Consider This from NPR - The Desperate Effort To Get Afghan Allies To Safety

Episode Date: August 19, 2021

As many as 100,000 Afghans — those who worked with the U.S. military over the years, and their families — are trying to get out of the country. But access to the Kabul airport is controlled by the Taliban, and the American military says evacuating American citizens is its 'first priority.' Among the Afghans trying to flee are those who've applied for or been granted a Special Immigrant VISA. James Miervaldis, chairman of No One Left Behind — which helps Afghan and Iraqi interpreters resettle in the U.S. — tells NPR the process has been frustratingly slow. For Afghans and the families who do make it out, those who wind up in the United States will be offered help from organizations like the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. Krish O'Mara Vignarajah, the group's president and CEO, tells NPR how the resettlement process unfolds. This episode also features stories from family members of Afghan refugees already living in the U.S., which which first aired on NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday, with production from Hiba Ahmad and Ed McNulty. Correspondent Eleanor Beardsley in Paris reported on Afghan refugees in France. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Avista Helmandi's parents used to tell her how the pomegranates tasted better in Afghanistan. The ice cream, too. They tell me about their childhood and the greatness of their homeland and the city of Kandahar. Avista is a student at the University of California in Davis. Her parents arrived in the U.S. years ago as refugees of the Soviet-Afghan war. And their hometown of Kandahar fell to the Taliban last week in the final stage of its takeover of the Soviet-Afghan war. And their hometown of Kandahar fell to the Taliban last week in the final stage of its takeover of the country. What I'm feeling is utmost hopelessness just because I'm watching the country my parents tell stories about every single day of my life

since they came and America as refugees, fallen to ashes. I cry. I can't control myself. My body is in France, but my whole mentality is all in Afghanistan. Zohra Yari, a 29-year-old university student in Paris, remembers living in Afghanistan under the Taliban. The group kidnapped her father in 2000, and the family never saw him again. When the Taliban were driven out, she told NPR it was a golden time for Afghans. We studied, we did our school. Especially the young people right now, they have hope.

They want to work in Afghanistan. Wazma Osman, a professor at Temple University, was born in Kabul. My family came here to the U.S. as refugees of war. Nobody really wants to leave their country, Osman told NPR. The situation has to be dire. Right now, tens of thousands of Afghan nationals are trying to do just that. And it's just heartbreaking for actually many people who believe in a democratic Afghanistan. Now they find not only what they've been building towards all the infrastructure and hard work and creativity

is in danger, but their actual lives are in danger. Consider this. For Afghan refugees and their families around the world watching from afar, this week's victory by the Taliban has been devastating. But that victory could be life-threatening for many Afghans who are still trying to escape their homeland. From NPR, I'm Adi Cornish. It's Thursday, historical failings. The Chair is streaming this Friday, only on Netflix. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees.

Download the WISE app today, or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. NPR's Planet Money Summer School is in session. This season is all about investing. Like, is it better to buy a lot of one stock or a little bit of a lot of stocks? What are bonds? Is it ever too late to start investing? New classes every Wednesday till Labor Day in the Planet Money podcast feed. It's Consider This from NPR.

This was the message from the U.S. military on Wednesday. We intend to evacuate those who have been supporting us for years, and we're not going to leave them behind. And we will get out as many as possible. General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was speaking about tens of thousands of Afghans who have worked with the U.S. over the decades and are now trying to escape Taliban revenge. But the first priority, he said, was American citizens still in the country trying to get to the airport in Kabul. And from videos that have emerged on social media in the last 24 hours, that has not been easy.

The Taliban are controlling the perimeter of the airport. They are shooting into the air. They are pushing people back. Charlotte Bellis, a journalist with Al Jazeera, is in Kabul. There's an element of chaos and kind of anarchy at the moment as the Taliban want to look like they're in control, but at the same time trying to deal with crowds and just feeling, I think, pretty overwhelmed with the thousands of people who are making a run for the airport. To help Americans get inside the airport perimeter, the Pentagon says it's worked out facilitation measures with the Taliban.

General Mark Milley again. We fully intend to successfully evacuate all American citizens who want to get out of Afghanistan. All American citizens who want to get out of Afghanistan. They are priority number one. Estimates of the number of Americans still in Afghanistan range from 5,000 to 15,000. They had been encouraged to leave the country weeks ago, even before the Taliban takeover. For those who remained this week, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul issued a security alert directing them to wait for instructions to come to the airport.

But they were told that the U.S. government could not ensure safe passage to the airport itself. In addition to those thousands of U.S. citizens, there are tens of thousands of Afghans and their family members trying to get out of the country. And that includes those seeking special immigrant visas because they worked for the U.S. government. Or high-profile Afghans, like journalists or human rights workers who will be targeted by the Taliban.

For those that do make it out of the country, if they wind up in the States, organizations like the U.S. Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service will offer help getting them resettled. Krish Omara Vignarajah is president and CEO. This week, she spoke to NPR's Mary Louise Kelly. I want to get the latest on how resettlement is going, all the work you're doing. But if I may begin by asking just what you are feeling, you must be watching these images as well at the airport in

Kabul. Yeah, it's heart-wrenching to see so many fleeing with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. Candidly, it's not surprising to advocates like myself and our organization, just because we have been predicting this panic for months. Well, let me get into some of the numbers of how many have been evacuated. How many Afghans have arrived in the U.S. already? At least 1,200, but the numbers coming out from the administration are about 2,000. So walk us through how it works. The Afghans who have been approved to come, who have made it out, they are arriving and then being processed at Fort Lee, Virginia. Is that right? Exactly. So I was actually at Fort Lee a week before, was able to meet with some of the families. They arrived there. For some,

the final step was just the medical exam. And so that was conducted on base. And then the vast majority of them are now resettled in communities across the country. Where are they going? How does that get decided? We take into account whether they have family ties to a given state or city, whether there is a concentration of other Afghans that could provide a stable community to integrate into. And so we see concentrations, particularly in Virginia, in California, and in Texas. And then what happens? Because, of course, there's getting people here, and then there's helping them build a life here. What kind of jobs are you helping people connect into? Many of them, they will go into really all different sectors. We help them to secure

their initial housing, food, clothing, meeting their basic needs. Volunteers help us get them to English as a second language courses. We help enroll their children in public schools and we connect them into the community so that, you know, they will learn to interact with their neighbors who we hope will ultimately become their extended family. For so many of them, they are leaving everything but a couple suitcases behind. They're also grappling with the fear and anxiety of what, you know, what family, parents, siblings, other extended family who don't qualify for admissions through the SIV program. There's urgency to this, obviously. Back to the pictures of people trying to frantically to get out of the country because they fear their lives are in danger. What do you need this is where the U.S. needs to act urgently. I truly believe that with community support, we can do the rest. Krish Omara Vignarajah, head of the U.S. Lutheran Immigration

and Refugee Service. A big question in the last few days has been how long the U.S. will use its military assets to help evacuate Afghan refugees. President Biden has set a deadline of August 31st to get Americans out, but said this week in an interview with ABC News that was fungible. We're going to try to get it done before August 31st. But if we don't, the troops will stay. If we don't, we'll determine at the time who's left. And? And if there's American citizens left, we're going to stay till we get them all out.

For the Afghans that remain, things are less clear. Earlier in the week, Biden suggested the U.S. could help some of them evacuate sooner, but didn't because, in part, there are those who didn't want to leave yet. I know there are concerns about why we did not begin evacuating Afghans, civilians sooner. Part of the answer is some of the Afghans did not want to leave earlier, still hopeful for their country. But keep in mind, many Afghans have been trying to leave the country for a long time, applying for those SIV, special immigrant visas. And applying for an SIV is a 14-step process that takes three and a half years. And obviously with the evacuation, we don't have that

time. James Maravaldis is chairman of the non-profit organization No One Left Behind, and it works to expedite the process for Afghans applying for special immigrant visas. James Maravaldis is chairman of the nonprofit organization No One Left Behind, and it works to expedite the process for Afghans applying for special immigrant visas. He told NPR's Elsa Chang even some Afghans who had finally gotten SIVs have not been able to leave the country. We had dozens of SIV recipients, the interpreters who had their visas in hand, and were waiting for the embassy to reach out to them about what evacuation flights they'd be on. They never heard from the embassy. So we started flying them out commercially on our own dime. Each family is about $10,000. So when the president

made a comment that Afghans may have wanted to stay in Afghanistan, the translators may want to stay there. Do you take issue with that? I wanted to ask you that question. Is that your understanding, that many Afghan interpreters and other people who assisted the U.S. military actually didn't want to be evacuated earlier? What is your understanding? No, ma'am. We strongly disagree with that assessment. How many people are we talking about right now who are currently stuck in Afghanistan? These are Afghan interpreters and other personnel who have helped the U.S. the last 20 years. What is the volume of people we're talking about right now? Sure. As of last, or maybe about two weeks ago, the total number of applicants was over 20,000. So there was a flood of applicants that started in the first part of this very serpentine, bureaucratic, paper-based interagency process. Again, 14 steps where that takes about three years. And we never saw that timeline get any faster.

What's interesting is by law, it's only supposed to take nine years. And some great organizations like IRAP sued the government last year and won in U.S. District Court about the timeline, the State Department not following the timeline, and then nothing happened. The government provided an adjudication plan, but provided no reports about whether recommendations were being audited, additionally, or acted on. And additionally, the State Department OIG provided a report to Congress last June, citing all these issues, and nothing was acted on. It's just... What danger do you believe that these people are in

because they have been unable to evacuate the country so far? We at No One Left Behind went through six years of emails and Facebook messages. We identified over 300 instances of interpreters or their family members specifically being targeted and killed by the Taliban or other extremist groups because of their affiliation with the United States. So there is a retribution campaign, an effort to, yeah, exact revenge. James Maravaldis, chairman of the nonprofit organization No One Left Behind. This week, Biden administration officials responded to criticism that the SIV program has been moving too slowly. They provided the Washington Post with a timeline that noted a

backlog of 17,000 SIV applicants when Biden took office. As part of the process, those applicants are required to sit for in-person interviews. The State Department spokesman said that before the Biden administration assumed power, not a single interview had taken place in Kabul since March of 2020. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Adi Cornish.