activity. so the taliban now run afghanistan, but that does not mean we ever accept their behavior. i supported the decision to eventually withdraw or military from afghanistan. i have long maintained, however, that how the united states left mattered. doing the right thing in the wrong way can end up being the wrong thing. and to get this right, the biden administration needed to answer two fundamental questions. first, would the withdrawal leave a durable political arrangement in its wake. second, would the u.s. and our allies maintain an ability to collect intelligence, conduct counter-terrorism and including isis-k seeking to do us harm. i believe they fell short on the the first measure and time will tell on the second but prospects don t look promising. let me start with the
as well as offers of help including financial assistance to pay for plane tickets. despite this efforts, at the time of the evacuation began, there were still thousands of americans in afghanistan. almost all of whom were evacuated by august 31st. many were dual citis living in afghanistan for years, decades, generations. deciding whether or not to leave the place that they know as home is a wrenching decision. in april, we began drawing down our embassy ordering nonessential personnel to depart. we also used this time to significantly speed up the processing of special immigrant visas for afghans who worked for us. when we took office, we inherited a program with a 14-step process based on a statutory framework enacted by congress involving multiple agencies. and a backlog of more than 17,000 siv applicants. there had not been a single siv applicant interview in kabul in
for women and many will attack the united states. they left afghanistan in total disarray and created a humanitarian crisis with thousands of refugees and displaced afghans in need of immediate emergency assistance. secretary blinken, you characterize the evacuation as an extraordinary effort. you ve touted over 124,000 evacuees but we have abandon the the people. theying with plague the by a lack of basic planning and ignoring repeated congressional offers to help, and a failure to recognize the taliban for what it is. a terrorist organization. the numbers are telling. you evacuated 6,040 americans and say only a couple of hundred remain. your own department told this committee in july that there were 10 to 15,000 americans in
degraded significantly including the ability to plan and conduct external operations. after 20 years, 2461 american lives lost, 20,000 injuries, $2 trillion spent, it was time to end america s longest war. when president biden took office in january, he inherited an agreement that his predecessor reached with the taliban to remove all remaining u.s. forces from afghanistan by may 1st of this year. as part of that agreement, previous administration pressed the afghan government to release 5,000 taliban prisoners including some top war commanders. meanwhile, it reduced our own force presence to 2500 troops. in return, the taliban agreed to stop attacking u.s. and partner forces and to refrain from threatening afghanistan major cities. but the taliban continued its march on outposted, check points, villages and districts as well as some of the major roads connecting to the cities. by january of 2021, the taliban
political bosses had gotten out of the way. now we have americans and u.s. contr contractors and sieves still in afghanistan despite repeated assurances you ll get them out. you ve been unable to do so. our planes are stranded and students on scholarships have been abandoned and our siv app lick abilities are in hiding as taliban death squads hunt them down. you said he would have continued evacuations after 31 august. where is your plan. i have not seen it. i don t know that i talked to anyone who has seen it. i ve seen a rebuke from our european allies. they begged us for help and where we were not helping our own citizens how could we help them. instead we have to rely on the generous partners like qatar. the way this evacuation was conducted i cannot blame them. for years despite strains in our relations with europe and other