WASHINGTON -- Veterans groups, Democratic lawmakers and Afghans called Tuesday for urgent Biden administration action on a weeklong standoff that has left hundreds of would-be evacuees from Afghanistan desperate to board waiting charter flights out of the Taliban-ruled country.
They say several dozen Americans, along with a much larger number of U.S. green-card holders and family members, are among vulnerable Afghans waiting to board prearranged charter flights at the airport in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif that are being prevented from leaving.
"We think we are in some kind of jail," said one Afghan woman among the would-be evacuees gathered in Mazar-e-Sharif. She said elderly American citizens and parents of Afghan-Americans in the U.S. are among those being blocked from boarding evacuation planes.
The woman, an employee of a U.S. nonprofit, Ascend, that works with Afghan women and girls, spoke Tuesday on condition of anonymity for her security. She said those in her group have proper passports and visas, but that the Taliban currently are blocking them from entering the airport.
She said she has been waiting for eight days. At one point last week, alarm spread through the women's side of her hotel in the city when there were reports that the Taliban were searching the would-be evacuees on the men's side, and had taken some away.
"I am scared if they split us and not let us leave," she said. "If we can't get out of here, something wrong will happen. And I am afraid of that."
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday that the U.S. was working with the Taliban to resolve the matter.
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He contested claims that the Taliban have blocked charter flights from departing the Mazar-e-Sharif airport, rejecting an assertion from Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, over the weekend that the standoff at Mazar-e-Sharif was turning into a "hostage situation" for American citizens in the group.
"We have been assured, again, that all American citizens and Afghan citizens with valid travel documents will be allowed to leave," Blinken said in Doha, Qatar, a major transit point for last month's U.S. military-led evacuations from Afghanistan.
"We intend to hold the Taliban to that," he added.
Later Tuesday, 12 Democratic lawmakers added to the pressure for evacuees, in a letter urging the administration to disclose its plans for getting out all of the hundreds of at-risk people remaining in Afghanistan, including American citizens.
"Our staff have been working around the clock responding to urgent pleas from constituents whose families and colleagues are seeking to flee Afghanistan, and they urgently require timely, post-withdrawal guidance to best assist those in need," Reps. Jerrold Nadler, Zoe Lofgren, Gerald Connolly and nine other lawmakers from President Joe Biden's party wrote.
In the case of Mazar-e-Sharif, Blinken said, the Taliban have objected to charter flights that combine passengers who have valid travel documents and those who do not.
"It's my understanding that the Taliban has not denied exit to anyone holding a valid document, but they have said that those without valid documents at this point can't leave," Blinken said. "But because all of these people are grouped together, that's meant that flights have not been allowed to go."
"We have to work through the different requirements, and that's exactly what we're doing," he added.
Blinken said he believed around 100 American citizens remain in Afghanistan, including "a relatively small number" seeking to leave Mazar-e-Sharif.
Further complicating matters, the Taliban said Tuesday that they would not allow people to leave the country until a new government is formed. The Taliban on Tuesday afternoon announced a list of people who will fill key roles, but they held off on formally swearing in the new government.
Taliban officials insist they are currently going through the manifests and passenger documents for the charter flights at Mazar-e-Sharif, but without functioning ministries to grant exit stamps and perform other necessary duties, an orderly departure process was not yet in place.
Blinken said the U.S. has been in contact with the Taliban "in recent hours" to work out arrangements on charter evacuation flights.
CONFLICTING ACCOUNTS
A U.S.-led evacuation out of the airport in the capital, Kabul, flew out tens of thousands of Afghans, Americans and others last month before ending Aug. 30, with the withdrawal of the last U.S. troops and diplomats.
Like the U.S., the Taliban do not want to see a repeat of the desperate scenes that played out in Kabul, where thousands of Afghans rushed to the airport and many were evacuated without proper documentation.
The Biden administration says the current holdup is the fault of the Taliban, but some private organizers of the flights are skeptical. They say the State Department and other U.S. agencies have been slow or outright unresponsive to pleas for help despite assurances that Washington would work with the Taliban and others to get people out.
The State Department said Monday that it had helped a family of four U.S. citizens escape Afghanistan using a land route. The Taliban knew what the family was doing but did not impede them, U.S. officials say.
An array of American men and women and groups -- many of them with some past experience in Afghanistan, or other ties -- have been working for weeks to try to help evacuate at-risk Afghans. Much of that effort is focused now on the planes in Mazar-e-Sharif.
Some of those Americans pushing for U.S. action said Tuesday that they fear the Biden administration will help out American citizens, and leave behind green-card holders, Afghans who used to work with Americans, and others vulnerable for their work, including journalists, women's advocates and rights workers.
Last month's U.S.-led flights weren't limited to citizens and green-card holders, said Marina LeGree, the American head of Ascend, the nonprofit for Afghan women. "The game changed partway through," she said.
Alex Plitsas, a representative of a group called Digital Dunkirk, which is serving as an umbrella group for several organizations arranging the private evacuation efforts since the completion of the U.S. military, welcomed Blinken's words.
"Welcome news," Plitsas said. "We are in touch with the State Department through official channels to help facilitate whatever is needed for those individuals that we have been helping who remain stranded.
"Our men and women in uniform and diplomats on the ground in Kabul did a fantastic job. Now it's time to bring the last remaining folks home."
AIRPORT REPAIRS
The Taliban also are working with international partners to try to restart full operations at the airport in Kabul.
Qatar expects to have Kabul's airport "operational very soon" and has urged the Taliban to help allow the evacuation of stranded Afghans, Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said in Doha.
"Right now we didn't reach yet an agreement on the way to manage, or to run the airport," he acknowledged.
Turkey's foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, said that his nation was working with Qatar and other countries to help fix damage at the Kabul facility and establish security protocols.
"The Kabul airport can be opened to international flights again, the damage can be repaired, the runway can be renewed, the terminal, also renewed," Cavusoglu said, noting that 19 Turks were working to repair damage.
While the security outside the airport can be maintained by the Taliban, he said, the airport's security "should be maintained by a security company that is trusted" by the international community.
"There are companies that do this business, if military presence is unwanted," he said. Without such security, Cavusoglu said, it was unlikely that commercial flights would be able to resume.
"Even if planes want to fly, the insurance companies will not allow," he said in an interview with a private Turkish broadcaster.
Reopening Kabul's airport to humanitarian and commercial flights is crucial to both the international community -- which is seeking to continue evacuations of citizens and Afghan allies -- as well as to the Taliban's efforts to win international legitimacy and maintain trade and aid ties. Allowing travelers to depart Afghanistan also is seen as a first test of the Taliban's willingness to engage with the West.
"The international community is watching to see if the Taliban will live up to their commitments," Blinken said.
Information for this article was contributed by Matthew Lee, Ellen Knickmeyer and Robert Burns of The Associated Press; by Michael Crowley, Wali Arian and Sami Sahak of The New York Times; and by Simone Foxman and Nick Wadhams of Bloomberg News (WPNS).