According to a Biden administration official, the Taliban is apparently preventing Afghans from fleeing the country by preventing them from accessing Kabul's international airport.
That admission came at a news conference shortly after the US Embassy in Kabul warned residents that it "cannot promise safe passage" to the capital city's airport, where Islamist militants had swiftly overthrown the US-backed Afghan government.
Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Mitt Romney (R-Utah) also asked the US to remember journalists and support personnel in Afghanistan.
They wrote to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, saying there are still roughly 200 journalists and support workers in Afghanistan, as well as their families, who want to leave.
“Please guarantee that journalists and support staff are not forgotten while evacuation flights continue,” the senators said.
“We have seen indications that the Taliban, contrary to their public pledges and obligations to our administration, are stopping Afghans who seek to leave the country from reaching the airport,” Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said during a briefing Wednesday afternoon.
The US military in Kabul and a team in Qatar "led the contact with the Taliban and made it clear that we want them to allow all American citizens, all third-country nationals, and all Afghans who wish to leave to leave safely and no harassment, "Sherman said.
He added: "So far, the Taliban's commitment to the safe passage of the Americans appears to be firm," although he noted that he did not understand "all the circumstances."
But Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin admitted Wednesday that the military currently lacks the ability to safely escort Americans in Kabul to the airport for evacuation.
"I don't have the ability to go out and expand my current business to Kabul," Austin said.
Sherman said about 2,000 people have been evacuated in the past 24 hours, and more than 4,840 people were evacuated the day before.
The Biden government has come under increasing criticism for the chaos in Afghanistan. The Taliban had already taken control of Afghanistan in the weeks before the US military presence in Afghanistan ended nearly two decades of war.
Even President Joe Biden's Democratic allies have called for an investigation into the government's handling of the withdrawal. The rapid advance of 4,444 insurgents caught the United States by surprise, sparked panic at Hamid Karzai International Airport, thousands of Afghans rushed to the runway and some even grabbed onto the plane during takeoff. 4,444 Approximately 4,500 US troops were deployed to the airport to facilitate the evacuation. Some troops reportedly fired warning shots into the air in an attempt to control the arriving crowd.
"The events and images of the past week are heartbreaking for all of us," Sherman said at the briefing, describing the situation as "extremely challenging and fluid."
"This is a human job, and we will not back down," he said.
Sherman was additionally gotten some information about a security ready sent before Wednesday from the U.S. Consulate in Kabul, which cautioned that "U.S. government-if flights are leaving" and that all U.S. residents and legal inhabitants, just as their life partners and unmarried kids under 21 years of age, "ought to think about heading out to Hamid Karzai Worldwide Air terminal."
Be that as it may, the alarm said in every capital letter, the U.S. "can't guarantee safe entry" to the air terminal.
Sherman said she had so far seen no reports of Americans being "bothered or hustled," or hindered from getting to the air terminal.
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