Afghans at Risk Appeal to Biden to Speed up Evacuation

Educated young women, former U.S. military translators and other Afghans most at-risk from the Taliban appealed to the Biden administration to get them on evacuation flights as the United States struggled to bring order to the continuing chaos at the Kabul airport.

President Joe Biden and his top officials said the U.S. was working to speed up the evacuation, but made no promises how long it would last or how many desperate people it would fly to safety "We don't have the capability to go out and collect large numbers of people," Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters Wednesday, adding that evacuations would continue "until the clock runs out or we run out of capability."

Afghans in danger because of their work with the U.S. military or U.S organizations, and Americans scrambling to get them out, also pleaded with Washington to cut the red tape that they say could strand thousands of vulnerable Afghans if U.S. forces withdraw as planned in the coming days.

"If we don't sort this out, we'll literally be condemning people to death," said Marina Kielpinski LeGree, the American head of a nonprofit, Ascend. The organization's young Afghan female colleagues were in the mass of people waiting for flights at the airport in the wake of days of mayhem, tear gas and gunshots.

© The Taliban cleared the civilian side of the airport Tuesday and control access to it. (Planet Labs Inc. via AP)

The U.S. has rushed in troops, transport planes and commanders to secure the airport, seek Taliban guarantees of safe passage, and ramp up an airlift capable of ferrying between 5,000 and 9,000 people a day.

Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman described an all-out effort by U.S. officials to get Afghans and allies to safety. "This is an...