Department Press Briefing – February 2, 2022
Friday, February 4, 2022
02/02/2022 07:25 PM EST, Afghanistan Excerpt Only:
QUESTION: Kim Dozier. I wanted to change the subject for a minute. So I understand the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is holding a classified hearing today on Afghanistan. So I wanted to give you a chance to give us an update on Afghan evacuees – not just the American citizens, legal permanent residents, and those who have already had approved SIV applications, but the would-be evacuees who are still stuck inside Afghanistan who can’t start their P-1 of P-2 process until they physically leave the country. I’ve spoken to a number of volunteer groups. They’ve manifested entire plane-loads of people, but they can’t find third countries will to take those people, and they – those third countries, according to diplomatic go-betweens, have said the State Department has actively discouraged them from taking these Afghans. So I want to hear your take on that, and do you encourage other countries to allow these people in so that they can be processed? MR PRICE: So, Kim, first, to take a step back: You heard from us during the course of the U.S. Government evacuation prior to August 31st and the end of the U.S. military mission that our commitment to American citizens who chose to remain behind or who were not able to leave at that time, to lawful permanent residents, to Afghans to whom we have a special commitment, would be enduring. And I think over the past several months you have seen us make good on that pledge. When it comes to U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, we have directly relocated nearly a thousand. QUESTION: Okay. And that’s all great news, but I’m still talking to groups who have thousands of people manifested, who have gone through the preliminary State Department okay that – they didn’t have any red flags – and they can’t move them off the X, still. And they say when they reach out to the State Department, they get silence. MR PRICE: Kim, I think what you may be hearing, first of all, to be very clear, we are in many different ways supporting the Afghan people. We are supporting the Afghan people in their humanitarian needs and we have continued to lead the world in doing so. QUESTION: That’s great, but that’s not getting P-1 and P-2 people out to start their applications going. MR PRICE: That’s right, and what I can say is that it is an environment in which the U.S. Government is not in a position to operate. We don’t have an on-the-ground presence, so we are not in a position to undertake the same sort of operations that we were doing prior to August 31st. As you know, we have an entire office here, the so-called CARE team, whose mission it is to work with a number of stakeholders, including private groups, working with them, doing all we can to support their efforts, working in turn with third countries, many of whom – and more than two dozen of whom – during the evacuation and in the weeks after showed extraordinary generosity in hosting Afghans. And many of these countries are still hosting Afghans who were relocated. That is something we continue to support. When it comes to the P-1 and P-2 program, the P-2 program, as you know, it was introduced in early August precisely so that we would have another avenue by which Afghans who met the criteria would be able to enter the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program pipeline. It was a complement to the traditional P-1 program that has been longstanding. It is also the case, Kim, for a number of reasons, that these programs we have always known would be useful, would be complementary to our broader efforts, but these are programs that this administration has had essentially to build up from – not quite from scratch, but programs that were decimated over the past four years. QUESTION: You’ve eloquently explained the backlog and that these are things that are just started. What I’m asking about is that piece of getting –still getting more people off the X to third countries. Are you actively working with new third countries right now who would take these people? MR PRICE: We are actively working with a number of countries in the region, in the Middle East, around the world, as we have been. I believe, over the course of this operation, these are countries spread across four continents who have displayed this extraordinary generosity in hosting Afghans. There are many pieces to this equation. Part of it is impressing upon the Taliban the imperative that they live up to the right of free passage. Part of it is the operational component, ensuring that there is a means by which – usually by air – for individuals to depart Afghanistan if they so choose. There is the charter element that goes along with that. There is a longstanding effort that some of our partners are working on with the Taliban to get Kabul International Airport stood up to regularize the flow of civilian aircraft in and out of Kabul. There is the refugee pipeline. There is a third country pipeline. So yes, there are many pieces to this, and it is impossible to say that one piece is the weak link. We’re working on all of them. We’re working on all of them because we have a commitment to American citizens, to lawful permanent residents, to Afghans to whom we have a special commitment, Afghans who primarily have worked for us over the years. But also we do have these so-called P-1 and P-2 programs as part of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program that this administration has prioritized. In the case of the P-2 program, it’s a program that we specifically stood up knowing the needs of the Afghan people. I say all of that not wanting to discount what it is that we are doing as the world’s humanitarian leader for Afghanistan, to support those many Afghans – millions of Afghans – who remain in Afghanistan and who are in need of nutrition, in need of shelter, in need of provision of health care and other basic human needs. Those Afghans are Afghans who are also benefiting from the generosity of the American people, but who are also benefiting from our leadership on the world stage, encouraging countries around the world to raise their ambition when it comes to humanitarian donations, when it comes to what they are doing on behalf of the Afghan people on a financial basis. But also on a political basis, to make very clear to the Taliban that there needs to be unhindered humanitarian aid and access, that they need to respect the basic human rights of the Afghan people, and they also need to respect the commitment they have made – to your point – to allow safe passage and freedom of movement for Afghans who do wish to leave the country. QUESTION: And of course, you did get women back – partially back to school today? MR PRICE: This is something that we have been pressing for. I know that there have been various statements made by the Taliban. What we’ll be watching for are the actions and the follow-through when it comes to the rights of women, the human rights of Afghanistan’s women, girls, its minorities. It’s something that we have prioritized to a great degree. I know that our Special Representative for Afghanistan Tom West in every engagement he has had with the Taliban has raised this question of human rights, and specifically the rights of women and girls. We have a senior official here in our Office of Global Women’s Issues, Rina Amiri, whose sole job it is to focus on the human rights of Afghanistan’s women and girls. As you know, she was recently in Oslo with Tom West where this was a core point of discussion with the Taliban. The Taliban are under no illusions about the priority we attach to this issue, the priority we have attached and we will attach going forward.
* Yellow highlights provided by AACC.
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