It will not be “possible” to get all Americans out of Afghanistan, warns former US special operations adviser



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Seth Jones, former US special operations adviser in Afghanistan, told CNBC he doesn’t think the US would be able to deport the nearly 1,500 Americans still in Afghanistan before the August 31 deadline. by President Joe Biden.

“No, I don’t think it’s going to be possible to get them all out, I mean the challenge is for the Taliban to control all the major roads, they control all the major cities,” said Jones, senior vice president. of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “So I think this is probably going to continue for a while, more as the United States uses underground forces to try to get others out.”

In the past 24 hours, Western forces have evacuated 19,000 people from Kabul on 90 military cargo plane flights, a rate of one departing flight every 39 minutes, according to the Pentagon.

The Biden administration did not provide the total number of Americans and Afghan nationals it aims to evacuate in just six days.

The State Department has given 500 of 1,500 Americans specific instructions on how to reach Hamid Karzai International Airport safely. The United States is still trying to contact the other 1,000, although the number of those who actually want to leave may be lower, according to the State Department.

Jones told “The News with Shepard Smith” that the presence of US forces had reduced the number of ISIS-K, an affiliate of the terrorist group based in Afghanistan. Now, however, Jones has said that without pressure from US forces, the terrorist group would return.

“He’s now able to reappear in eastern Afghanistan and parts of the north, and he’s built cell structures in various cities, so I think we’re going to see a much more violent Afghanistan, including by groups like ISIS-K, ā€¯Jones said.

The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

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