Washington, DC – Afghan-American freedom fighter Halema Wali is said to receive a lot of letters every day from people who want to flee Afghanistan.
His cousin, whose father worked for the US, and his family were unable to board a flight from the Kabul capital this month after trying twice and waiting for 36 hours without food or water at Hamid Karzai International Airport.
Now, Wali’s relatives are living in shelters for fear of reprisals from Taliban, a regional leader said, as more calls for Biden officials to do more to help Afghans who remain in the country after the last U.S. military on the left on Monday.
“As President Biden wins the longest possible withdrawal from the United States, it leaves behind … US citizens, legal citizens, visas and vulnerable people in Afghanistan,” Wali told a news conference Tuesday.
Wali, co-founder of the Afghans For A Better Tomorrow Campaign, also added that the US has a responsibility to the people of Afghanistan after the 20-year war that followed and was dismissed as “reckless and reckless”.
“President Biden has been elected to a stable platform, and this must continue in the current context of the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan; millions of lives are at stake,” he said.
At the same meeting, Lida Azim, co-founder of the Afghan Diaspora For Equality and Progress, drafted a list of demands on Biden, including the end of the US threat in Afghanistan, the influx of refugees, and humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan.
On Sunday, an airstrike against a U.S. military aircraft that Washington said was fighting fighters from Islamic State militants in the Khorasan region, ISKP (ISIS-K), an ISIL (ISIS) ally, killed 10 Afghan people, including several children, according to their siblings.
The ISKP said it was responsible for the attack near the airport last week killed at least 175 people.
“We do not want to lose interest in the war that has failed in the fight against terrorism in the last 20 years,” Azim said.
‘Economic hardships’
President Joe Biden and his top aides are with them praised rescue work, explaining that it is the largest in history and emphasizing that the ensuing riots are inevitable.
The evacuation began on August 14, a day before the Taliban overthrew the Kabul government following unrest before the August 31 deadline for US troops to be set up by Biden. The Taliban’s capture came after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country and Afghan security forces collapsed.
The U.S. military has been monitoring the Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA) airport until Monday. According to the State Department, Washington and its allies have transported 123,000 people – American citizens, third citizens and allies of Afghanistan – out of the country.
Biden repeated he defended his idea to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan on Monday, despite amid criticism by US allies and lawmakers in Washington described the disturbances at Kabul airport as a failure of supervisors.
Bilal Askaryar, an Afghan and American freedom fighter who leads the #WelcomeWithDignity campaign at the Women Refugee Commission, said the deaths of civilians in Afghanistan on Sunday were the result of “negligence”.
“We in the Afghan government in the Diaspora and others have been saying for years, even decades, that every move should be managed properly,” Askaryar said. “What we are seeing now in Afghanistan is a complex humanitarian crisis compounded by the way the United States has left illegally.”
On Tuesday, Afghan and American freedom fighters said the crisis could have been resolved, starting with the initial reduction in visas for deportation.
Azim and Wali said U.S. forces needed to expand security bases to ensure the area was safe and secure, while Azim also said the State department could have gone through some of the offices to reduce visa renewal.
“It would have been better if he had been removed, to say the least,” he said. “They could have expanded the area around the airport to provide more security … They could have done much better.”