WASHINGTON (AP) — Educated young women, former U.S. military translators and other Afghans most at-risk from the Taliban appealed to the Biden administration to…
WASHINGTON (AP) — Educated young women, former U.S. military translators and other Afghans most at-risk from the Taliban appealed to the Biden administration to get them on evacuation flights as the United States struggled on Wednesday to bring order to the continuing chaos at the Kabul airport. President Joe Biden and his top officials said the U.S. was working to speed up the evacuation, but made no promises how long it would last or how many desperate people it would fly to safety “We don’t have the capability to go out and collect large numbers of people,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters, adding that evacuations would continue “until the clock runs out or we run out of capability.” Afghans in danger because of their work with the American military, and Americans scrambling to get them out, also pleaded with Washington to cut the red tape that they say could strand thousands of vulnerable Afghans if U.S. forces withdraw as planned in the coming days. “If we don’t sort this out, we’ll literally be condemning people to death,” said Marina Kielpinski LeGree, the American head of a nonprofit, Ascend. The organization’s young Afghan female colleagues were in the mass of people waiting for flights at the airport in the wake of days of tear gas and gunshots. The U.S. has rushed in troops, transport planes and commanders to secure the airport, seek Taliban guarantees of safe passage, and ramp up an airlift capable of ferrying between 5,000 and 9,000 people a day. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman described an all-out effort by U.S. officials to get Afghans and allies to safety. “This is an all-hands-on-deck effort and we’re aren’t going to let up,” Sherman said at a State Department news conference. Taliban fighters and checkpoints ringed the airport — barriers for Afghans who fear that their past work with Westerners makes them prime targets of the insurgents.
