More than 800 Americans have evacuated from Afghanistan in the year since the U.S. military withdrew, significantly more than the Biden administration’s early estimates, a State Department spokesperson confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Aug. 30 2021, just as the last U.S. aircraft departed the Kabul airport, that the State Department had identified roughly 100 Americans living in Afghanistan who wished to leave. However, a GOP House Foreign Affairs Committee report to be released Monday shows that out of an unknown number of civilians left stranded in Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover, the U.S. helped hundreds leave, Politico reported, suggesting the Biden administration either underestimated those who would attempt to evacuate or deliberately obscured the actual numbers.
A State Department spokesperson confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation on Monday that the U.S. government had “directly supported” the evacuation of 803 U.S. citizens since August of 2021, adding that “individuals in Afghanistan periodically identified themselves as U.S. citizens wanting to depart the country.”
“Whether they had travel documents or whether they could get to Kabul, that was part of that factor,” a committee aide told Politico, referring to the Americans left behind to face increasing danger of directed Taliban violence.
