Flights resume from Kabul airport as people scramble to leave Afghanistan

At least 10,000 Afghans who helped the U.S. military — contractors, interpreters and their families — remain in limbo.

“My heart has broken,” said Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., an Army veteran who served in Afghanistan. “Like most vets, I left part of me in Afghanistan.”

“Later we’ll debate the failures of the last 20 yrs, but today our mission is clear: hold the airport as long as possible and get all U.S. citizens and as many Afghan partners out as we can.”

The Biden administration has faced criticism for the slow speed of the Special Immigrant Visa program, for which the vetting and approval process can take more than three years. James Miervaldis, chairman of the organization No One Left Behind, which helps Afghan and Iraqi interpreters resettle in the U.S., told National Public Radio that “things are going very, very poorly” well for the evacuations of Afghans.

“We had dozens of SIV recipients, the interpreters who had their visas in hand and were waiting for the embassy to reach out to them about what evacuation flights they’d be on,” he told NPR on Monday. “They never heard from the embassy, so we started flying them out commercially on our own dime.” 

Miervaldis said that as of a few weeks ago, the total number of SIV applicants was over 20,000.

On Sunday, a State Department spokesperson said: “We are committed to relocating as many SIV applicants as possible out of Afghanistan, increasing the tempo from recent weeks where we have already relocated nearly 2,000 SIV applicants.”

Biden has approved up to $500 million in aid to support refugees and others “at risk as a result of the situation in Afghanistan,” the White House said late Monday. In a speech Monday addressing the predicament of Afghans who helped U.S. forces, Biden claimed that some Afghans were granted U.S. visas but previously chose to stay in Afghanistan.

To that, Miervaldis told NPR, “We strongly disagree with that assessment.”

Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/17/flights-resume-from-kabul-airport-amid-scramble-to-leave-afghanistan.html