Garamendi's office working to help evacuate citizens, others from Afghanistan
(File photo by Matthew Keys/Solano NewsNet)
Congressman John Garamendi has joined a growing list of federal lawmakers who are providing lifelines for constituents or loved ones who need assistance leaving Afghanistan after the collapse of the government there.
On Monday, Garamendi’s office tweeted a statement that said those who are in Afghanistan or who have loved ones there should visit the website of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul or contact his office by e-mail at CA03.casework@mail.house.gov. The guidance was also issued to constituents who have or need to obtain a Special Immigrant Visa or other type of visa based on the situation in Afghanistan.
The message comes amid frightening scenes of Afghan civilians flooding the international airport in Kabul mere hours after Taliban leaders seized the vacant presidential palace.
Eyewitness videos posted to social media showed dozens of Afghans, many of them young, clinging to an American military transport plane as it attempted to take off from the airport in Kabul with hundreds of evacuees on board. Grim footage that circulated online showed at least three bodies falling from the plane in mid-flight. Another four people were killed on the ground, according to officials.
At a press conference late Monday afternoon, a spokesperson for the Pentagon said officials had launched an investigation into what happened at the airport, adding that the facility had been returned to normal status with the assistance of some American troops there.
The situation in Afghanistan began to deteriorate earlier in the year when President Joe Biden fulfilled a promise by his predecessor, Donald Trump, to withdraw American combat troops from the country by the start of May.
Almost immediately, the Taliban began seizing contested regions before advancing into government-controlled territory, with a breathtaking speed that surprised everyone, including the Taliban itself.
As they moved from region to region, they found little resistance from the American-trained Afghan military, who for years had been plagued with accusations of payoffs and other forms of corruption.
Over the weekend, Ashraf Ghani, the president of Afghanistan, fled the country, all but ensuring a Taliban takeover of its capital city. Pictures broadcast on regional news outlet Al Jazeera showed Taliban leaders sitting at the desk that was occupied by Ghani just 24 hours before their arrival.
Appearing on MSNBC earlier in the day, Garamendi said the situation unfolding in Afghanistan was a hard pill to swallow for the thousands of American troops and other officials who spent so much time, effort and money on nation-building there.
“This has been a very difficult two or three days as they’ve watched the collapse — or the disappearance — of the government they worked so hard to put into place,” Garamendi said. "Nobody expected the Afghan government to simply disappear — it's not that it collapsed, it disappeared.”
In a televised address on Monday, Biden said responding to the September 11 terror attack and eradicating the terror group al-Qaeda was the objective of America’s intervention in the country — and nothing else.
“Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation-building,” Biden asserted. “It was never supposed to be creating a unified, centralized democracy…[if] anything, the developments of the past week reinforced that ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan now was the right decision.”
Now, the objective in Afghanistan has shifted to stabilizing the situation within the control of American forces so citizens and key civilians can leave the country.
“Right now, the issue is how do we extract the Americans and the American troops?” Garamendi questioned on MSNBC. “Going forward, I would expect the American military is attempting to engage the Taliban to try to develop a coordinated effort at the airport and, ultimately, an evacuation.”
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