The top U.S. diplomat said Sunday that the administration thought it would have more time to execute those efforts to relocate Afghans and their families working alongside the U.S. government.
“Because we thought the government wasn’t ready, it wasn’t going to collapse, the military wasn’t about to fade away when it did, we think we could do it with, very quickly, more resources, more effort, there were more people out there, but we would have time to do it effectively, “Fox News Sunday said.
Advocates and bipartisan lawmakers had urged the administration for months to carry out an evacuation, arguing that it was the only way to ensure SIV applicants were safe before all troops were withdrawn from the SIV. United States of Afghanistan.
Blinken said he read and responded “almost immediately” to this dissenting cable and said the State Department “took into account several recommendations that were made on the cable,” but was unable to go into details.
The top U.S. diplomat argued that the Biden administration had “inherited a program that was in a dead end.”
The State Department said there were 17,000 ongoing SIV applicants when President Joe Biden took office.
“No interviews had been done when we took office to get visas for these people dating back to March 2020. Now, in large part, this was due to Covid. We restarted the interview process,” he said. say Blinken, who also noted an increase in staff in Washington and Kabul. to help process applicants.
“We went from about 100 visas a week in March to 800 in July. We issued about 5,000 in total,” he said, adding that they reduced processing times and added an air transport component as part. of “Operation Allied Refuge.” The State Department said last week that 10 shuttle flights with about 2,000 SIV applicants and their families landed at Dulles Airport in the Washington, DC area between July 30. and August 15th.
“But here’s the rub, and I recognize it, there’s a difference between moving quickly to get this program off the ground, getting out of the dead stop it was in and getting it moving … there’s a difference between that and a total evacuation, ”he said.
The administration has been under immense pressure to evacuate not only Afghan SIV applicants, but other vulnerable Afghans who now fear for their lives under the Taliban government. The administration has been working to address the huge massage of people wanting to flee the country on Kabul evacuation flights, as scenes of chaos have been playing out for days outside Hamid Karzai International Airport for days.
On Sunday, the U.S. embassy in Kabul issued instructions on who should arrive at the airport and noted that SIV applicants “will receive instructions on the next steps.”
CNN’s Kylie Atwood contributed to this report.