U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday he accepted the Taliban’s repeated promises of safe passage for anyone seeking to flee the country.
He spoke after his meeting with Qatari officials on accelerating evacuations in his first trip since the establishment of the self-proclaimed Islamic Caliphate in Afghanistan.
Representatives of the terrorist organization told the United States “they will let people with travel documents freely depart,” Blinken informed a news conference in Doha where he and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met their Qatari opposite numbers.
“We will hold them to that,” he added, AFP reports.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken (2nd-R) and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin (L) pose for a group photo with Qatari Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani (R) and Qatari Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Dr. Khalid bin Mohammed Al-Attiyah (2nd-L), at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Doha, Qatar on September 7, 2021. (OLIVIER DOULIERY/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
“The entire international community is looking to the Taliban to uphold that commitment,” Blinken added, referring to a U.N. Security Council resolution that pleaded for safe passage.
The Biden administration has come under increasing pressure in the wake of the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan to ensure those who want to leave can do so, even as the exact numbers of those seeking urgent departure have been never been revealed much less confirmed.
Blinken said the U.S. believes there are “somewhere around 100” American citizens still stranded in Afghanistan, speaking as the BBC reported the Taliban fired shots Tuesday to disperse the crowd at a large protest in the Afghan capital, Kabul.
The State Department had previously put that estimate at between 100 and 200 however critics have said the number remains closer to 500 people, as Breitbart News reported.
But non-governmental organisations say that some 600 to 1,300 people — including girls and U.S. citizens — remain at the airport in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
Marina LeGree, the founder and executive director of a small American non-governmental organisation active in Afghanistan, told AFP the Taliban are refusing requests for movement.
Blinken countered by saying the Taliban had not blocked people with valid travel documents but that not all passengers on charter flights had papers, denying there was a “hostage-like situation” in Mazar-i-Sharif.
The White House’s original number of Americans within Afghanistan before the country collapsed stood at close to 11,000.
Blinken and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin are in Qatar to thank the Gulf Arab state for its help with the transit of tens of thousands of people evacuated from Afghanistan after the Taliban took control of Kabul on Aug. 15.
AFP contributed to this report