Every day brings new reports that prove the situation in Afghanistan is only getting worse, thanks to the incompetence of the Biden administration.
On Thursday, Politico reported that U.S. officials gave the Taliban a list of names of American citizens, green card holders, and Afghan allies who would need to be granted entry through the terrorist organization’s checkpoints outside the Kabul airport. If this report is true and the United States isn’t able to find these people and evacuate them, the Biden administration just endangered their lives.
During a press conference, President Joe Biden did not deny that the U.S. has handed over names to the Taliban, though he said he wasn’t sure a specific list existed.
“There have been occasions when our military has contacted their military counterparts in the Taliban and said, ‘This,’ for example, ‘this bus is coming through with X number of people on it, made up of the following group of people. We want you to let that bus or that group through,'” he said. “So, yes, there have been occasions like that. To the best of my knowledge, in those cases, the bulk of that has occurred, and they have been let through.”
“I can’t tell you with any certitude that there’s actually been a list of names,” he added. “There may have been. But I know of no circumstance. It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist, that here’s the names of 12 people, they’re coming, let them through. It could very well have happened.”
The problem is the U.S. has no way of guaranteeing that the people on the alleged list will get out of Afghanistan safely. There are an estimated 1,000-plus Americans still stuck behind Taliban checkpoints, and the attacks on the Kabul airport Thursday have slowed down the U.S.’s evacuation efforts. There is a very good chance that many of those people will be left behind.
And if they are, they will almost certainly be hunted down by the Taliban. Several reports from people in Afghanistan confirm that Taliban soldiers have been searching for Afghans who worked with and fought alongside the U.S. and NATO forces. One former interpreter for American Special Forces told the New York Times he saw another man gunned down right in front of him because the Taliban suspected the man had worked with foreign forces. And in a video that circulated on social media last week, Taliban soldiers are seen dragging people from their homes and executing them in the streets.
The Biden administration just made it even easier for the Taliban to identify their targets. This is horrifying, and it should force us to question whether the U.S. officials in charge of this crisis are capable of protecting the country and its people they swore to defend.
