Newly created non-governmental groups and ad hoc volunteer organizations have been working 24 hours a day to identify Afghans and get their name into the hands of the State Department, while trying to find charter planes that could go to Kabul.
Even Senate aides have been on the phone with U.S. citizens while they have been detained, harassed and attacked by the Taliban.
Lawmakers have contacted Marines on the ground in Kabul and their contacts at the State Department and the Pentagon to try to streamline the process. While the U.S. military has intensified its operations to evacuate people, outside groups are trying to coordinate charter flights that could complement those efforts.
But Taliban checkpoints and chaos at gates outside the airport have prevented many thousands from entering the airport, let alone on planes, subjecting them to the harsh conditions and violence of the Taliban. . Difficulties have pushed advocates and lawmakers to urge President Joe Biden to extend the August 31 deadline to complete the withdrawal of U.S. troops, arguing that there is not enough time to pull everyone out in the next two weeks.
“We have so many rejected people, especially women,” said Stacia George, director of the Carter Center’s Conflict Resolution Program, adding that she works with a network of trusted people to try to arrange airport transportation for those who they are at risk.
The reality on the ground
Congress offices across the country have taken on thousands of cases over the past week that have come from friends and relatives of people trapped in Afghanistan, including U.S. citizens fearful of trying to flee, Afghan interpreters working with the U.S. military and Afghan women now risk under Taliban rule.
Congress aides say they have been in contact with Americans who are afraid to go through the Taliban checkpoints in Kabul. Others have succeeded but not without harassment and violence.
Assistants to Sen. Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, said his office has listened to more than 1,000 people seeking help, including hundreds of U.S. citizens. Their employees have been on the phone with the Americans as they were physically attacked by the Taliban while on the streets of Kabul, aides said.
Rep. Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Navy veteran Democrat, said his office has helped more than 500 people who have come to him through veterans, diplomats, activists and others desperate to get his friends and relatives out. .
He spoke to a woman in Afghanistan who is the wife of a green card holder and is six months pregnant with a 5-year-old son.
“They waited for hours with the heat burning until she got so sick she had to go to the hospital and couldn’t get through the door,” Moulton said. “The Taliban have already come home, so they don’t want to go home.”
Moulton, who served in Iraq, said he had spoken Friday at Kabul airport with Marines, who said they needed more troops on the ground and more time to complete the evacuation.
“An hour ago I spoke to a member of the navy who said to me,‘ You have to get them to extend the deadline; we will stay here as long as it takes, but we have to finish this job, “Moulton said.
Representative Carol Miller, a Republican from West Virginia, has been talking to people who are trapped in the country. CNN spoke directly to a person who described him trying to go to the airport to leave with his family, but who was forced to return home after it was too unsafe to continue.
“We try to do everything we can through our government channels, but we also try to keep communication alive for them,” Miller told CNN.
Representative Tom Malinowski, a former State Department official, has been helping to connect Afghans on the ground with some outside groups that have been coordinating charter flights out of the country alongside the U.S. government.
But the New Jersey Democrat admits there are now so many things out of the control of U.S. lawmakers. Malinowski said he has heard directly that Afghans were beaten on their way to the door.
“It took days,” Malinowski said of some who have come out. “Then we also had a lot of people who came to the door, after the U.S. State Department asked him to come to the airport, and then the U.S. Marines or, in some cases, the British or the Turks put it aside. It was yesterday. I know the administration was trying to get it. “
Congress offices have been sent an e-mail from the State Department to process the applications they have received to evacuate people from Afghanistan, with the aim of including them in the lists needed to obtain permits. of flights. The number of cases is easily in the thousands and Congress offices are working through them, just as they would for a voter who had a problem with a Social Security check.
The office of Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a New Hampshire Democrat, says she has filed nearly 500 applications. Representative Jason Crow, a Democrat from Colorado, has helped process more than 800 visa applications, a spokeswoman said.
Desperate to leave
Non-governmental groups have focused on helping eliminate Afghans who applied for the special immigrant visa program and served alongside the U.S. military, as well as other vulnerable Afghans, especially women. , which are also at risk under the Taliban government.
There have been some successes with the evacuations. No One Left Behind, a group driven to help Afghan performers through the Special Visa for Immigrants program, announced a new joint coalition that got its first flight on Friday.
The Biden administration said it had evacuated about 13,000 people on government flights since last Saturday, in addition to facilitating the departure of at least 11 charter flights. Flights were halted on Friday for at least eight hours, but resumed and defenders expect more charter flights to land at Kabul airport this weekend.
George of the Carter Center, who previously worked in Afghanistan with the U.S. International Development Agency, has been sitting with her husband, a veteran, last week, sending inquiries and contacts to try to get Afghans to be out of danger.
“The moment we saw the direction of things, the people who served in Afghanistan began to mobilize,‘ Okay, how do we work to get ex-comrades out? “” he told CNN.
George has received calls from people he knows, who will then dial people who worked for the U.S. government and who need to evacuate with their families. It will collect your information and send it to the State Department or to the most appropriate avenue.
Deepa Alagesan, who is part of the International Refugee Assistance Project litigation team, said dozens of her clients, including special immigrant visa applicants, are at the airport trying to make flights evacuation, some waiting more than 24 hours in painful conditions.
“Some customers have made the tough decision to go back and go home because they are very worried about dying in the crowds outside the airport before they get inside for an evacuation flight,” Alagesan said.
Yalda Afif, program manager for the refugee assistance organization HIAS, has been sending calls from people desperate to evacuate. “They know they will be killed there and if they don’t leave, they will kill them later,” he said, adding that people have described beatings, stampede and shootings outside Kabul airport.
“A major bottleneck”
There have been several charter flights coordinated with the U.S. military to try to help Afghans get out, though they have not yet resumed. Defenders say they expect charter flights to resume as soon as Saturday.
One group, the Afghanistan Evacuation Coordination Team, is a newly created volunteer organization that has organized several charter planes ready to enter Afghanistan, said Evanna Hu, the company’s chief executive officer. ‘artificial intelligence Omelas, who co-directs the group. Hu said the group has a list of 200 to 300 people who have worked for Western non-governmental and media organizations.
But some of the people the group has tried to help have been sidelined, even American citizens, underscoring the danger that still lies on the ground. Hu said he has spoken to some people who were turned down at the door or who refused entry because they had gone to the wrong door. A woman, a dual citizen authorized to go with another NATO country, was beaten while trying to enter the airport.
“He didn’t even come close,” Hu said. “About 200 yards from the doors, she was whipped. She sent me pictures of the whip marks on her hand.”
There is “a big bottleneck” in getting U.S. allies out of Afghanistan, said Jennifer Quigley, chief human affairs director at Human Rights First, who noted the chaos and violence outside the airport.
“It’s the crowds that have accumulated and the volatility and violence of the situation,” he said.
In one case, the aunt of someone in the United States, who is a U.S. citizen, tried for 12 hours to get to the airport gate, but was injured by the crowd and eventually had to give up. and return home, according to Quigley.
Only two of the nine families the Quigley organization worked with to help them get out of Afghanistan arrived at the airport entry point.
“It’s not acceptable,” Quigley said of the lack of U.S.-managed crowd control on the outskirts of the airport. “If you say you evacuate people, you’re not really going to do it because they can’t pass.”