Americans And Allies Left Behind In Afghanistan

It seems inevitable that the U.S., after twenty years of military presence in Afghanistan that was producing diminishing returns, needed to wind down one of its longest foreign wars. 

Because multiple administrations over those twenty years proceeded in a way that failed to build a functional Afghan government that could stand on its own two feet, it quickly fell to the Taliban when U.S. forces left by a self-imposed August 31, 2021 deadline it announced well in advance. Fundamentalist and ruthlessly violent Taliban rule will ruin the lives of millions of Afghan people, especially women and our former allies, who could finally receive educations and a better life under the U.S. sponsored Afghan government.

The Taliban's unqualified victory does present a glimmer of hope, however, that roughly four decades of continuous civil war in the country, sometimes hotter and sometimes cooler, will finally come to an end. These four decades of war have left Afghanistan, which was briefly a developing country on the brink of modernization in the 1970s, as the least developed country in the world outside of Africa and a major global source of refugees.

Also, because the U.S. exit was executed in a clumsy way, it left many Americans and many of our local allies who are now at life or desk risk due to their support for us behind. As Stars and Stripes, an independent newspaper with a military beat explains:

“The administration by its own account left 600 Americans behind — over 400 of whom want to leave" and the "State Department also has contacted another 244 U.S. citizens in Afghanistan who “are not ready to depart either because they want to stay or aren’t ready” to leave yet[.]"

In addition to the hundreds of Americans, thousands of vulnerable Afghans also remain in Afghanistan while they await special immigrant visas, which are given to allies who helped U.S. forces during their time in that country. . . . “The total number of SIV's in the pipeline is 28,000, according to our records, of which 8,555 have come out with their family members,” he said. “So that would suggest there's a significant number of SIVs still in Afghanistan.” 

[Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin] Kahl said the Biden administration is trying “to get them out and hold the Taliban to their pledge for safe passage with people with documents which should include SIVs.”

The administration, unconscionably, has blamed its own red tape for leaving almost 20,000 Afghan allies behind.

The problem, however, is “the SIV process was not designed for an emergency — it's very slow,” he said. “Typically it took a year or two [and] nothing was done in the previous administration to speed that up. At the beginning of the Biden administration, the State Department took some steps that shrunk the time to about eight months — still way too long.”

The Pentagon has also taken steps to help the State Department process SIV applications faster, creating “an enormous database … to try to speed up the confirmation of employment” necessary for special immigrant visas, Kahl said.

Meanwhile, about 53,000 Afghans are awaiting visa processing at eight military installations in the United States and about another 3,500 at bases in the Middle East and Europe, chief Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Monday.

More than 6,000 have completed the process and have resettled in the U.S. since evacuation efforts began in late July, Kirby said.

Honestly, it is in the best interests of the Taliban to let the Special Immigrant Visa applicants and their families migrate to the U.S.  These individuals are among the most capable people in the country with an inclination to be pro-Western and anti-Taliban. Their departure would greatly weaken any potential insurgency against the Taliban by people who felt allegiance to the U.S. installed Afghan government that the Taliban toppled or that seeks a new regime to replace the Taliban along the same liens. In short, allowing them to leave would remove a thorn from their sides. 

It would also discourage the U.S. from considering future involvement of any kind in Afghanistan out of guilt for the harm it caused by leaving so many people behind.

But whether the Taliban will see the wisdom in this course of action, and allow it to overcome a desire to inflict vengeance on people who provided aid and comfort to their deadly foreign backed enemies for two decades, remains to be seen.