One Year Later: Americans and Allies Remain Stranded in Afghanistan After Biden’s Botched Withdrawal

One year ago, America’s longest came to a brutal, abrupt end as the U.S. military completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan, leaving Americans and Afghan allies behind. 

Marine veteran Chad Robichaux, who was on the ground helping to evacuate American citizens and U.S. allies, joined “Fox & Friends First” Monday to recall what many critics call Biden’s “botched” withdrawal after U.S. forces left the Taliban-controlled nation. 

“I think the president’s advisers had advised him not to do this,” Robichaux told co-host Griff Jenkins. “He chose to do it anyway for whatever motivation is still unknown a year from a year from this happening.”

WHITE HOUSE DRAFTS MEMO DEFENDING AFGHANISTAN WITHDRAWAL 

“Everyone who had been to Afghanistan, who is aware of any kind of military strategy was like, this place is going to fall in the next days or weeks,” he continued. “That’s why myself and the team that we put together at ‘Save Our Allies’ acted the way we did and responded because we knew it was going to happen.”

Robichaux, who served eight tours in Afghanistan, is a co-founder of “Save Our Allies,” an organization dedicated to rescuing Americans trapped behind enemy lines. 

An Afghan woman waits to receive food rations distributed by a Saudi humanitarian aid group, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, April 25, 2022. 
((AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi))

He worked with his Afghan interpreter Aziz while fighting in America’s longest war, and when his life was threatened, Robichaux knew he needed to spring into action. 

“The State Department did announce on July 18th a number that indicated how many of our allies were there,” Robichauz said. “So the applicants, which are our interpreters that fought with us for 20 years, like Aziz, and that number they announced was 74,274.”

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“If you average… 4.5 family members, we’re talking 334,000 pending applications, [and] that doesn’t include who is already here,” he continued. “The rate that they’re bringing people out is 200 cases per week, so it would take 140 years to get all of our interpreters out of Afghanistan at the rate the State Department’s doing it.”

The organization’s goal was ultimately to “evacuate American citizens, SIV holders, and Afghan Allies who the United States government had left behind.”

It remains unclear how many Americans might still be trapped in Afghanistan, but Save Our Allies has successfully evacuated around 12,000 people. 

“Anybody that knew anything about Afghanistan, we’ve seen it was an international hub to keep terrorism at bay in the mountains of Afghanistan,” Robichaux said. “Recently, in the last weeks, we saw al-Zawahri freely walking around… and let’s not forget, the Taliban themselves are still a terrorist organization. They have a safe haven now.”

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