Vets, volunteers ask Biden to appoint staff to help evacuate Afghans

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Vets, volunteers ask Biden to appoint staff to help evacuate Afghans

Hundreds of veterans and other frontline volunteers who have organized ongoing evacuations from Afghanistan say that their efforts have become untenable without the support of the U.S. government.

A coalition of more than 100 veterans and other groups organized under the name AfghanEvac has listed 15 steps the U.S. government needs to take in order to honor its promise to those who are at risk because of their connections to U.S. activities in Afghanistan, according to a letter to President Joe Biden and members of Congress. The coalition said that success depends on improving interagency coordination, increasing evacuation capacity and resettlement throughput, and our government fulfilling the roles and responsibilities only a government can fulfill, in line with the expectations of the American people and our Afghan allies.

The letter, signed by more than 285 veterans and volunteers, asks the Biden administration to appoint a leader with a dedicated staff by February 2022 to coordinate federal agencies and create an actionable multiyear plan for Afghan evacuations.

Shawn VanDiver, a Navy veteran and founder of AfghanEvac, said such a position is critical because at this moment we don't know who's in charge. This is not a two-week mission - it's months, maybe years long, he said in a phone interview. We want that one person in government to be able to use all the tools available to the American government. We got to the moon. The groups want the State Department and Department of Homeland Security to expedite the processing of visa applications, interviews and medical waivers, while the Department of Defense maintains places in countries where Afghans can be evacuated to, and the Department of Defense maintains places in countries where Afghans can be evacuated.

Evacuations have slowed considerably since the U.S. left Afghanistan in August, and one issue is the capacity to keep refugees in overseas locations while their immigration status is processed by U.S. agencies. There are still a large number of Afghan allies who need to leave the country.

Alex Plitsas, a military veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan who worked with the Human First Coalition to help evacuate Afghans, said the number of people who need to leave the country is most likely to be equivalent to the number of people who have fled before the U.S. military departed.

The massive airlift and Pentagon and State Department resources that were aided in the evacuations are gone.

He said that there is no such thing as it is now. There is no functioning embassy on the ground. There is nowhere to conduct interviews, and there is nowhere to physically issue visas for people whose passports were destroyed during the evacuation operation. They're stuck right now, and they're stuck. The letter asked Congress to pass the Afghan Adjustment Act, which would make it easier for evacuees to access the U.S. immigration system and find a pathway to citizenship. The signatories also asked Congress to provide greater funding to these efforts through the State Department and USAID, particularly as many groups have noted that private donations have dipped as the American public's attention veers elsewhere.

The Departments of State, Defense, Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs and Health and Human Services are working together to provide mental health services to Afghans who have evacuated, and American volunteers and public servants who have dedicated themselves to the withdrawal.

Kristofer Goldsmith, a Iraq War veteran who has worked with Veterans for American Ideals to help evacuate Afghans, said he and other veterans and volunteers who have committed themselves to this effort continue to receive countless messages from allies who remain in Afghanistan. He said they express the fear they have for their lives and the lives of their families and the disappointment over being left behind, and it takes a heavy toll, especially as the process is extremely frustrating.

Goldsmith, who has openly shared his struggles with PTSD and worked with veterans on their mental health challenges, said the messages, the disappointment and frustrations have led him to reflect on 15 years of calls from veterans asking for help.

He said that it feels like a piece of my heart has died because of people I lost in the past who asked for help and who I wasn't able to reach in time. I can say with certainty that the calls for help that our entire community is receiving and will continue to receive are like everything I've gotten over the last 15 years condensed into just a few weeks - and it repeats ad nauseam. VanDiver, Plitsas and Goldsmith all noted that the effort to remove Afghans is apolitical. They said there is no desire to support one political party over another in this push to aid Afghans who helped the U.S.

They said that a focus on politics would undermine their work and bring the ire of veterans, volunteers, public servants and professionals who, as stated in the letter, have the shared goal of evacuating Afghan allies impacted by the 20 year US mission in their country. VanDiver said that partisanship will kill the effort, both on the volunteer side as well as the government side. We can't get anything done if everyone is trying to score cheap political points. Folks who say they stand by veterans should be aware that we are not interested in that kind of behavior or path. If politicians want to say they support the troops and then turn around and say, You know, we don't want to actually get Afghans into the U.S. or they want to put up a roadblock,'' Goldsmith said.