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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. The desperate scramble to get out of Afghanistan before the Taliban might kill them continues for thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Afghans who have helped the US-led military coalition there or otherwise opposed the Taliban's fight to regain control. The Pentagon says they are getting flights out of the country at about one every hour, and that the Taliban has assured safe passage through the end of this month. That would theoretically allow enough flights to evacuate around 5,000 people a day, enough to cover the estimated 11,000 Americans and 60,000 Afghans who have been identified as eligible for the evacuation by the Taliban deadline of August 31st.

Are those numbers real? Is the promise of safe passage real? Who's not on the list who perhaps should be? With me now are Tracy Reines, regional director for US programs at the International Rescue Committee helping to resettle refugees in eight states. She was previously director of the American Red Cross International Response Operation Center, serving people affected by everything from the Ebola outbreak in Liberia in 2014, to Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the Japan earthquake and tsunami in 2011, the Haiti earthquake in 2010, and the 9/11 recovery effort here. Tracy Reines is with us.

Also Rachel Cohen, senior reporter for the US Air Force Times. Her last two articles are one about the tragic discovery of human remains and the wheel of a US cargo plane that left Afghanistan. The other is called The last runway out of Kabul: US transport jets face complex evacuation mission. Tracy and Rachel, thanks very much for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Tracy Reines: Thanks for having us.

Rachel Cohen: Thanks very much for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Rachel, I'll start with you. Your article notes that it is a single runway at the Kabul airport that planes can use for the evacuation. Why just one runway in the whole country?

Rachel Cohen: The Bagram Air Base that the US has been using for the past couple decades is no longer in American hands. The Talibans took over provincial capitals starting the first week of August and entered Kabul on Sunday so the US military does have control of the airport. Things are changing very quickly but as of now, we still do. We really have no other options. We've turned over the rest of the runways that could feasibly serve as evacuation points. Now, that's not to say that we may not be able to set up new ones. That's a special ops kind of mission that they may be looking at. As of right now, the Air Force has to make do with what it has.

Brian Lehrer: Does a departure every hour sounds about right to you for what's actually taking place?

Rachel Cohen: I don't know that I can really answer that, having never been an airlift pilot. I think they're going to be scheduling them as best they can, given the security situation on the ground. I guess we'll hope that they stick to what they've said they will.

Brian Lehrer: Do you know how people are being prioritized for who's being able to leave today, and who will have to wait till closer to August 31st?

Rachel Cohen: Sure. I think the definition may be changing a little bit, depending on the day. President Biden said on Monday that about 22,000 Afghans would be resettled in the US, including, visa applicants and other people who have aided the US war effort in the past few decades. That may extend to Afghan embassy staffers, obviously also Americans that live in the country, work in the country, dual citizens, things like that. They can always expand it based on what they see the need is being. I've heard estimates, I think, yesterday. Someone suggested it could be up to 100,000 people that may need to get out.

Brian Lehrer: Tracy Reines from the International Rescue Committee, what's the big picture now from the point of view of the IRC in terms of how many refugees or people who want to flee and become refugees there are in Afghanistan versus how many the Biden administration is actually designating?

Tracy Reines: Thank you for having us. The overall picture is positive in the sense of the administration is trying to open the pipeline to have more SIVs and P-2, which are priority two individuals who are working or non-government organizations and have a bit less stringent requirements for evacuation than SIVs. The fact is, though, that even with those numbers, it's probably less than 1% of the people in Afghanistan who need assistance to get out.

SIVs themselves, which again, are special immigrant visas, which are very specific, have worked for the US government for at least a year, have made up about half of the overall refugees that come in to the US in the last year. As we all know, those numbers have gone down perceptively, with the past Trump administration, half every year, every year, every year. We're down to about 3,000, who have come in so far this year.

The numbers looking ahead, we've heard in the range of at least 12,000 US citizens, but tens of thousands either SIVs or P-2s who are eligible and need assistance getting out. Those numbers are increasingly [unintelligible 00:06:21], but are still a limited number relative to the huge number of people who are vulnerable and remaining in Afghanistan, not to mention women and children who are particularly vulnerable, and not frequently in these SIV and P-2 category.

Brian Lehrer: Did you see the incident where more than 600 Afghans desperate to leave streamed onto a cargo plane when that wasn't the intent of that flight, but the Americans controlling the flight did take them as passengers? I'm curious if you know, working with refugees as you do, where that flight went, or what happens with those people now.

Tracy Reines: I can't speak to the specifics of that flight but I do know that the Department of Justice, DOD, Department of State, of course, are running a facility in Virginia to receive SIVs and people fleeing Afghanistan. That location has a limit to the number of people it can take, and I'm quite sure there'll be other locations stood up in the coming few days across the country.

I can tell you that on the ground both the IRC as refugee resettlement agencies and their sister organizations are looking to staff those locations. With USCCB, which is another sister agency, we received about 40% of SIVs that arrived and are staffing those locations as they arrive. To the specific location of that plane and those folks, I don't know. I can also just tell you that, when people do arrive, who are evacuated, there are many, many services they receive through a processing center, and then others who have already been fully processed can go to a destination of their choice across the country.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take a few phone calls, if you have questions on the evacuation effort, questions or comments, or stories of people you're hearing from. If you have anybody like that, for our guests, Tracy Reines, regional director of the International Rescue Committee, and Rachel Cohen, reporter for the Air Force Times, 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280, or tweet your question or comment @BrianLehrer. Rachel, from what you can tell, are the Taliban leaders allowing safe passage for these flights as they say they are?

Rachel Cohen: They did come to an agreement with the US military assuring safe passage. In practice that has looked a little different in certain places than the US might have wanted it to. In certain instances, many people are getting through, in other instances, the Taliban are harassing these applicants who are trying to get to the airport. I saw one report, I think, last night of, beating people with chains that were trying to get there. Obviously, people have to try and navigate their way through now Taliban-controlled checkpoints across the country, as they try and make their way there.

In terms of actually getting planes off the ground, that is happening, but it may not be as easy as a trip to Kabul or to the airport as people might want.

Brian Lehrer: In that circumstance, are the people who are to be evacuated later being given protection of any kind? Is that part of the mission at this point for the US military personnel there?

Rachel Cohen: I'm not sure that I know the answer to that. My understanding as of right now is that the troops that are there, the mission is to secure the airport and make sure that planes can come in, take people on, and get out. The US military wants to be out by August 31. I'm not sure that they are extending their services, if you will, to protecting people who may not be on a plane today or tomorrow.

Brian Lehrer: I saw you reported that while the Taliban is considered unlikely to try to shoot down evacuating aircraft, there's more concerned that they may take foreign hostages during the process, and that hostage-taking is a well documented Taliban weapon. You just talked about the horror of some people being beaten with chains, reportedly, and things like that, as they were trying to get to the airport. Do you have any more on the potential for hostage-taking, who they might want to kidnap, and why?

Rachel Cohen: I don't, unfortunately. One of the experts that I spoke to for that story, Will Wechsler at the Atlantic Council, he thinks that that's a, if not, likely possibility, a better possibility than surface-to-air missiles being brought out to shoot down planes. Just knowing how hostage-taking goes, I would guess that they would go for people that they know that the US and Western Allies value. They might take government officials, whether that's Afghans. I don't think it would be ours, but I would guess that they would use it as leverage if they wanted to.

I also think the point that other people have made is the Taliban are winning right now. They've gotten what they wanted, the US is leaving. I think that there's a lot of people that think that it is in the Taliban's interest to leave us alone, let people get out safely, and not try to intervene all that much.

Brian Lehrer: Well, let's hope. Tracy with the International Rescue Committee, I've seen a report of many thousands of refugees crossing the long border with Iran into that country. Is that a situation you're familiar with, or could describe at all in terms of how many people or what kinds of conditions or reception they're dealing with?

Tracy Reines: I can tell you that one of the concerns that we have for, as I mentioned before, the P-2 visa, which again, is a priority 2, which is open for staff who have supported NGO or media past and present, that could be hundreds of thousands of people in that category, the processing for P-2 visas have to take place in the third country. That means that if you work in Afghanistan with an NGO or media, past or present, you might be eligible for the visa, but you have to be processed outside of Afghanistan. That means that people have to travel outside of the country to start to be processed in that space.

I can tell you that that is not happening in Turkey nor in Iran. If people are looking for a pathway out of either of those countries or into the US, the process to get that is actually not able to take place in Turkey or Iran, where people might be fleeing. I think that on the issue of trying to formally support and get people on a pathway to safety and support who have been so integral to the work of the international community in Afghanistan, it's really essential that we strengthen the pathways for that to have processing in-country in Afghanistan or to provide support for travel visas processing, that doesn't have to be in a third country, which of course puts people at a additional vulnerability.

I'll say, again, that this has a disproportionate impact on women, just given the challenges of either being alone or traveling in those circumstances. Really mindful of that and the [inaudible 00:14:46] crossing borders unsafely if these processing opportunities aren't available in Afghanistan.

Brian Lehrer: When you talk about processing opportunities and different kinds of visas, it sounds like it's about paperwork. The crisis is so immediate as I know you well know, and life and death proportions to desperate human beings. How can the US vet people as rapidly as possible and in as mass numbers as possible to save people's lives?

Tracy Reines: We're hoping that the US government can increase the rates and resources in-country for embassy staff on the ground to be able to review, interview and do background security checks of Afghans in Afghanistan, and then complete that process in the US, which was happening in about the last month in that facility in Virginia, that we were staffing as I mentioned, the continuation of that processing happening on US soil.

We're hoping what continues to happen is the immediate steps of security background and screening happen in-country but then the rest of that "processing" happens in the US. That's what we are hoping that can get unstuck a bit and resources put forward by USG to make that happen in Afghanistan but then complete that process on safer ground in the US. Right now that's happening in Virginia. It will likely happen in at least a couple of other locations in the US and we're hoping for more of that.

Brian Lehrer: Vanessa in Hackensack, you're on WNYC with Rachel Cohen from the Air Force Times and Tracy Reines from the International Rescue Committee. Hi, Vanessa.

Vanessa: Hi, thanks for taking my call. I have a question about a particular group of Afghans. I have hosted and befriended a number of Afghan graduate students who were here as Fulbright Scholars, just an extraordinary group of people. They're back home for the most part, and I'm wondering, where do they fit in this scenario of all of the many kinds of visas that are possible? Do they stand a chance of getting out? Do you think?

Brian Lehrer: Tracy, would you take that?

Tracy Reines: Sure. Right now the evacuations are going to be prioritized. They're going to be prioritized, as mentioned by special immigrant visas and this P-2, which are associated with people working for NGOs and other media organizations, and then American citizens and dual citizens. I'm, to be very honest, personally and professionally concerned about the wider group of people who are looking for pathways to get out, either via family relations and reunifications or otherwise. The crush, the anticipation, and expectation of those either exit visas or evacuations is probably far higher than the actual number of people that will receive them. I hate to say that. I think that that is very likely though.

Brian Lehrer: Rachel Cohen and Vanessa, thank you for your call. Rachel Cohen, for you as a reporter for the Air Force Times, I want to play a clip of President Biden from his speech on this on Monday, and then ask you if this is the same assessment that you're hearing from your sources at high levels or even lower levels in the Air Force. This is in defense of having withdrawn in the way and at the pace that we did.

President Joe Biden: There would have been no ceasefire after May 1. There was no agreement protecting our forces after May 1. There was no status quo of stability without American casualties after May 1. There was only a cold reality of either following through on the agreement to withdraw our forces or escalating the conflict and sending thousands more American troops back into combat in Afghanistan lurching into the third decade of conflict.

Brian Lehrer: Rachel, on the narrowest point there, do you have sources who would say that probably if the US did try to stay any longer, even with a small forest 2,500 troops or something like that, that then there would have been all-out attacks against Americans again, after May 1st because that was the supposed agreement deadline by which the US would get out from President Trump, that it would have been war again, and we would have been faced with that prospect again of Americans getting killed or sending in more Americans to protect them?

Rachel Cohen: Personally, I think what is important to consider, looking back at that May 1st deadline, and what President Biden said, is the government was not considering the sweep that the Taliban made in the past couple of weeks. They didn't think that was going to come for at least a year, year and a half. I think the assessment that was made of saying we're going to take everybody out, we're going to leave it up to the government that we have backed for the last, however many years, we can leave and it'll be all right at least temporarily.

Maybe I don't have any particular insight into this that I'm sure other reporters may but this may prompt a rethinking of, "Who do we actually need there?" That being said, military officials for the last few months at least have said, "Look, we're not going to have people on the ground, but there will still be air assets in the region in Qatar, and other countries around that can come in and do airstrikes as needed." There's naval assets I believe in the Arabian Sea. The US military is not gone entirely but I think it's always a possibility that they reconsider sending in a smaller [unintelligible 00:21:44] of people.

Brian Lehrer: What you said at the beginning of your answer there might be the biggest failure in this scenario, that the US with all its intelligence capabilities, and military experts, did not accurately gauge how quickly the Taliban would take the capital. Are major reasons known yet for what they got wrong, that led them to that presumption?

Rachel Cohen: I think that there was an assumption that we've spent billions of dollars over the last 20 years building up the Afghan Air Force, the National Defense Forces more broadly, and I think that there was an expectation that the training that we gave them would be enough. The Post reported the other day that there were deals going on in the background for the past, I think year and a half that said, luckily, we see that the US is looking for the exits, and we are going to make nice with the Taliban to either get money out of it or to create a better position for ourselves so that we're not hunted down and things like that.

I think that there was an expectation that the status quo would hold based on what the situation on the ground has been in the last few years, but I think that without US support and Allied support there, things are not panning out the way that we hoped. I will say, I think the New York Times has a story on the intelligence situation out either this morning or yesterday, so I would encourage people to go read that.

Brian Lehrer: That there was some intelligence but it wasn't acted on, is the premise of that story. Rachel Cohen, senior reporter for the Air Force Times, and Tracy Reines, regional director for US programs at the International Rescue Committee, thank you so much for joining us.

Rachel Cohen: Thanks for having us.

Tracy Reines: Thank you for the conversation. I appreciate being here.

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