After a meeting with intelligence officials, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) said that it was “very unlikely” that the United States was going to finish evacuating Americans by the U.S. withdrawal deadline of August 31st set by President Biden.
“I think it’s very unlikely given the number of Americans who still need to be evacuated, the number of SIVs, the number of others who are members of the Afghan press, civil society leaders, women leaders, it’s hard for me to imagine all of that can be accomplished between now and the end of the month,” Schiff told reporters. “I am encouraged to see the numbers of people evacuated, increasing readily to the point where we evacuated 11,000 people in a single day. Nonetheless, given the logistical difficulties of moving people to the airport, and the limited number of work arounds, it’s hard for me to see that being fully complete by the end of the month. And I’m certainly of the view that we maintain a military presence as long as it’s necessary to get all U.S. persons out, and to meet our moral and ethical obligation to our Afghan partners.”
On Sunday, Biden suggested that U.S. troops may stay beyond the August 31st deadline. The Taliban has said that they will not allow “additional time to continue evacuations” and that there “would be consequences.”
Schiff later commented on the “terrorism threat” in Afghanistan, saying, “I think the intelligence community has always been very sober about our capacity to detect and deter a terrorism threat from within Afghanistan once we have no military force there, once our military footprint has been reduced to effectively zero.”
Schiff later added that he was worried about the terrorism threat to the Kabul airport, where nearly all evacuations are taking place.
“I think the threat to the airport is very real and very substantial,” Schiff said. “And this has been a concern of mine for for some days now that this would make a very attractive target for ISIS-K or for elements of Al-Qaeda, but most particularly ISIS-K, an opportunity to attack both the U.S. forces as well as Afghan nationals, and indeed, the Taliban as well, and just cause chaos, that might prolong the U.S. stay in a way that ISIS-K believes might suit their interests. So it’s a very real risk, I think, to our aircraft, to our personnel, to people who have congregated around the airport. Whenever you have a mass gathering like that, it is an opportunity for improvised and other explosive devices. So it’s a real danger.”
