The United States will temporarily host at a military base in Virginia a few hundred Afghan auxiliaries of the US military and their families who fear reprisals from the Taliban after the withdrawal of foreign forces, the State Department said on Monday (July 19th).
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Some 700 interpreters and other Afghans who have assisted the U.S. military and their immediate families, or about 2,500 people, will be dispatched to Fort Lee, an Army base some 200 km south of Washington, D.C., told the press the spokesperson for American diplomacy, Ned Price.
"They are courageous Afghans
,
"
said Ned Price, stressing that they had been subjected to intensive security checks and that their files for obtaining a special immigration visa (SIV) were the most advanced.
These Afghans, who are unlikely to all arrive at the same time in the United States, should only stay at Fort Lee
"a few days,"
said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby.
“These people and their families are at the last stage of the SIV process, so they don't need to stay on a military base for a long time
,” he said.
Read also: Afghans fear the return of the Taliban after the departure of the Americans
If there were no facilities at this Virginia base, other US military bases could be brought in, but only for those in the final stages of obtaining immigrant status, added John Kirby.
The others should be received on American bases abroad, he said.
Some 20,000 Afghans who assisted the US military, including as interpreters, have at this stage requested to be evacuated by the United States with their immediate families. In total, around 100,000 people are eligible for these evacuations. The evacuation flights of these Afghan auxiliaries are due to begin the last week of July, with the American troops expected to have completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan on August 31.
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