In a Wednesday afternoon briefing, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said 1,500 Americans are still stuck in Afghanistan, with many looking to get out. According to Blinken, 4,500 Americans have been evacuated out of Afghanistan in the last 10 days. The video above includes clips from the briefing.
“Over the past 24 hours, we’ve been in direct contact with approximately 500 additional Americans and provided specific instructions on how to get to the airport safely,” Blinken said. “For the remaining roughly 1,000 contacts that we had who may be Americans seeking to leave Afghanistan, we’re aggressively reaching out to them multiple times a day through multiple channels of communication, phone, email, text messaging, to determine whether they still want to leave and to get the most up to date information and instructions to them for how to do so.”
Another notable headline from Blinken’s briefing came when he discussed the Aug. 31 deadline to get all Americans and Afghan allies out of Kabul. President Joe Biden has gotten near universal pushback against his decision to hold firm on that deadline.
“Let me be crystal clear about this. There is no deadline on our work to help any remaining American citizens who decide they want to leave to do so, along with the many Afghans who have stood by us over these many years and want to leave and have been unable to do so,” Blinken said. “That effort will continue every day past August 31st.”
Blinken also said the Taliban has made “public and private commitments” to allow Americans, as well as at-risk Afghans to leave the country safely, even after Aug. 31.
“The United States, our allies and partners and more than half of the world’s countries, 114 in all issued a statement making it clear to the Taliban that they have a responsibility to hold to that commitment and provide safe passage for anyone who wishes to leave the country, not just for the duration of our evacuation relocation mission, but for every day thereafter,” Blinken said. He went on to say the nature of any potential future U.S. relationship will depend “entirely on the actions and conduct of the Taliban”.