Over 60,000 Afghans who collaborated with US military still in Afghanistan: Report

At least 62,000 US interpreters and other Afghans who applied for an American visa, including those who collaborated with the US military, are still in Afghanistan, the Wall Street Journal reported. The south-central Asian country has been thrown into a political and economic crisis after a US troop pullout at a time the Taliban ousted Afghanistan's elected government and took control of Kabul.

Following the fall of the Afghan government, the US had evacuated thousands of Afghans who managed to get past Taliban checkpoints. The vast majority now reside in the United States on humanitarian parole, which authorises the Department of Homeland Security to admit those who do not have visas for urgent humanitarian grounds or considerable public benefit.

However, for Afghans who were unable to fight their way to the airport through throngs and threats from Taliban insurgents or who gave up entirely after a terrorist attack killed hundreds of people, asking for humanitarian parole with the USCIS is among the few remaining possibilities for escape. 

Other options include special immigrant visas, which only apply to specific groups of people, and the standard refugee admissions procedure, which can take years and is currently operating at a reduced capacity due to the erstwhile Trump administration's cutbacks and the COVID-19 outbreak.

Around 33,000 Afghans and their family members have gone through the appropriate verification procedures and can be evacuated immediately, the Wall Street Journal reported.

29,000 people in early stages of application procedure 

According to the Wall Street Journal report, another 29,000 people who want to leave Afghanistan are in the early stages of the application procedure, which is designed to check their employment history as well as their ties to terrorist organisations. Several flights a week are currently being operated by the US, depending on weather and other conditions at the Kabul airport, which is still partially operational.

This is the first time since August that the State Department has revealed the exact number of Afghans who are eligible for evacuation, as per the Wall Street Journal report. Afghans are looking forward to flying out of Afghanistan due to the country's deteriorating economic position.

Many Afghan residents have attempted to flee the country since the Taliban retook power in August, fearing retaliation from the insurgents. Many countries also operated planes out of Afghanistan to evacuate their people, diplomatic mission workers, and other Afghans.

According to lawyers and sponsors seeking to bring Afghan citizens to the United States, humanitarian parole applications are a less-than-ideal approach to secure assistance. Since the end of the Vietnam War, when over 170,000 Vietnamese people were released as parolees, the method has not been employed on such a large scale, as per the Wall Street Journal report.

(With agency inputs, Image: AP)