WASHINGTON DC (Ag-encies): The Biden administration in August will fly thousands of Afghan interpreters and their families out of the country to safety ahead of the U.S. military’s full withdrawal from Afghanistan, the White House confirmed on Thursday.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki told repor-ters that the administration had “stood up an operation to physically relocate” the Afghan nationals “before the U.S. military mission concludes,” but she did not say specifically where they would be relocated.
The administration’s operation “has identified U.S. facilities outside of the continental United States, as well as third countries,” she said. “Because of security reasons, we’re not going to outline and detail at this point where those are.” The U.S. is considering sending the Afghans to the United Arab Emirates, Qatar or Guam as they wait for their visas to the U.S. to be processed, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
Psaki said the administration had “already dramatically accelerated the processing timeline” for the visas “to bring them to the United States.” White House officials are also “continuing to work closely with Congress to change the authorizing legislation so that we can streamline the process for approving visas even when they are in a third country,” she added.
“We did what we wanted. We don’t have a moment of celebration, but one when we feel it is in our national security interest to bring our military home. It is in our national security interest to have Afghan forces accountable,” she said. “However that may be, in our opinion, there is no benefit if the military continues to participate in this,” she said.
