Rep. Michael McCaul, the ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the Taliban has already started to execute some of the 10,000 interpreters who worked with the U.S. in Afghanistan.
The Texas Republican’s comments came during an interview on CNN’s “The Situation Room” on Monday.
“The interpreters, who worked with our Special Forces, they are gone. The Taliban will not allow them to leave,” he said. “These are the guys who worked right with our special forces. The Taliban views them as the worst of the worse because they betrayed, in their view, their country and they worked with the infidel.”
McCaul estimated there are about 10,000 interpreters still in Afghanistan. He noted that when you take into consideration the families involved, the number of people at risk is as high as 30,000.
CNN host Wolf Blitzer asked, “So, you think they’re going to be stuck? They’re never going to get out?”
McCaul replied, “They’re already being executed. We’re already getting stories of families and interpreters being executed by the Taliban.”
The congressman criticized the Biden administration for its withdrawal plan from Afghanistan.
“Had they done this sooner, this actually could have worked,” he said. “But they waited for the last minute on the hopes that they had this peace deal with the Taliban.”
But Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the Foreign Affairs Committee on Monday that the administration had prepared for worst-case scenarios in Afghanistan, Agence France-Presse.
Blinken told the panel that officials were “intensely focused” on the safety of Americans.
“Even the most pessimistic assessments did not predict that government forces in Kabul would collapse while U.S. forces remained,” he said.
“Nonetheless, we planned and exercised a wide range of contingencies.”
Related Stories
- Pentagon Backs Efforts by US Veterans to Evacuate Afghans
- Blinken Slammed for Testifying Virtually — From Nearby
