About only 5 percent of the people the United States has evacuated from Afghanistan are Americans seeking safe passage home.
More than 82,300 have been airlifted from Kabul since the government’s collapse nearly two weeks ago, but the Pentagon says that, as of Wednesday, only 4,400 Americans were rescued in those evacuation operations.
Over 4,400 Americans have now been evacuated from Afghanistan: Pentagon
— Lucas Tomlinson (@LucasFoxNews) August 25, 2021
President Joe Biden previously promised to get out the Americans who are left in Afghanistan and subject to the Taliban’s rule, but so far, our own citizens do not appear to be the priority.
The State Department also confirmed that a majority of the people whisked away on flights from Kabul are not U.S. citizens. On Tuesday, Politico national security reporter Alex Ward reported leaked numbers indicating that in just 15 hours on Aug. 23, the United States evacuated approximately 6,916 people from Afghanistan. Only 483 of those were American citizens while the rest were Aghan nationals.
While estimates suggest that thousands are still stranded in Afghanistan following the Taliban’s swift takeover of the capital city, the Biden administration still refuses to disclose just how many Americans were left behind. The administration’s process for thoroughly vetting individuals coming into the United States from Afghanistan is also unclear.
Polls indicate that Biden’s approval ratings are nosediving following his administration’s botched exit from Afghanistan, but Politico reports that the White House and “administration allies have begun aggressively touting the success of their evacuation efforts in the war-torn country, offering frequent updates on the number of evacuees.”
“They’ve framed the operation as historic — in line with the Berlin airlift — declared that they’re ‘over performing’ their own metrics, and trumpeted the president as ‘defying expectations,’” the article stated.