400 Americans are still stranded in Afghanistan, a much larger number than originally claimed by the White House. Washington Free Beacon. 363 are American citizens while 176 are US permanent residents. The State Department said that they had evacuated 218 US citizens and 131 permanent residents during the evacuation in August. The source for the number of American citizens comes from congressional staffers and was confirmed by Representative Darrell Issa. The United States has established communications with the Taliban but it is unclear if the citizens will be evacuated soon.
My Comment:
There are a few inconsistencies with this story. Other sources say that the 176 permanent residents are just the number of people that want to leave, not a separate class. That was from CNN so I automatically don't trust it, but it's very possible that the error is on the Washington Free Beacon.
Second the source of this story was anonymous in both cases so as usual, there is the disclaimer that anonymous sources are often wrong. Though a Congressman did confirm the story I wouldn't be surprised if some of the details are wrong.
Still, it's amazing to me that we left so many people behind in Afghanistan. Our evacuation there was an utter disaster. Instead of getting our people out or the people that helped us in our 20 year war with the Taliban, we kind of just took whoever was there. A lot of these people were not vetted and we have no idea who they are. It's very possible that some of them were Taliban, al-Qaeda or even ISIS members.
Keep in mind that these numbers don't count the number of translators and other green card holders left behind. These people aren't counted in the official statistics and were left behind just like these US citizens.
I don't believe that much if anything is being done to get these people out. Some of them probably want to remain for their own reasons but the rest are stuck there against their will. The Taliban seems to have bigger problems and are not interested in tracking down these people and sending them home. And even if they were the ways out of Afghanistan are limited.
The Biden White House, such as it is, has other problems as well. Biden himself seems to be totally out to lunch and have very little interest in foreign policy. Indeed, I expect them to totally ignore this story as nobody in the media is likely to question people on it. Biden, or more accurately, his staff, is focused on the Coronavirus, the economy and various elections. They have little incentive to actually try and get these people out...
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