[American University, funded largely with U.S. government money, attempted to evacuate thousands of students, faculty members and graduates but was mostly unsuccessful. Afghans associated with the school are considered “at risk” and were eligible for U.S. evacuation flights, according to a person coordinating evacuation efforts in Kabul who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter. A deadly 2016 Taliban attack on the institution killed 15.]
Embassy staff had collected his
family’s information weeks before in preparation for a possible evacuation. But
after he was told on Aug. 15 to leave the embassy’s grounds, “nobody called,
nobody emailed.”
“Everyone knows where I worked,
that I worked with the Americans,” said the contractor, who ran a shop at the
embassy and who, like others in this report, spoke on the condition of
anonymity out of fear of reprisals. He eventually fled to the home of a
relative in a neighboring province. “I gave my mother my embassy badges and
told her to put them in a box and bury it in the garden.”
Roughly 2,500 U.S. Embassy
employees were among the 120,000 people the United States evacuated by air from
Afghanistan, according to President Biden. But the operation left “many of our
longtime partners” behind, according to a State Department spokesperson. One
person familiar with the matter said they included about 2,000 U.S. Embassy
contractors and immediate family members, some of whom who had worked at the
embassy for more than a decade. The State Department declined to comment on
that number.
For those who were not
evacuated, Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland said at a recent news conference, “we’re looking at all possible options,
but we’re also conveying to them that their safety and security is of paramount
concern to us.”
Biden described the operation as an
“extraordinary success,” but thousands of Afghans considered
vulnerable and eligible for evacuation fell through the cracks. They include
American University of Afghanistan students and graduates, applicants for
special immigrant visas and members of Afghanistan’s Special Forces who fought
closely with the United States.
With the departure of U.S. forces
from Afghanistan, many Afghans who felt threatened by the Taliban takeover now
say they are in greater danger.
Among the tens of thousands who
managed to reach the airport and get on planes out of the country were 5,500
Americans, thousands of citizens and diplomats of U.S. allies, and thousands of
Afghans who worked for the United States as interpreters, translators or other
roles, according to Biden.
Planning for the evacuation began
weeks before Kabul fell to the Taliban in mid-August, but the effort began to
stumble almost as soon as it started.
U.S. officials did not expect Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to flee the
country so quickly and for Kabul’s security forces to collapse, leaving the
civilian side of the airport unguarded.
Ghani’s departure as the Taliban
entered Kabul on Aug. 15 is “really what threw a wrench into the whole thing,”
said a person familiar with evacuation planning.
“We made every effort to know who
we were dealing with and what the numbers were, making sure we had proper
resources on the ground to try to assist them. But the whole situation kind of
spiraled into chaos,” said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity
because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The airlift is now complete, U.S.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, but other evacuation efforts are ongoing. “We’ve gotten many out, but many are still
there,” he said. “We will keep working to help them. Our commitment to them has
no deadline.”
When the last U.S. evacuation plane
left Afghanistan, Azada said, she became a prisoner in her own home.
The 23-year-old had recently
graduated from American University of Afghanistan in Kabul, a distinction she
fears has placed her name on a Taliban “kill list.” Now, she’s too afraid to walk down the street.
Over the past two weeks, she held
out hope as her university repeatedly emailed advisories for an evacuation that
never came.
[In
Kabul, celebration and dread the day after U.S. troops withdraw]
American University, funded largely
with U.S. government money, attempted to evacuate thousands of students,
faculty members and graduates but was mostly unsuccessful. Afghans associated
with the school are considered “at risk” and were eligible for U.S. evacuation
flights, according to a person coordinating evacuation efforts in Kabul who
spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter. A deadly 2016 Taliban attack on the institution killed 15.
But those connected to the
university were not prioritized as “high risk,” meaning it was up to the school
to navigate Taliban checkpoints without U.S. or NATO help and make it into the
military side of the airport, the person said.
Azada received a message directing
her to get to the airport. She waited for hours, she said, only to be turned
back. The last message she received read simply: “The operation has been
canceled. Wait at home; we are working on another plan.”
“I can’t just sit at home and wait
for the Taliban to come impose their rules,” said Azada, who spoke on the
condition she be identified by a nickname because of fears for her safety.
“What is going to happen to us?”
Azada once led a life full of work
and weekends with friends meeting up at Kabul’s trendy restaurants and cafes.
Now she spends her days in her bedroom on her phone chatting with friends or reading.
“Most of the time, we are just
talking about how do we get out of here and save our lives,” she said of her
Facebook and WhatsApp groups. “But we also share memories about how life was
beautiful.” She spoke of the dorm room dance parties she threw with her
girlfriends.
“Those days will never happen
again,” she said, “but I’m really thankful we had them.”
Ian Bickford, president of American
University of Afghanistan, said efforts to relocate students, graduates and
faculty members continue. “It has becomes a more gradual and incremental
effort, but we are in it for the long haul,” he said. “And we continue to
appeal for U.S. support.”
Asked about the American University
students, the State Department spokesman said he couldn’t “speak to specific
cases … for privacy and other considerations.” He said the U.S. evacuation was
aimed at addressing “the needs of those most at risk, including women and
girls, journalists, members of religious and ethnic minorities, and others.”
On the day Kabul fell to the
Taliban, an engineer who worked for the U.S. Army was scheduled to have his
final interview at the U.S. Embassy for an expedited visa.
The interview was set for 10:45
a.m., but the embassy had begun dismissing its staff an hour before, as news
broke that the militants had reached the city’s gates.
The engineer, in the final stages
of processing for a special immigrant visa, should have been eligible for an
evacuation flight. His family camped outside the airport for three nights, he
said, sleeping in an open park littered with garbage. He managed to reach the
airport gates twice but was turned away both times. Taliban leaders had barred
Afghans who didn’t hold foreign passports or green cards from leaving the
country.
“It felt like after all that time,
[the United States] just doesn’t care about us,” he said.
Neighbors warned him that local
Taliban fighters were asking questions about who he worked for and whether he
was still in Kabul. The inquiries were enough to scare him off the streets. But
unable to leave his home, his family is running dangerously low on food. “For
days, all we have had is bread, tea and sugar,” he said.
“My children, they don’t
understand,” he said. His son is 3; his daughter is 1. “But my wife is just
crying: Why did you work with those people? Look how you brought us under
threat!”
A State Department spokesman
declined to comment on the engineer’s case, citing privacy. The spokesman said
the evacuation prioritized U.S. citizens, legal permanent residents, special
immigrant visa applicants and other Afghans at risk.
“After 20 years of investment in
Afghanistan, this was a very large pool of people,” the spokesman said. U.S.
troops and others on the ground “did the best they could, working
around-the-clock to evacuate as many people as possible,” despite “many
constraints” including the threat of Islamic State attacks to the Kabul
airport.
Moving forward, the spokesman said,
“we will hold the Taliban to its pledge to let people freely depart
Afghanistan.”
An Afghan Special Forces officer
was on the list of people to evacuate but wasn’t able to get inside the
military side of the airport. He said U.S. forces tried to extract him and a
few hundred other Afghan commandos, but the logistics repeatedly fell apart.
“The Americans would call us and
tell us to gather here. And then they would say, ‘No, that is the wrong place.
Go to another location.’ And then they would say, ‘Come back tomorrow,’ ” he
said.
“Of course I’m angry. We were on
the front line for the United States in this war,” he said. “They told us you
will be the best of the best in the Afghan army, and now look.”
When Kabul fell, the officer said,
he did not want to flee. “I called my [foreign] sources and told them, if you
support us, we can fight against the Taliban in Kabul. We have the training, we
have the ability, we can be the resistance.”
But he said there was no response
to his offers. As the Taliban tightened its grip on his neighborhood, he fled
to a friend’s house and then, a few days later, to another home. The night the
last U.S. evacuation plane took off, he and a friend went to watch the Taliban
gunfire from the roof.
“He said to me: ‘Everything is
finished. Now what?’ ”
After his experience of the past
two weeks, he said, he can’t imagine trusting the United States enough to
partner with its military again.
[Fear
and anticipation on the streets of Kabul as Afghans adapt to Taliban rule]
The U.S. Embassy employee said the
silence from his longtime employer is unnerving. “We are still waiting to see
what they will do for us,” he said. “We don’t know, exactly.”
But while the withdrawal has left
him “heartbroken,” he said, he remains proud of his former employment.
“It was not a mistake,” he said. “I
will never say that. Even if the Taliban threaten to kill me, I wouldn’t. No
one has helped me the way the Americans have.”
Azada has been consuming all the
books in her home since the United States withdrew. Years ago, she was given a
copy of “The Diary of Anne Frank.” The book had never interested her. But last
week, she began reading it.
“I feel like it’s really relatable
to my situation,” she said. “The girl was really strong. I admire how she
adapted to a life that she didn’t deserve.”
Azada hasn’t finished the book, but
she thinks she knows how it ends.
“I heard she doesn’t make it.”
