I want to discuss an issue I’ve been watching unfold through the process of the evacuation from Kabul which has now been on-going for some ten days. As we’ve discussed, the fate of American allies in the country has become both a humanitarian mission as well as a cudgel used to attack the US withdrawal – both by those who wanted the US to stay in Afghanistan permanently and those who’ve wanted to use the inevitable messiness and chaos of the US withdrawal as a way to cleanse their own dirty hands and complicity in the misbegotten mission. But a key part of both dimensions of this question is that the number in need of evacuation is a moving target.
A week and a half ago reports had numbers in the range of 70,000 to 80,000 Afghan nationals needing to be evacuated – mostly so-called SIVs and their families. A greater number of people have now been flown out of the country, though a small percentage of those are US citizens and some large percentage is third country nationals. Today however The New York Times reports new numbers based on analyses of Pentagon records by an advocacy group called the Association of Wartime Allies. They find that as many as one million Afghan could be eligible for expedited immigration status and that a minimum of 250,000 are yet to be evacuated.
A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss the centrist stunt in the House, the Afghanistan evacuation on a personal level, and what to make of the dip in President Biden’s approval numbers.
Watch below and email us your questions for next week’s episode.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
