How lawmakers aided the Afghan evacuation | TheHill

Sep 15, 2021

While Kabul’s quick fall shocked the world, Senate and House lawmakers soon found their offices overwhelmed with desperate pleas from Afghan Americans, military veterans of the war in Afghanistan, workers of nongovernmental organizations and others scrambling for contacts to save people stranded in the country suddenly under the rule of a terrorist organization.

But it was very emotionally stressful — when you’re making life and death decisions and pleading with people on the ground at the airport itself to let these people in,” Rep.

Gerry ConnollyGerald (Gerry) Edward ConnollyOvernight Defense & National Security — Congress begins Afghanistan grilling Connolly rips Wilson over 'you lie' during Blinken hearing House Democrats press leaders to include more funding for electric vehicles in spending plan MORE (D-Va.) had spent months trying to help one SIV applicant, Dellawar Khan, get the proof of employment needed to leave the country.

Connolly’s office also helped forward to the State Department the names of family members of his former political opponent Zainab Mohsini, an Afghan American woman he ran against in last year’s Democratic primary.

Those were the terrified, terrified people trying to figure out what to do,” she said.

Andy Kim’s (D-N.J.) office, which set up a general email for people to forward names to the State Department, passed along more than 11,000 names while Connolly’s office forwarded 20,000.

According to the State Department, hundreds of lawmakers forwarded thousands of names to their office.

Secretary of State Antony BlinkenAntony BlinkenTop Republican: General told senators he opposed Afghanistan withdrawal Overnight Defense & National Security — Details of Trump's final days prompt call to fire Milley Senate lawmakers let frustration show with Blinken MORE, in an appearance before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Monday, held up a thick stack of paper, which he said represented 26,000 cases forwarded by congressional offices, adding that State has responded to 21,000 of them.

“Congressman [Brian] Fitzpatrick [R-Pa.] worked with the State Department to reunite an Afghan family in New Jersey.

Congressman [Bill] Keating [D-Mass.] worked with our folks on the ground to help a Voice of America reporter and his family get to the airport.

Some lawmakers and staff saw the requests to their offices as a reflection of failure by the State Department.

“Our offices were flooded with requests to help people get out of Afghanistan, requests that were coming to us because the State Department failed,” McCaul told Blinken at the hearing.

McCaul told The Hill his office turned to outside groups such as Digital Dunkirk and Pineapple Express, volunteer-led groups of veterans and others who worked outside the government to evacuate people from Afghanistan, to help assist with evacuating people who reached out to his office but were not being assisted by State.

“We in many respects had to take it into our own hands and become our own kind of mini State Departments,” he said, calling his committee a clearinghouse for members working to get people out.

Many offices also grew frustrated with a State Department drowning in data, juggling multiple spreadsheets and forms that quickly populated with repeat names.

Several staffers said State, though communicative, was asking for too much follow-up documentation for people in crisis.

These people are feeling the Taliban,” said one staffer whose office succeeded in getting 35 people out of the country out of more than 150 cases they were working on.

“Look, they were completely overwhelmed,” Swalwell said of the State Department.

One Republican Senate aide, who asked for anonymity to protect their work on evacuations, said nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and other groups working to get people out abandoned coordination with the Biden administration and went directly to the Qatari government for help with evacuations.

Qatari officials on the ground in Afghanistan reportedly helped transport at least 3,000 people through treacherous Taliban checkpoints and dangerous crowds to reach the airport.

government agencies bypassed the State Department and reached out to their office directly for help in evacuating high priority Afghans, including government officials who could lead the Taliban to a potential windfall by subverting international sanctions and blocks to access millions of dollars.

One GOP staffer also went through their own rolodex to help an interpreter who worked with their cousin during his time in Afghanistan.

“I started reaching out to others, starting with reporters I knew who had been to Afghanistan or were familiar with the country, and who had already had some success getting their people out.

The office worked with a number of people on the ground to coordinate “the larger kind of big-brush stuff in terms of getting letters to permit people to enter the country, to fly planes in, to get people out — coordinating that with State — to reading off license plate numbers at midnight on Saturday.

They weren’t going to bother with the red tape, they just wanted to get people out, and that was clearly the mindset of people on the ground,” said one Democratic aide of the need to bypass the State Department.

But staffers in Moulton’s office who were tracking thousands of people on the ground in Afghanistan looking to flee said the congressman’s trip provided critical connections that helped them in their evacuation efforts.

Of the roughly 4,000 people the office was tracking, about 100 groups of people were brought into the airport.

About 60 of those groups made it past the airport gates through direct contacts, using encrypted messaging services, to connect with Marines at the gates and people on the ground.

“They would say ‘yes’ and they would do it, around the clock for about a week, two weeks,” the staffer said, of the Marines collecting people at rendezvous points the staff had established.

“This really felt like life and death situations that we were dealing with because, in a lot of cases, it was,” said a staffer in Meijer’s office.

and trying to help people but often not having the tools that were necessary and just doing the best that we could.”.

The Republican congressman’s trip to Afghanistan helped increase visibility and publicity for his advocacy surrounding evacuations, his office said, but his on-the-ground knowledge did little to improve efforts to help evacuate the hundreds of people who were referred to their offices.

“It didn’t change what our office was doing through the State Department too much on an operational level.

I think we certainly got more calls and emails from around the country, from   people who thought we might be able to help, and we did everything we could to help as many people as we could,” Meijer’s staffer said.

But I do think it harmed a lot of people in these offices taking the calls and getting the Facebook messages,” said one Democratic source.

A staffer for Moulton’s office said they struggled with directing those fearful of Taliban reprisal through checkpoints run by the group only to send them to the airport, unsure if they could survive waiting for hours or even days amid the overwhelming crowds blocking entrance to the gates.

And we had cases where people had found the resources to bribe the Taliban to get through the gates and in one case, they got to the gate two hours after it was sealed for good,” Swalwell said, pointing to 30 people who had letters from State allowing them to leave

“In particular for people who have a connection to the global war on terror, whether that’s because they served in Afghanistan or Iraq or because they worked on these issues, I think it’s particularly challenging to recognize that the war that began as a result of 9/11 has come to an end,” Spanberger said

… Unfortunately, there's not a ton of information that we are able to share with individuals who are still looking for help, at this point, beyond the State Department's website and official guidance,” the aide said

“The immediate urgency of trying to get people to the airport before the withdrawal has kind of dampened down

“But I’m grateful for the people that were on the ground there — the Marines, even the State Department officials, everybody from DOD that was on the ground — that literally were not sleeping, [working] around the clock trying to figure this out, and it’s just disappointing that it feels like we didn’t stand up for them