacuated as of Saturday morning, which would be in line with Pentagon press secretary John Kirby’s statement Monday that “we’ve been able to evacuate several thousand Americans” and with Rep. Brady’s estimate from the classified briefing.
The U.S. State Department on Monday denied reports that Afghans who worked with U.S. occupation forces, including those who obtained Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) to resettle in the United States, have been turned away at the Kabul airport to make more room for departing U.S. citizens. On Tuesday, an anonymous source claimed to the New York Times those refusals are happening.
Former CIA officer Matt Zeller, founder of a support group for his former Afghan colleagues called No One Left Behind, told the New York Times his team in Kabul witnessed “hundreds of SIV holders who were considered at high risk of Taliban reprisals” getting turned away at a State Department checkpoint Sunday.
At a press conference Tuesday, the Pentagon admitted the Taliban’s cooperation will be required to American troops to withdraw safely from Kabul after the civilian evacuation is complete:
The Taliban announced Tuesday that it would ban Afghan nationals from Hamid Karzai International Airport.
“The road that ends at the Kabul airport has been blocked,” the Islamist regime stated. “Foreigners can go through it, but Afghans are not allowed.”
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