A “majority” of special immigrant visa applicants were left in Afghanistan due to the difficulty presented by the security threat at the airport, the Taliban’s checkpoints, and the airport’s design, according to a new report.
The SIV applicants “all worked alongside the U.S. during the 20-year war,” Politico reports, noting that in the private briefing to reporters, the State Department official said those who helped in the evacuation effort are “haunted” by the difficult decisions they were forced to make on the ground and “by the people we were not able to help depart.”
The senior State official noted in the call Wednesday there were many impediments to evacuating everyone who wanted out of Afghanistan, namely threats by ISIS-K, the fortified design of the airport, the Taliban’s “unpredictable” guarding at checkpoints, and viral communications among refugees.
While no estimate for the SIVs left behind is yet available, the official did say “it's the majority of them, just based on anecdotal information about the populations we were able to support.”
One reason for why so many SIVs remain in Afghanistan, the official noted, is “every credential we tried to provide electronically was immediately disseminated to the widest possible pool. And so it was no longer a viable credential to differentiate among populations, and we simply did not have the people for that time to be able to try to sift through that crowd of people demanding access.” (Politico)
The Biden administration evacuated more than 120,000 people but there are still between 100-200 Americans trapped in the country, according to Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
In a separate report, a White House official told Politico they are "absolutely appalled and literally horrified we left Americans there."
"It was a hostage rescue of thousands of Americans in the guise of a NEO [noncombatant evacuation operations], and we have failed that no-fail mission," the official said.
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