Republican demands info from State Department on delayed Afghanistan flights

FIRST ON FOX: A Republican congressman is disputing Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s insistence that the State Department did not block citizens from leaving Mazar-i-Sharif Airbase in Afghanistan during the frenzied withdrawal. 

Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, wrote a letter, obtained by Fox News Digital, demanding to know how many planes the State Department blocked from leaving the airbase, who made the call on whether to clear flights for takeoff, what the criteria for blocking delaying flights was and whether there had been communication with the Taliban.

Following the withdrawal, reports emerged that 1,000 people, including Americans, were stuck at Mazar-i-Sharif Airport awaiting clearance for their charter flights to leave. 

Many had made the 400-mile trek from Kabul to be able to get out more quickly at the airport in northern Afghanistan. 

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Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, wrote a letter, obtained by Fox News Digital, demanding to know how many planes the State Department blocked from leaving the airbase.

One flight organizer told Reuters the State Department had failed to tell the Taliban of its approval for flight departures in Mazar-i-Sharif or validate a landing site. 

Davidson said in the letter that when he was in talks with the State Department, an official asked him “which tail number” he was referring to, insinuating more than one flight had not received authorization to take off and been delayed. 

Col. Francis Hoang, who worked on Afghanistan evacuations with his group Allied Airlift 21, told the Foreign Affairs Committee, “We spent three weeks hiding these nearly 400 people from the Taliban, keeping them alive and fed using funds from American donors.”

During a hearing last week, Davidson asked Blinken, “Did the State Department block American citizens from departing from the airfield in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan?” 

“Absolutely not,” said Blinken. 

“You know they were blocked!” said Davidson. 

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“I’d be happy to look at any information you have on that. I’m not aware of any American citizens who were blocked.”

Hundreds of people gather near a U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane at a perimeter at the international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Monday, Aug. 17, 2021. (AP)

“I have the emails. I have the photographs of American, blue passport-holding American citizens who were on the airfield awaiting departure that got clearance for safe third countries to depart to, and the order came down from the United States government. Was it the State Department?” Davidson asked. 

Blinken’s testimony came three months after the committee voted along party lines to recommend he be held in contempt of Congress, when he refused to appear to testify again about the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal. 

Republicans released a lengthy report in September highlighting how State Department officials had no plan for getting Americans and allies out while there were still troops there to protect them. 

The report claimed that Ross Wilson, U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan at the time, grew the embassy’s footprint instead of sending personnel home despite warnings from military officials that a Taliban takeover was imminent. 

“You ignored warnings of collapse from your own personnel,” Foreign Affairs Chair Michael McCaul told Blinken. 

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Blinken defended the Biden administration’s handling of the withdrawal, saying every American who wanted to leave had been given the opportunity to do so and thousands of Afghans have been resettled internationally. 

President-elect Donald Trump has promised to ask for the resignation of every senior official “who touched the Afghanistan calamity.”

Democrats, meanwhile, insist the blame for the 20-year war’s acrimonious end lies with a deal Trump negotiated with the Taliban for U.S. withdrawal.