Veterans groups, evacuees plead for action: ‘We are in some kind of jail’
NAVY Times 9/7/2021
https://www.navytimes.com/flashpoints/afghanistan/2021/09/07/veterans-groups-evacuees-plead-for-action-we-are-in-some-kind-of-jail/American veterans groups and others are pleading for U.S. and Taliban action on a weeklong standoff that has left hundreds of would-be evacuees from Afghanistan desperate to board waiting charter flights out of a northern Afghan airport.
These groups say several dozen Americans, along with a much larger number of U.S. green card holders and family members, are among those waiting to board pre-arranged charter flights at the airport in Mazar-e-Sharif that are being prevented from leaving.
“We think we are in some kind of jail,” said one Afghan woman among the would-be evacuees gathered in Mazar-e-Sharif. She said elderly American citizens and parents of Afghan-Americans in the U.S. are among those being blocked from boarding evacuation planes.
The woman, an employee of a U.S.-based nonprofit, Ascend, that works with Afghan women and girls, spoke Tuesday on condition of anonymity for her security. She said those in her group have proper passports and visas, but that the Taliban currently are blocking them from entering the airport.
She said she has been waiting for eight days. At one point last week, alarm spread through the women’s side of her hotel in the city when warnings came that the Taliban were searching the would-be evacuees on the men’s side, and had taken some away.
“I am scared if they split us and not let us leave,” she said. “If we can’t get out of here, something wrong will happen. And I am afraid of that.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday the U.S. was working with the Taliban to resolve the matter. He rejected an assertion from a Republican lawmaker, Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, over the weekend that the standoff at Mazar-e-Sharif was turning into a “hostage situation” for American citizens in the group.
