rescue. possibly concerned about their own safety. there is some frustration because a lot of the afghans have made it onto the base and not necessarily connected with the siv program. there was a period of time where there was more humanitarian filtration system that they let people on who looked desperate. they sometimes let people on who showed an american-style visa which was essentially passed aroundgetting more of a handle on it. a lot can still go wrong but the ultimate question of how long does this go on for, for something president biden was clearly reluctant to necessarily address. i m sure there are allies who wanted to go on for weeks who don t want to see anybody, quote, left behind, but when they first announced this program, when the afghan government was still in place, it seemed exceptionally ambitious if not fool hearty to get tens of thousands of afghans to form an orderly queue in
it doesn t seem like that s particularly likely because this could be an indefinite process to some degree. they don t know how many americans they are looking for. and the allied afghans could bring on, it s complicated and there could be an awful lot of them. so they could be doing this for weeks if they want to allow any afghan who feels they are eligible for the siv program to come forward. it s increasingly difficult for them. he mentioned specifically himself, the local afghans employed at the u.s. embassy. a source i spoke to said they feel those people have been, quote, screwed over because, remember, there were extraordinary scenes of u.s. diplomats being evacuated from the embassy by helicopter but those local afghans who they sit next to, work with, day in, day out, who were left behind. who a source said are almost certainly eligible for the siv program, if not already in fact candidates that have completed its processes. so they, hundreds of them, are concerned and sat out
but they re not necessarily all eligible to be evacuated. i want to go straight to doha. nick paton walsh joins me now was also in kabul just a few days ago. we re getting this real sense of how many people are there on the ground, just clamoring to try to get out of kabul right now. yeah, i m hearing from a source familiar with the situation on the airport that there are a total of 14,000 currently on the airport. that s people trying to get out. now it s not clear obviously amongst those who are europeans, american citizens, who are afghans who have got on to the base, who amongst those afghans have a legitimate under the american system right to leave the country under the siv program. i should point out that figure of 14,000, there are a lot of numbers floating around, but this source does know the situation pretty well and says they re currently dealing with 14,000. now if you are able to put 400
included in that universe of potential evacuees to include all of those groups of afghans? well, let me take this in turns. as you know, we have a commitment to the american citizens who are in afghanistan. we have spoken of our enduring commitment to those afghans who have worked with us. that includes our locally employed staff. that is to say those that worked with us at our embassy in kabul as well as the many brave afghans that partnered with the united states government over the course of some 20 years. many instances putting themselves or their families at risk. this so-called siv program is a program that this administration has prioritized from day 1 and we ve made very clear that we are committed to doing all we can for these brave afghans and
infrastructure projects, and so on and they have been targeted and they re not eligible for this siv program that we have been hearing so much about. the special immigrant visa program. they were not direct employees, it was government affiliated projects or american institution affiliated projects but they re still targets. and they re vulnerable and trying to leave. they did manage to get on an evacuation list from another flight. from an allied list, but they went through at 8:00 last night. a father, a mother, an 8-year-old daughter, and they could not get near the airport. what they told me was that it is basically chaos. they said it was like dooms day and that it was not the taliban creating the problem. they said it was the u.s. army soldiers that were not able to secure the location. who were firing indiscriminantly into the air throwing what he