The U.S. must renew its efforts to rescue Afghan allies who fought alongside Americans and were left behind in the chaotic withdrawal, veterans told Congress on Wednesday, calling the abandonment a moral stain.
Scott Matt, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, said the Afghan military’s U.S.-trained special operations community should be a particularly high priority for assistance. He singled out in particular the Afghan National Mine Removal Group, operators who did heroic duty clearing IEDs from the battlefield in front of U.S. and Afghan troops.
“These people are being hunted down systematically by the Taliban,” he told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
He said the mine removal group is already eligible for a special visa to enter the U.S. based on their service, and private groups are working on their cases, but extracting them from Afghanistan has proved to be a challenge.
Clearing those hurdles and getting them out could be “one of the first big wins” in the post-Taliban takeover period, he said.
He was testifying as part of a hearing called to examine the withdrawal, which saw the U.S. airlift tens of thousands of lightly-vetted Afghans out of Kabul, even as Afghan troops who assisted the American war effort were left behind.
“We need to get them the hell out of there,” Chairman Michael McCaul, Texas Republican, said.
Some of the hearing involved finger-pointing over the decisions that predicated the withdrawal, and the lack of anticipation and preparation for the Taliban’s lightning-fast takeover in August 2021.
But tears flowed freely at the stories of heroism by U.S. troops who stood posts around the Kabul airport, pulling children to safety. And they flowed over Afghan allies who didn’t make it.
Rep. Michael Waltz, Florida Republican and Army green beret who served in Afghanistan, displayed photos of one of his interpreters, Spartacus, whom he said was beheaded by the Taliban at age 19, and of Rahim, who did manage to get out on the Special Immigrant Visa program.
The congressman said even this “success” — he used his fingers to put the word in quotation marks — was met with brutality by the Taliban.
“They’re hunting down his family. They captured his cousin, tied him up behind a Taliban truck, drug him through the village and killed him, to say ‘Don’t you dare ever work for America,” Mr. Waltz said. “Even when we’re successful they start targeting and going after the families.”
Mr. Mann said allies left behind can’t get jobs because when they have to show identification, they pop up on the Taliban’s radar.
“We have seen scores of these individuals who have disappeared, who have been detained, who have been tortured, and who have indeed been executed,” he said.
Mr. Mann said some veterans have spent all their savings working to bring out Afghans who fought alongside them. He said some have emptied their kids’ college funds. Some saw their marriages survive the stress of deployments, but succumb to the stress of the withdrawal and the aftermath.
And several witnesses nodded when asked if they knew fellow troops who killed themselves over the despair of the withdrawal.
There were also stories of searing humanity.
Marine Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews, who lost both legs, an arm and a kidney in the suicide blast at the Kabul airport that killed 13 Americans and 170 Afghans, recalled one instance earlier in which he spotted a girl, maybe 7 or 8 years old, holding a baby and pulling along her younger brother through the mass of people around the airport perimeter.
He ran to them, picked up the baby and saw its face was turning blue. He found a medic and they administered CPR with the help of a breathing bag.
“I didn’t know if the baby had already passed, but I assumed it wasn’t breathing. I didn’t want to injure the baby by performing CPR on it myself,” he said. It worked, and the baby’s “face flushed pink, it started crying.”
The older girl then started asking for her father. He took her back to the perimeter and held her up over the razor wire, looking in the crowd of hundreds to see any sign of recognition. The girl pointed and he spotted a man carrying luggage with his hands on his head, crying.
He got the troops at the gate to bring the man through. The girl ran to him and they hugged. He had all the paperwork for the children.
“For me, that was a moment that my personal injury was worth it. I know those three little kids will have a life of freedom and opportunity now because of that,” Sgt. Vargas-Andrews said.
Rep. Madeleine Dean, Pennsylvania Democrat, said that story should be a challenge to Congress.
“Help us make sure we live up to our obligation to the remaining people, whom we must save, rescue, [help] get on with their lives,” she told the sergeant.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.