By Maren Winter @Shutterstok
Joe Biden told Americans that any American who wants to leave Afghanistan will be able to leave. He also announced that any American who wants to get to the airport can get there.
A Full Blown Humanitarian Disaster
John Davidson in the Federalist writes that Americans trapped in Kabul right now are saying the opposite.
A deluge of news reports coming in from Afghanistan indicate it’s almost impossible to get into the Kabul airport, even for Americans and Afghan with Special Immigrant Visas, for SIVs. There have even been reports, for days now, that some Americans have been beaten at Taliban checkpoints, and that contrary to Biden’s claims, showing a U.S. passport doesn’t guarantee anyone passage to the airport.
David Fox, an American man trapped in Kabul with his Afghan wife and son, told ABC News that when he arrived at the airport perimeter, there were perhaps a thousand people, mostly Afghans, trying to get in. U.S. Marines were firing warning shots into the air and throwing flash-bang grenades to keep the crowd at bay.
When (David Fox) managed to make eye contact with a Marine, Fox said, the soldier shouted at him to leave the area, that it wasn’t safe. “The airport is very dangerous,” Fox told ABC News. “The Americans do not have control of the northern gates.” He added that British troops, “for some reason are not allowing American passport-holders to come in” at the south gate they control.
Inside the airport perimeter, conditions are deteriorating. CNN’s Clarissa Ward, who has been reporting from the airport, said yesterday that in an eight-hour span, not a single U.S. evacuation flight had left. The situation she describes is harrowing. Thousands of people, Afghans and Americans and dozens of other nationalities, have gotten into the airport compound, but there is no process or system in place to get people on flights or provide basic necessities for the people who are waiting. What she describes is utter chaos:
In response to the President telling reporters that he sees “no reason” U.S. troops can’t complete the evacuation in the next couple of weeks of all Americans, as well as tens of thousands of Afghans who have worked and helped the U.S., Claire Ward disagrees:
From what Ward is seeing at the airport, that timeline is impossible: “The scale of this mission is now enormous — beyond the scale of any military but even beyond the capacity of the U.S. military and the six or eight thousands troops who are now here… How on earth are you going to evacuate 50,000 people in the next two weeks? It just can’t happen.”
Is There a Plan to Ensure Americans Get Out?
Fox, the American, told ABC News that the State Department emailed Americans in Afghanistan a generic visa document they could use to get to the Kabul airport.
The problem is, the document has no name or serial numbers on it, and was also emailed to thousands of Afghan citizens eligible for special immigrant visa, or SIVs. This generic visa document is now being copied and printed off by the thousands, sold to Afghans trying to get to the airport, essentially rendering it worthless.
Mr. Davidson reminds readers how defiant and out of touch Joe Biden remains.
“This is about America leading the world,” Biden said at the press conference.
No, this is about America blundering on the world stage. If the situation on the ground in Afghanistan remains as it is, we are almost certainly going to leave Americans behind — and not hundreds, but thousands.
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