The United States is working quickly to improve the squalid conditions at the Qatar base that the U.S. military is using as a safe haven for Kabul evacuees.
Pentagon officials spoke about increased sanitation stations at Al Udeid Air Base in Doha and efforts to provide additional food and water to those evacuees during Tuesday’s press briefing.
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The comments come on the heels of supervisory special agent Colin Sullivan’s email to State Department and Pentagon officials last Friday warning U.S. Central Command with the subject line “Dire conditions at Doha,” and it described a “life-threatening humanitarian disaster,” according to Axios.
“We have made progress in caring for and safeguarding these vulnerable individuals and getting them moving onward,” Army Maj. Gen. William D. “Hank” Taylor, joint staff deputy director for regional operations, said. “We are committed to doing more and to continue to expand and improve our facilities from adding shelter to additional sanitation hand washing stations, refrigerator trucks, providing cold water and the appropriate food, and we’re working with our partners to increase this capacity as soon as possible.”
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby also said officials were “as concerned as anybody” about “terrible sanitation” conditions and blamed them on “the sheer numbers and the speed with which those numbers got there.”
“In many ways” the conditions “are still not at the level of sanitation and good hygiene that we want,” Kirby added, noting that “nobody is making excuses” about the situation.
In particular, the U.S. is installing more than 100 toilets and will be offering 7,000 traditional Afghan meals, three times a day, the Pentagon told Axios.
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The U.S. is using 14 locations in various European and Middle Eastern countries to serve as intermediary locations for Americans and Afghan allies fleeing the Taliban. Many will then board additional flights, sometimes on commercial planes, to travel to four different air bases in the U.S.
Afghan refugees will be housed at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin, Fort Lee in Virginia, Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey, and Fort Bliss in Texas.
