U.S. faces snags in bid to speed up at-risk Afghan evacuations
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[February 04, 2022]
By Jonathan Landay and Ted Hesson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A lack of flights and the search for a new
U.S. reception center are among the hurdles facing the White House as it
races to speed up the evacuation of at-risk Afghans from their homeland,
according to a senior U.S. official and others familiar with the new
plan.
Other obstacles include difficulties in obtaining passports and an
affordable housing shortage in the United States, they said.
The plan's goal "is just to make this more enduring and less of an
emergency operation," the senior U.S. official said in describing the
revamp, requesting anonymity to discuss internal operations.
The Biden administration has been under pressure to speed up Operation
Allies Welcome from lawmakers, veterans groups and others angry that
tens of thousands of Afghans who worked for the U.S. government and
others at risk of Taliban retaliation were left behind when the last
U.S. troops departed in August after 20 years of war.
Human rights organizations and the United Nations say the Taliban has
stepped up detentions, abductions and killings. Afghan Interior Ministry
spokesman Sayed Khosti has rejected the accusation of reprisal killings,
saying no evidence had been presented.
"People left behind are getting more and more desperate and we're going
to start seeing more of the consequences of that, whether mass movement
of refugees or meeting grim fates in Afghanistan," said a second senior
U.S. official.
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Advocacy groups say Washington should ensure the new plan will not
suffer the types of setbacks that have hampered Afghan arrivals.
"We want to see enough resources applied to these issues so that even if
one area fails or falters for a moment, there are options to make sure
the pipeline isn't cut off," said Shawn VanDiver, a Navy veteran and
president of #AfghanEvac, a coalition of advocacy groups.
President Joe Biden on Tuesday ordered that up to $1.2 billion be made
available for the effort, the largest operation of its kind since the
Vietnam era. About 80,000 Afghans have been resettled since August.
The new plan calls for shifting the processing of Afghan evacuees for
admission to the United States from reception centers on U.S. military
bases that are being closed to a base in the Qatari capital of Doha.
FLIGHTS ARE 'MAIN CHALLENGE'
But two U.S.-chartered Qatar Airways flights a week from Kabul to
Qatar's al Udeid military base are needed, with the goal of adding more
flights, the U.S. official said.
The flights are the "main challenge," said the official.
Differences between Qatar and the Taliban triggered a suspension of
regular charters before Christmas.
"We're hoping we can get to regular order," the U.S. official said.
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![](../images/020421pics/news_t71.jpg)
Afghan evacuee children participate in social and emotional art
initiatives run by Mural Arts after arriving at the Philadelphia
International Airport in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., October
25, 2021. REUTERS/Hannah Beier
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Feb/04/images/ads/current/xamis_lda_LUAL_2016.png) The Qatar Embassy and foreign
ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Qatar has told Washington it intends to close the reception center
in September ahead of the World Cup, the U.S. official confirmed.
The official said the U.S. was looking for alternatives, including
reopening the air base center after the World Cup.
Once Afghan evacuees are processed for admission, they will be flown
to the U.S. and placed with relatives or friends, provided housing
by resettlement agencies or sent to a the planned reception center
to help them resettle.
The Biden administration has housed tens of thousands of such
evacuees on bases in the United States while their admission and
resettlement arrangements were finalized.
The Pentagon has been closing those reception centers, with the last
two expected to shutter this month, a U.S. Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) official said, after the roughly 6,500 people there
have been processed.
One of those two centers will remain open until the administration
finds a civilian site, but a location has not been selected yet, the
senior U.S. official and a congressional source said.
The State Department plans to process Afghans for refugee status
within 30 days beginning in March, two U.S. officials said. That is
far faster than typical refugee processing, which can take years.
To be sure, that creates additional challenges that the second
senior U.S. official said would be difficult to surmount.
Speeding up the operation, the second senior official said, will
require an agreement with the Taliban to prioritize passports for
evacuees or a deal with Qatar to allow travel without them, more
U.S. officials in Doha to process evacuees, and a "higher tolerance
of risk to speed up vetting."
Afghans entering the United States through the refugee resettlement
program will be able to proceed directly to their destinations on
U.N.-funded flights.
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The department also will complete the processing in Doha of tens of
thousands of Afghans who worked for the U.S. government and have
applied for Special Immigration Visas (SIVs), according to the
official and two congressional aides.
The goal is to process and fly to the United States 1,000 refugees
and 1,000 SIV recipients a month, the official said.
(Reporting by Jonathan Landay and Ted Hesson in Washington; Editing
by Mary Milliken and Gerry Doyle)
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