A new report describes a desperate Afghan-American citizen who had worked with the office of a Nebraska GOP congressman and was trying to escape Afghanistan with his wife and four young children. Allegedly instructed by the State Department to travel to the Afghan Interior Ministry, he was reportedly told by the Taliban guard, “Go and tell the State Department to f*** themselves.”
The Washington Examiner reported of the desperate man, who had worked with the office of Nebraska GOP congressman Don Bacon:
He eventually got into the Kabul airport after taking a big risk outside the gate during a firefight, in which guards shot at peoples’ feet to disperse the crowd. “Everybody run away,” he said. It was the day after the ISIS-K bombing at Abbey Gate. “I know it was stupid, but I took just my chance. I ran towards the soldiers. I had my passport in my hand — shouting that I’m an American citizen.” He, his wife, and four small children have since made it to the United States.
Bacon’s Deputy Chief of Staff Felix Ungerman told The Examiner of one U.S. citizen in Kabul reporting to a citizen’s access point:
“He goes, ‘Oh my god, he’s shooting.’ And I said, ‘Please get away from there, go get to safety,’” Ungerman said. “His phone cut off while I could hear gunshots going off, and I couldn’t get in touch with him again. I tried calling his cellphone every couple of hours to see if I could get him, tried an email, sent him a text message. And it wasn’t until [Tuesday] morning that he actually texted me back and said, ‘Yeah, I’m OK, but now what do I do?’ I’m like, ‘You get to somewhere safe, and you stay there until we can — our government can offer some solutions to help you.’”
CNN reported on Wednesday that an official from the U.S. State Department claimed they had no number of the Afghan Special Immigrant (SIV) applicants and family members who failed to board evacuation flights. “More broadly, the official described an evacuation effort confronted by numerous challenges — one that left US officials who worked on the ground “haunted by the choices we had to make and by the people we were not able to help depart in this first phase of the operation,” CNN noted.
California Republican Rep. Mike Garcia opined to The Examiner:
Where we were successful is where we weren’t necessarily beholden or waiting on the State Department. In fact, all of our successes — we ended up getting roughly 97 folks out successfully — these were all folks that we were able to do so through our own channels and folks on the ground there that were supporting mostly American citizens and SIV’s who otherwise would have been stopped by the bureaucracy, frankly, by the State Department.
Two weeks ago, the New York Post reported that members of the Taliban were seizing U.S. passports and identification orders from people attempting to leave Afghanistan:
“I got to the gates and was about to show my passport, but the Taliban got it, and he said you are not allowed to go through and wouldn’t give it back,” one Afghan-American, who served for several years as an interpreter during the war and has his home in the U.S but requested anonymity for safety reasons, said. “I was lucky a U.S. Marine was right there and forced him to give it back.”