At least 1,500 American citizens remain in Afghanistan...with 500 more expected to depart soon.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said the government was trying to track down around 1,000 American citizens still believed to be in Afghanistan who had not responded to a frantic flurry of emails, phone calls or other messages offering to evacuate them.
I'm wary of saying anything concrete since I'm not on the ground in Afghanistan, but wtf is going on with these people? It's bad enough that there are so many Americans who ignored advice months ago to get out of Dodge, but why on earth would anyone be staying behind at this point?
In other news, the Times, using numbers from the Association of Wartime Allies, claims that there were more than 300,000 Afghans who assisted us during our 20-year war and deserve our help in being evacuated. Of these, about 250,000 remain and still need to be airlifted out.
Maybe so, but I'd take this with a grain of salt. The AWA has been pushing this number for months, but as near as I can tell they're the only ones. As you can imagine, it's a very difficult number to estimate, which means that it's easy to produce nearly any figure you want. The AWA may be right, but other estimates I've seen seem to hover around 80-100,000, of which we've already evacuated about 60,000 or so. If that estimate is correct, it means we have 20-40,000 Afghans left to evacuate.
Obviously I don't have any independent way to estimate these numbers myself. I just want to point out that the AWA has been alone in its estimate for months, and the fact that the Times has finally decided to write a story about them doesn't make their estimate any more (or less) credible than it's ever been.
1) How many Afghans have left the country via overland routes?
2) How many Afghans still in country perceive themselves to be in such danger as to be willing to leave their homeland?
3) Is there likely to be an armed resistance to the Taliban, and how many at-risk Afghans might join it?
Apparently, Afghans have been leaving for a while. In 2020, 1.5M Afghans went to Pakistan, 780,000 for Iran.
https://www.american.edu/sis/news/20210823-where-do-afghanistans-refugees-go.cfm
Last report I've read (talkingpointsmemo) is that the US has evac'd 102,000 civilians. Of course, the number the United States is absolutely required to evac continues to rise, so we are bound to fail. Because of the well-known journo principles of "balance" and "both sides". 🙁
I'm wary of saying anything concrete since I'm not on the ground in Afghanistan, but wtf is going on with these people?
Some may have ties to local people (spouses, partners, lovers, parents etc) who don't have visas and cannot depart. I'd like to think I wouldn't leave my S.O. behind if I were in that situation. Some may be in (remote) areas and can't get to Kabul or the airport. Some may not want to leave behind businesses.
Lots of conceivable reasons.
I think Kevin's comment/question has to do with the 1,000 who won't respond to the efforts to contact them. At least, that's my question.
Sure. Could be. I'm just saying it doesn't surprise me that not all Americans want to leave (as crazy as that sounds to most people). I guess I find it similarly unsurprising that some American haven't bothered to return Uncle Sam's call.
I can imagine if you've made a decision to stay despite the evacuation order, you also don't want contacts with the US gov't in your cell phone records in case it gets confiscated by Taliban officials or something.
We need a new batch of Johns Walker Lindh.
The next big question is to what extent the US and the West will provide financial aid to the new regime. Personally I’d support a policy of neglect. There is no good reason for the US government to engage with the country at all. If there are US companies which want to do business with them, I wouldn’t view them in a favorable light, but neither do I think the government should impose a trade embargo. It hasn’t worked in Cuba and it won’t be useful in Afghanistan either. But there is no reason to help them at all.
And for gods sake, do not sell weapons to opposition / rebel groups.
Aug 26 (Reuters) - The United States and allies urged people to move away from Kabul airport on Thursday due to the threat of a terror attack by Islamic State (IS) militants as Western troops hurry to evacuate as many people as possible before an Aug. 31 deadline.
I suppose this is the endgame. Such a target rich environment won't be left alone for long.
I haven't really seen speculation on this, but, I can't imagine it's all that difficult for highly armed fighters to take down a commercial jet. So, there'll be no extension absent the permission of the Taliban, and that doesn't appear to be forthcoming. You would think money would do the trick, but I don't get the impression the Taliban need our cash.
On the other hand, the Taliban sure wants their assets in the United States to be unfrozen, so yeah, cash apparently does matter.
By definition, arms dealers have no morals. I'm sure they're already exploring sales opportunities to the Taliban as well as to any insurgents that may pop up.
Afghanistan is a county of 39 million
And the AWA is saying 400,000 have helped Americans in the 20 year war?
So we're expecting to evacuate over 1% over the entire population?
Many of whom may have not only bilingual skills but SOME education?
How naive can we be?
This maps in the story from the BBC may be helpful
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-57933979
The government only controls 7 districts as it stands now the Taliban controls 391
In July the government controlled and the Taliban 90
In that SHORT MONTH do we think the Taliban did NOTHING to those who they suspect helped the Americans from those districts?
We have NO DEFINITIVE CLUE as to the exact number of Americans in Afghanistan. How do we know how many Afghanis helped us?
A Treaty was signed and highly touted by all. We signed that treaty
WE have, for months advised people to get out. The Afghan Army collapsed, the Afghan President left the country. Unless we were to OCCUPY the country there is no safe way to get all the Americans out if they are still roaming the countryside.
We want to ignore personal responsibility. We EXPECT our government to rescue us even when we ignore their warnings - even when we are expected to register with the Embassy when we arrive and we ignore even THAT?
Where's the uprising from the Afghan people over Taliban control? Only several provinces are fighting them off. That too will end.
I do NOT want to sound like an American life isn't worth saving, but when we can't get our own people in our own country to save their lives by getting a vaccination then WE apparently don't give a damn about life
👍🏻
"And the AWA is saying 400,000 have helped Americans in the 20 year war? So we're expecting to evacuate over 1% over the entire population?"
If that's true they have a very wide definition of the word "help" No way is it going to be possible to airlift that many people even with no deadline.
The window is closing. Explosion
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/26/afghanistan-kabul-taliban-live-updates/#link-I54NWGIRF5H4VEL7B5KA2NXVTA
"A number of U.S. allies announced an end to evacuations from the Kabul airport Thursday, citing intelligence of an imminent terror threat and a looming deadline for U.S. withdrawal."
"Pentagon spokesman John Kirby confirmed that an explosion took place outside Kabul’s airport on Thursday, following repeated warnings of a threat by the United States and its allies.
There were no immediate reports about casualties, though large crowds of Afghans have been gathering daily at the airport in hopes of fleeing the country following the Taliban takeover.
A U.S. official told Reuters the blast was caused by a suicide bomber."
I think it's good that we got out as many as we did. TFG would not have done so.
The 250K number is being established as the target BECAUSE it is very unlikely to be achieved. Then the War Press can claim they were right all along and that this evacuation was, sadly, very botched indeed, just as we said.
Like anybody cares. I could care less if the Afghan morons live or die.
I guess that means the United States needs to evac the entire Afghan army and police forces, such as they were, plus their (maybe extended) families? Obviously, this would be a very bitter outcome, given that little, if any, fight seems to have been put up by the Afghan armed forces to keep their (or any) non-Taliban government in power.
Not that it matters, but these particular Afghans might find less of a welcome in the US than the translators etc. I know I'm sounding like a Republican, and I apologize.
For all the reasons Jasper said, but also, I'm sure a lot of people are there as NGO humanitarian reasons, and wish to help the Afghan people regardless of who's in charge. The world isn't going to stop working in Afghanistan just because of regime change, especially those Americans who disapproved of the US war to begin with.
Re the 300,000 afghans who helped us.
Of course there are 300,000 afghans who " helped" us and actually way more that that. There were around 300,000 in the Afghan armed forces alone, not even counting their families.
But nobody had ever said we were going to be evacuating that many and especially accepting them here. We never promised that - at least I never heard any such number - by trump or biden.
It was always known that many afghans who helped us in some way were going to be left behind. We gave special visas only to the ones who more directly helped us like the translators.
Note that if we had promised to get the entire afghsn army and their families out, maybe they would still be fighting as then they would be fighting for themselves, not just to give us time to get out people other than themselves. And maybe you can argue that morally we should have promised that.
But such a discussion would have been for when we were deciding the policy months ago , not now. And realistically the American public is OK with the goal we set of getting out Americans and maybe 80 to 100,000 afghans.
Whether we accomplish that goal is relevant. Changing the goalposts now is not.
You are really dedicated to shilling here. Yeah, the MSM overreacted but this over correction.
At a guess? Trying to get relatives out. Not all American citizens are white guys.