President Joe Biden's pledge to evacuate thousands more at-risk Afghans who worked for the US government will run into the cold reality of a fast-closing window of time, insecurity all over Afghanistan and major logistical hurdles.
US soldiers stand guard at Kabul Airport. Photo: AFP
As one US official told Reuters, "too many things have to go 100 percent correctly" to execute the plan to move out those going through the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) process. The Pentagon is aiming to evacuate up to 22,000 SIV applicants, their families and other at-risk people.
But officials and refugee resettlement groups said that number, while admirable, will be much more difficult to reach now that the Taliban have seized the capital Kabul and most of the country.
Groups that work with refugees vigorously disputed Biden's assertion in a speech on Monday (Tuesday NZT) that many applicants had not wanted to leave Afghanistan earlier.
Biden announced his intent to start evacuating at-risk Afghans in July, despite calls by lawmakers and refugee groups to do so months earlier. Since July, only 2,000 Afghans have been flown to the United States.
"It's a nice goal to have, but realistically it's going to be a challenge," the US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said of the 22,000-person benchmark.
The hope is to fly out between 5,000 and 9,000 per day when the Pentagon reaches full capacity with 6,000 troops on the ground in Kabul. Only 4,000 troops have reached Kabul so far.
Evacuating that many Afghans would require them to first be able to get to Kabul and then to the airport through a series of Taliban checkpoints, officials said. The US military would need to maintain some semblance of calm at the airport to allow flights to take off and land, and also need the weather to cooperate.
Order has been restored at Kabul airport after five people were killed on Monday as thousands of desperate Afghans thronged the area. The US military temporarily suspended flights to clear the airfield. The evacuation mission is set to end on 31 August.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Monday that the White House had received reports of people being beaten outside the airport even though the Taliban had agreed to allow civilians safe passage.
Harder to leave
Kim Staffieri, executive director of the Association of Wartime Allies, said the group's contacts outside of Kabul are "terrified" and reporting that in some places, "Taliban fighters are going door to door and pulling people out who are not being seen again."
Jenny Yang, senior vice president at World Relief, a US refugee resettlement agency, said that with the Taliban in control, "it's going to be increasingly difficult for Afghans to leave."
Ideally, officials say the White House would have allowed the Pentagon to start evacuating people weeks earlier using military aircraft and moving them to bases in the United States.
Instead, until last week the SIV applicants were slowly flown out through civilian aircraft and only one base in Virginia was tapped to house them.
The State Department did not formally request the use of more military bases in the United States to house the Afghan applicants until Sunday, with the Taliban already in Kabul, another official said.
Resettlement groups have said for months that at least 80,000 SIV applicants and their families need to be evacuated.
Two US officials told Reuters that Biden was concerned about the political impact of the large number of Afghan refugees flowing into the United States and preferred they be sent to third countries.
Biden, a Democrat, has faced intense political pressure over immigration from opposition Republicans as arrests at the US-Mexico border have soared to 20-year highs in recent months.
Earlier this year, Biden delayed a decision to raise the cap for refugee admissions due to the political optics, US officials told Reuters at the time.
'Appaling' comments
In his speech on Monday, Biden acknowledged concerns about why Afghans had not been evacuated earlier, but said the Afghan government had discouraged him from doing so.
He also appeared to blame the applicants.
"Some of the Afghans did not want to leave earlier, still hopeful for their country," Biden said.
The comments stunned officials and refugee groups, who have been working for years to streamline the lengthy process to get Afghan SIV applicants out of Afghanistan.
People have been stuck waiting for visas for years, said Betsy Fisher, director of strategy at International Refugee Assistance Project.
Afghan people line up outside AZIZI Bank to take out cash as the Bank suffers amid money crises in Kabul, Afghanistan. Photo: AFP
"To me that is extremely, extremely appalling to see that language coming out from the White House," Fisher said.
Some interpreters and translators for the US government had been killed in the last few months waiting to get out, said Krish O'Mara Vignarajah, president of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.
"To suggest that Afghans were not desperately seeking refuge here in the US is utterly inconsistent with our experience," Vignarajah said.
Meanwhile, the UK government has promised that thousands of Afghan refugees will be resettled in the UK.
The new scheme will see up to 20,000 Afghans offered a route to set up home in the UK in the coming years.
In the first year, 5,000 refugees will be eligible - with women, girls and others in need having priority.
Home Secretary Priti Patel urged other countries to help, writing in the Daily Telegraph "we cannot do this alone".
However, opposition parties have criticised the settlement scheme for not going far enough.
The new plan is on top of the existing scheme for interpreters and other staff who worked for the UK.
Parliament has been recalled and Prime Minister Boris Johnson is to open a debate in the House of Commons about the situation in Afghanistan on Wednesday.
Downing Street said Johnson spoke to Biden on Tuesday evening about the evacuation of Kabul.
The leaders "resolved to continue working closely together on this in the days and weeks ahead to allow as many people as possible to leave the country", a spokesperson said.
"The prime minister stressed the importance of not losing the gains made in Afghanistan over the last 20 years, of protecting ourselves against any emerging threat from terrorism, and of continuing to support the people of Afghanistan."
Announcing the new Afghan Citizens' Resettlement Scheme, Johnson said: "We owe a debt of gratitude to all those who have worked with us to make Afghanistan a better place over the last twenty years.
"Many of them, particularly women, are now in urgent need of our help. I am proud that the UK has been able to put in place this route to help them and their families live safely in the UK."
Patel wrote in the Telegraph that she wanted to ensure the UK was doing "everything possible to provide support to the most vulnerable fleeing Afghanistan so they can start a new life in safety in the UK".
She added: "The UK is also doing all it can to encourage other countries to help. Not only do we want to lead by example, we cannot do this alone."
The government emphasised the new scheme would "not compromise on national security" and has promised all those arriving will have to pass "strict security checks".
'Not enough'
Among those to criticise the scheme was Tory MP Tobias Ellwood, chairman of the Defence Select Committee, who told the Daily Mirror it was a "woefully inadequate response", citing the government capping numbers at 5,000 for the first year when "the threat is at its greatest".
Shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds welcomed the government putting a scheme in place but said there needed to be a "more urgent plan of action".
"This proposal does not meet the scale of the challenge," he added.
The Lib Dems foreign affairs spokeswoman Layla Moran said that "20,000 should be the starting point of this scheme, not the target".
And Ian Blackford, the SNP's leader in Westminster, tweeted that the scheme didn't "go anywhere near far or fast enough" and the target should be at least 35,000 to 40,000 Afghan refugees.
A separate route for Afghan nationals to resettle in the UK, the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP), already offers the chance to live in the UK to Afghan staff who worked for the UK government in frontline roles.
Some 5,000 staff - including interpreters - and their families will come to the UK via that scheme this year. Nearly 2,000 have arrived since 22 June.
On Tuesday night an RAF plane carrying British nationals and Afghans landed at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire from Kabul, Afghanistan's capital.
The Foreign Office has advised all remaining UK nationals to leave the country.
Vice Adm Sir Ben Key, who is running the UK's evacuation programme in Afghanistan, said the operation was "operating at full pace" but the changing political situation meant it couldn't "afford to pause and wait".
"We will go for as long as it takes us to either meet the demand, or when the security situation means that we're no longer operating with consent," he added.
Among those trying to flee Taliban rule is a former employee of the British Council in Afghanistan, who fears he may face retaliation for working on behalf of the UK.
The man - whom the BBC is not naming to protect his safety - told BBC Radio 4's The World At One he had applied to a government relocation scheme more than a month ago, but had yet to be accepted.
"Talibans are going around our home, going everywhere and I have already received some notifications, some warnings from them," he said.
"I have cried a lot. I do not cry because I lost my salary or my other things, but I cry for my family. I have three daughters and one wife and I have no one else to support them.
"If I die, who will be there to support them?"
- Reuters/BBC