U.S. Asks Central Asian Nations to Take Afghans Seeking Visas

(Bloomberg) -- The Biden administration has asked three Central Asian nations to temporarily house some 9,000 Afghan citizens who worked with the U.S. as they look to flee the Taliban before NATO forces withdraw by Sept. 11, according to two people familiar with the discussions.

The U.S. has asked Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to take in the Afghans who assisted with the American military’s invasion and occupation of the country before the completion of the withdrawal, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations.

The agreement would be part of a broader deal to establish further cooperation with Central Asian countries concerning Afghanistan. The Uzbek and Tajik foreign ministers are in Washington this week, and the sides are discussing an accord that would allow the U.S. to conduct intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations from their territory, one of the people said.

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“All the visa seekers are surprised by this news and we are hoping they shift us swiftly as the security is really worsening and those countries are much safer than Afghanistan,” Amin Rahimi, an Afghan employee of a U.S. government-funded project, said by phone on Friday.

The State Department declined to comment.

Bagram Handover

It comes as the Associated Press reports unnamed U.S. officials saying America’s military has left Bagram Airfield -- the heart of its war to expel the Taliban -- and handed it to Afghan defense forces, who are struggling to stop the insurgents from taking more territory. The group now controls half of the country’s 400 districts.

Afghan leaders have warmed of an imminent civil war or the collapse of the government once all foreign forces withdraw, despite President Joe Biden’s promise to President Ashraf Ghani and Chairman of the Afghanistan National Reconciliation Council, Abdullah Abdullah, that he’d continue to provide military and financial assistance worth billions of dollars to Afghan forces.

“The truth is the survival, security and unity of Afghanistan is in danger,” Abdullah said in remarks broadcast on state-run television Wednesday following a high-level meeting attended by Ghani and other senior political leaders.

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The Biden administration has pledged to expedite immigration visas for Afghans who worked closely with U.S. forces during the two-decade conflict. A crucial way of doing that would be through the Special Immigrant Visa program, which allows those who were employed by the U.S. to claim refugee status.

Advocates for those Afghans have expressed worries that after the American withdrawal, they would be vulnerable to reprisals from the Taliban and other U.S. enemies. Officials have said there are some 18,000 SIV applicants, with 9,000 or so just starting the process.

State Department spokesman Ned Price declined to say at a briefing Thursday where the applicants might go. He said they and their families “will have the option to be relocated to a location outside of Afghanistan before we complete our military drawdown by September” to complete the immigration process.

‘Every Option’

“Importantly, these are individuals who are already in the SIV pipeline,” Price said. “We would undertake any relocation in full compliance with applicable laws and in full coordination with Congress.”

Some officials had suggested the idea of sending those Afghans to the U.S. island of Guam in the Pacific, and the island’s governor even tweeted that he was in favor of the idea. But that was never seriously considered given officials’ fear that if the visa applicants went to Guam, it would be impossible to force them to leave if their SIV applications were denied.

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Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Uzbek Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov and Tajik Foreign Minister Sirojiddin Muhriddin at the State Department on Thursday. Blinken thanked Kamilov “for Uzbekistan’s continued support for a just and durable peace settlement in Afghanistan,” the department said in a statement.

Testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in June, Blinken said the U.S. is looking at “every option” to help the Afghan employees -- interpreters, drivers, construction workers and other staff -- who may become victims of the Taliban as the Pentagon pushes ahead with Biden’s order to remove the troops.

Blinken said a backlog of immigration applications is being cleared, and he asked Congress to raise a cap on special immigrant visas for Afghans by 8,000 slots. There’s now a congressionally mandated cap of 26,000 slots under the Special Immigrant Visa program.

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.