Thread by @KirkWJohnson

I don't know whether I'll be able to keep this going, but I'm going to post updates on the attempt of a 60-year-old mother of a U.S. citizen and wife of a man that has worked on our behalf of 19 years, as she tries to make it to the Kabul airport. @jaketapper

@jaketapper Two years ago, they applied for family reunification, but the visa went nowhere, in part due to bureaucracy and in part due to the pandemic slowing everything down. Her dad is in a location I can't discuss, but still working on behalf of the United States. /2

Her mom hasn't seen her dad in some time - he's been locked down in this location - but yesterday, the Taliban knocked on her front door asking about him, saying that they knew who he was. /3

This has put the daughter in an awful predicament: should her mom wait to flee with her dad (who has no assurance that he'll be evacuated), or should she flee on her own? /4

What if her mom gets out but her dad is left behind and killed? What if her mom is killed along the way? Her parents are trusting in her judgment, but it's awfully difficult to know what to advise from 7K miles away. The daughter hasn't slept in about 5 days. /5

But if they wait too long to try, what if the tenuous window of opportunity closes - what if one of these planes are shot out of the sky, or if Marines start taking heavy fire, or if the last U.S. citizen is evacuated - and Biden decides to end this helter-skelter airlift? /6

They decided that it was worth taking the risk, even though they've been seeing & hearing the same things we all are - gunfire and chaos around the airport checkpoints. So the mother shredded all the family photos - which include: /7

Photos of a family member with @GWBLibrary, @CondoleezzaRice, and @RumsfeldOffice. Photos of the daughter with her American husband. Commendation letters from U.S. officials, etc. These are all death sentences if discovered by the Taliban. /8

For the past weeks, her dad has been routinely told that the U.S. will help, but...nothing. No SIV granted. After 2 years of waiting, her parents are 'documentarily qualified' for the family reunification visa, but in the hierarchy of who gets on the planes, who knows? /9

It's 6:15 in Kabul, and the mom has just decided, after much weeping and anxiety, to try to make it through Taliban checkpoints to the airport. The daughter urged her to pack all of her meds, a phone charger, and to keep the emails on her phone. /10

But the mother doesn't really speak English, so we were trying to coach her to say "my daughter is an American citizen." In the end the daughter recorded a voice memo for her mom to play...but that's only if she gets close enough to a [sympathetic] American willing to listen. /11

But she has to be able to get this in front of the eyes/ears of an American, without any Taliban listening in. At the same time, I'm working contacts to find someone on the U.S. side willing to come 'pluck' her out of the crowd. /12

The daughter, who voted for Biden (her first vote cast as an American, I believe) is furious with this ramshackle process, but heartened by all of the messages of support she has received from her fellow Americans. /13

They keep offering to send her money, but she doesn't want money - she wants her parents to make it out before they're killed by the Taliban. /14

I'm deliberately obscuring any identifying details, but a contact at @StateDept has committed to flagging her name at the airport (if she makes it there). Should be obvious but there are sadly many thousands of Afghan allies who aren't getting this kind of attention. /15

(Last week, I wrote a piece in which I worried that these flights might just be a Darwinian gauntlet that only the strong and well-connected can navigate. I wish that weren't the case, but I'm still going to help the ones I know)newyorker.com/news/daily-com… /16

The daughter is sick with worry. What if the Taliban reads the emails on her phone? What if her phone runs out of battery? How long should she wait outside the airport if she clears the Taliban checkpoints before going home? 12hrs? 2 days? /17

She just left 10 minutes ago. I will update as soon as I know more. So much of this debate has occurred on the macro level - who owns the blame, what could've been done better - but try to imagine making this decision on behalf of your own mom or dad. /18

I just heard from the daughter. There is so much shooting from Afghan security forces guarding the airport that her mom can't even get close enough to show any of her papers. When she called, it was difficult for her to hear over the gunfire. /19

(Taking a moment to tag all of the orgs/individuals that have done such valiant work fighting for these Afghans over the years - @IRAP @n1leftbehind @mattczeller @PaulRieckhoff @sethmoulton @AdamKinzinger @repblumenauer @SenatorCardin @humanrights1st among others). /20

So now, what does she do? What are these promises made by the United States worth if she can't even get in front of an American who can put her on a plane? What would you do if it were your mom? Tell her to wade through gunfire? Wait for what to happen? /21

This is right now, sent from the family, which is trying to approach the various checkpoints/entrances to the airport, hoping like hell that they can get her mom in front of an American. /22

The last gate they tried had some 2,000 Afghans, all of whom apparently have some documentation tying them to the Americans...some with contracts they signed years ago with U.S. contractors that no longer exist (although their execs are all sitting pretty now). /23

Today @potus told @GStephanopoulos:"we're having some more difficulty having those who helped us when we were in there." Would've been easier if the 1,000 C-17 sorties over the past 6 months emptying out coffee pots and office furniture were used to help these imperiled souls /24

But this isn't about point-settling. (Here I go slipping into macro again). It's about whether this one woman, a mother (of 8, one of whom is an American), and a wife of an employee of our country, can get through a goddamn checkpoint to safety. And right now, she cant. /25

This chaos at the airport is the perfect distillation of the whole sordid story of the promises we've made to Afghan and Iraqi allies over the past 15 years: risk your lives for us and we'll help you out. But that help is always locked behind some impenetrable door. /26

I just heard from the daughter. Her mom is now sitting outside one of the checkpoints, hoping her phone holds a charge long enough, but uncertain what to do. Will an American come out to get her? I know @StateDept has her details. Maybe @StateDeptSpox has a canned answer. /27

For all of you saying "this was going to happen no matter what," I beg of you to dig a little deeper (and stop saying that while people that risked their lives for *our* country are on death's door). Yes: any sober observer knew the Afgh govt would fall once we cut them off. /28

But we've also known for a decade that our interpreters would be first in the cross-hairs when we withdrew. That's why we created these visa programs (I've been fighting this since 2006), but they take *years* to navigate, and are seemingly designed to reject people. /29

The Pentagon is, above all else, a world-class logistics agency, bragging all year about retrograding nearly 1,000 C-17 loads of materiel back to the U.S. You think *this* was inevitable? Don't think if we gave a damn about these Afghans we could've put them on those flights? /30

I testified before Congress 10 years ago to build evacuation of our allies into the withdrawal plans for both Iraq and Afghanistan. Lot of good that did. All we did was keep making promises that we were unwilling to honor before and incapable of honoring now. /31

Waiting. The excruciating waiting. Her daughter is sending me horrifying clips of gunfire at night to drive desperate people back. /32

And for whatever it's worth, I've been pissing in the tents of Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden on this issue, so spare me the partisan bs. Served in Fallujah with USAID and lost colleagues to assassination - don't care about your political alignment. This is about right & wrong./33

From her daughter: "Feeling nauseous and feel a tight knot 🪢 in my stomach. My jaw has been hurting as I have been holding my teeth so tight." /34

Sweet interruption: my own 74-year-old mom just texted me to say she's ready to open her home to this woman if she gets out. (This isn't an empty promise - my parents hosted an Iraqi colleague of mine and his wife for 4 years - they sat with our family at my dad's funeral). /35

In our anxiety of waiting - to see if any of my contacts within the U.S. government and military can somehow orchestrate the movement of a Marine or someone willing to go out and call for this woman's name - nervously triple-checking that we provided her right phone #. /36

There are four entrances. She has now spent hours at one, with no luck. The others have more shooting and thousands waiting. The daughter thinks her mom should move to a different one, but what about all the contacts we've been working? Will moving ruin her chances? /37

This is what this whole cruel and inept 'evacuation' looks like, taken by her mom, moments ago. Those people are there because the United States promised them something, and because they sacrificed something on our behalf. Imagine your mom there, alone. /38

She is within sight of Americans. But now panicking because because she doesn't have a printed-out version of the 'visa' to get on one of the flights - she received it via email from the @StateDept and @USEmbassyKabul on her way to the airport. /39

And we're hearing that the checkpoints won't accept digital versions. (Like I said - this is a process designed to reject people). So should she risk leaving and going to an internet cafe (where there might be Taliban) to print it out? Or stay for hours and not get through? /40

This whole effin thing is like trying to work a 7,000-mile-long arcade claw. And it's not like she's the only deserving person in that crowd. /41

Well. I was hoping this would end differently, but after seeing the thousands ahead of her, sitting in 90-degree heat with health issues, with only 7 hours before curfew resumes, she is leaving. If one of my contacts calls her she'll hurry back. /42

Which brings me to the questions haunting all of us: how long can this last? Will the Taliban start firing at these flights or reclaim the airport? When the last U.S. citizens are evacuated, will the planes keep landing for people like this 60-year-old mother of an American? /end

Everyone asking me where the happy ending is to this. Unconfirmed but early reports that some ~15 people trampled/suffocated. One private channel I'm in described it as a 'mosh pit of chaos.' Daughter only found out today that her mom passed out while being shoved around. /+1