A U.S. Army Soldier patrols with Afghan soldiers to check on conditions in the village of Yawez in Wardak province, Afghanistan, Feb. 17, 2010. The partnership between U.S. and Afghan soldiers is proving to be a valuable tool in bringing security to the area. The U.S. Soldiers are assigned to Company A, 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team. U.S. Army / photo by Sgt. Russell Gilchrest / February 17, 2010 / Flickr / CC BY 2.0
Back in August, while American troops were frantically evacuating from Afghanistan, the country looked to Biden to see how he would handle the situation.
He made lofty idealistic claims as always – pledging that he would not leave any U.S. citizens behind… But we all know to take Biden’s words with a grain of salt.
This past week, the Biden administration announced that they had evacuated nearly 500 U.S. citizens from Afghanistan since the withdrawal on August 31st, but there are still almost a dozen American Citizens who want to leave and have been left behind.
The state department has announced that they are “in touch” with the remaining U.S. Citizens, and have been working to prepare the necessary documents for travel.
“As Secretary [Anthony] Blinken has said, there is no deadline for this work,” the State Department said in a statement, in an attempt to reaffirm their commitment to getting everyone out.
In addition to the American Citizens being evacuated, the state department has also been working to evacuate and relocate more than 2,200 Afghan allies who worked alongside the U.S. during the war.
Many of them are Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) holders or applicants and are going through a thorough and rigorous screening and vetting process before they even arrive in America.
Once again, another promise made by Biden was that all Afghan evacuees would be thoroughly screened, “At these sites where they are landing, we are conducting thorough scrutiny – security screenings for everyone who is not a U.S. citizen or a lawful permanent resident,” he said.
With the military’s departure and the sweeping takeover of the Taliban, Afghanistan has become a crumbling nation, struggling to put itself back together.
