Nearly 400 U.S. citizens left behind at the end of the evacuation from Kabul have escaped Afghanistan, and all others eager to leave have been given the chance, according to Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
“Since the end of the evacuation mission, we have evacuated roughly 380 Americans,” Blinken told reporters Friday. “As of the 10th of November, all U.S. citizens who have requested assistance from the United States government to depart Afghanistan and who we’ve identified as prepared to depart and having the necessary documents have been given an opportunity to do so.”
Those figures exceed the estimates in the hours after the U.S. military departure from Afghanistan when Blinken acknowledged there was “a small number of Americans, under 200 and likely closer to 100, who remain in Afghanistan and want to leave.”
State Department officials have emphasized those figures would change as more people surfaced and asked for assistance. However, veteran groups and other advocates for at-risk Afghan nationals have argued those totals understate the scale of the abandonment.
“There was still, at the time everything imploded, about 6,000 people in Afghanistan who had a blue passport, who had American citizenship,” Blinken said, recalling the security alerts U.S. Embassy officials sent to Americans in the country. “And making that incredibly wrenching decision to leave, to give up everything you know, is incredibly hard and difficult. So, that’s why there were still roughly 6,000 remaining despite everything, despite our efforts to encourage anyone who had American citizens and wanted to leave to take advantage of that.”
US-TRAINED AFGHAN PILOTS CLOSE TO LEAVING TAJIKISTAN
Blinken announced the update alongside Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed Al-Thani as they met to sign an agreement that Qatar would function as the “protecting power” for the United States in Afghanistan. That means the government will speak to the Taliban on behalf of U.S. officials in the absence of diplomatic relations between Washington and Kabul. Al-Thani, for his part, made the case for providing humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan and argued against the “isolation” of the Taliban.
“We believe that abandoning Afghanistan will be a big mistake, and ignoring it, because isolation has never been an answer for or a solution for any issue, and engagement is the only way forward,” the Qatari envoy said. “So that’s why we believe engaging with Taliban since they are in power right now is very important for us to ensure that our facilitation for humanitarian assistance is moving smoothly, and also encouraging them and urging them all the time to stand up to their commitments and their pledges for the international community.”
Taliban officials promised “safe passage” for foreigners and Afghan nationals who worked with the U.S. military and other Western institutions during the 20-year war, a promise reiterated Thursday in a meeting hosted by Pakistan.
Pakistani, U.S., Russian, and Chinese officials gathered in Islamabad to discuss the fallout of the U.S. withdrawal. They also “met with senior Taliban representatives on the sidelines of the meeting,” according to the State Department.
“The four participating States,” in a joint statement, “welcomed the Taliban’s continued commitment to allow for the safe passage of all who wish to travel to and from Afghanistan and encouraged rapid progress, with the onset of winter, on arrangements to establish airports countrywide that can accept commercial air traffic, which are essential to enable the uninterrupted flow of humanitarian assistance.”
Yet U.S. officials have also struggled to secure safe passage for the Afghan relatives of U.S. soldiers, as Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s team acknowledged this week.
“We believe it’s certainly most likely in the dozens,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters. “We’re working this as hard as we can. We take the obligation seriously to our people and to their families.”
Blinken acknowledged they have “been taking out Afghan families of U.S. service members all along,” but underscored State Department officials wanted them to leave months ago when a departure would have been easier to arrange.
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“The airport was functioning, and we were pressing the community that we had identified to leave,” he said. “We are going to continue this effort for as long as people want to leave. But as I’ve said, we made a commitment. We’re making good on that commitment. And that, of course, extends to the family members of U.S. service members who remain.”
