Afghans chose razor wire suicide over Taliban when Kabul fell, US Marine tells lawmakers
WASHINGTON — Some of the thousands of Afghans denied help during the August 2021 evacuation of US forces from Kabul chose horrific deaths rather than risk capture by the Taliban after helping Americans during their 20-year war there, a Marine told lawmakers on Wednesday.
Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews described what he called the “surreal” horror he and other US service members saw during the chaotic and deadly evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport while testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
“Some Afghans turned away from HKIA tried to kill themselves on the razor wire in front of us that we used as a deterrent,” he said.
“They thought this was merciful compared to the Taliban torture that they faced.”
While the US and coalition forces evacuated nearly 130,000 people during the weeks-long mission, hundreds more Americans and thousands of their Afghan allies were left behind.
Vargas-Andrews was one of the roughly 5,800 troops Biden sent to help evacuate Kabul during the final weeks of the conflict.
He was also among the dozens of troops injured when an ISIS-K terrorist bombed the airport’s Abbey Gate, killing 13 US service members and more than 160 Afghans.
“Hundreds of people came in waves, surging through the gate multiple times, physically fighting us …” he said.
“Nothing prepared us for the ground experience we were about to encounter.”
As the mission entered its final days, the situation degenerated into “chaos” as Vargas-Andrews and his fellow Marines “worked together to figure out the next best steps [as] tens of thousands of people descended upon” the airport’s main gate.
“People were suffering from extreme malnutrition. dehydration, heat casualties and infants were dying,” he said.
“Afghans were brutalized and tortured by the Taliban [and] flocked to us pleading for help.”
The Defense Department relied on the Taliban to help secure the airport’s perimeter throughout the operation, but Vargas-Andrews said the group also “would routinely murder people in our observation at their checkpoint.”
“Countless Afghans were murdered by the Taliban 155 yards in front of our position, day and night, with only shipping containers between us and the Taliban,” he said.
“We communicated the atrocities to our chain of command and intel assets but nothing came [of it.]”
US troops “tirelessly worked to control the crowds” around the clock, Vargas-Andrews said, even after State Department personnel stopped work for the night and the number of hopeful evacuees outside the airport surged.
“Department of State staff at HKIA would completely shut down processing Afghans every evening and into the morning, leaving ground forces with a nightmare,” he said.
“It did not work in reasonable rotations and very much presented an unwillingness to work in other situations, as well.”
The committee’s Republican members called for “multiple open hearings” about the botched US troop pullout last year after President Biden declined to hold any senior official responsible for the decisions that led to the mission’s chaos, according to a report issued in August by the panel’s then-ranking GOP lawmaker.
“Much more investigation is still needed to provide a full accounting of what caused this disaster,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said at the time.
“And as more information is revealed, more questions will certainly arise.”
The August report also criticized the State Department, noting that just 36 diplomatic officials were in Kabul to screen 124,000 evacuees, amounting to “roughly one consular officer for every 3,444 evacuees.”
If more had been on the ground, the committee’s Republicans said in their report that they believed processing could have gone faster and saved more people.
“Multiple US Marines assigned to [Kabul airport’s] Abbey Gate told Army investigators they rarely saw US State Department personnel on the ground,” the report said, “and when they did show up, they did so inconsistently.”
