当这个年仅13、14岁的小男孩安全进入喀布尔国际机场大门时，那里的美国国务院官员问了两个问题:他的父母在哪里?为什么他的衣服上都是血?
“他说有人就在他面前被杀了，他的全家人都散了，”一名国务院官员说，讲述了他们在地面上12天的悲惨遭遇阿富汗。
他们是几十名美国外交官中的一员成千上万的美国军队帮助疏散了123，000多名逃离塔利班的美国同胞、阿富汗人和其他外国人。
但据美国国务院一名高级官员称，这一努力也留下了多达200名试图逃跑的美国公民，以及与美国外交和军事人员一起工作的“大多数”阿富汗人，现在他们担心自己的生命受到威胁面临塔利班报复的风险。
“每个住在那里的人都被我们不得不做出的选择和在行动的第一阶段我们无法帮助离开的人所困扰，”这位应国务院要求匿名的高级官员说。
官员们表示，这项全员参与的努力汇集了华盛顿和世界各地大使馆的数百名国务院人员，甚至可以与2020年春季冠状病毒大流行开始时的全球遣返行动相媲美。
据美国国务院称，总部设在国务院的紧急行动阿富汗协调工作队汇集了数百名美国各机构官员，包括国防部、国土安全部以及负责管理难民重新安置的卫生和公众服务部的官员，并帮助协调了给在阿富汗的美国公民的大约5.5万个电话和3.3万封电子邮件，试图将他们带到安全的地方。随着这一行动转向帮助留下的美国人和阿富汗人，这位国务院高级官员承认，疏散工作并不“漂亮，非常具有挑战性”。...这涉及到每个参与者的一些非常痛苦的权衡和选择。”
那些仍在那里的美国人中最年轻的可能是“阿里”，美国广播公司新闻没有用他的真名来保护他和他的家人。这个三岁的男孩出生在萨克拉门托地区，他的父亲“拉明”和母亲“萨哈尔”都是美国合法永久居民，或绿卡持有者。几年前，拉明把一家人，包括阿里的三个哥哥姐姐，搬到了喀布尔，在他的祖国从事社会工作者的职业。
但是随着阿富汗政府的垮台——其速度之快连美国官员都感到惊讶——他们争先恐后地逃离了这个家庭告诉美国广播公司新闻子公司KGO。他们说，他们收到了美国驻喀布尔大使馆关于如何接近机场的指示，但被塔利班武装分子击退并封锁——他们太害怕了，不敢再次尝试。
这位美国国务院高级官员表示，尽管与塔利班的合作足以让数万名撤离者通过，但当激进组织的检查站被人群淹没，或者来自领导层的信息传递速度不足以到达地面上的战斗人员时，这种合作经常会中断。
他们周三对记者表示:“我们没有能力控制机场综合大楼实体大门以外的流入。
美国国务院的行动还努力向美国人和阿富汗伙伴提供如何进入机场的详细说明，以免最终在大量人群中传播。相反，任何独特的证件都很快被共享，对驻守在喀布尔机场坚固城墙上的美国和盟国军人来说变得毫无用处。
这位高级官员说:“这不再是区分不同人群的一个可行的凭证，我们根本没有人或时间去尝试筛选那些要求进入的人群。
这尤其意味着为美国工作的阿富汗人——有时被称为SIV，因为他们申请了特殊移民签证——被留在人群中。
这位高级官员补充说:“我们无法区分我们都想以何种方式吸引这些SIV人。”他拒绝提供疏散人数的任何数字，但表示“坊间证据”表明“大多数人”没有被疏散。
救援美国人、阿富汗伙伴和其他外国人的行动也变得越来越危险。上周四，一名自杀式炸弹袭击者在阿比门外引爆了炸药，造成至少182人死亡，其中包括13名美国军人，这让ISIS-K的威胁变得非常真实。
但官员们也担心人群本身，尤其是随着时间越来越紧迫，拜登总统8月31日的最后期限越来越近，人们越来越绝望。
这位高级官员说:“这不是对急于离开的人的批评，这只是这种情况下人类行为的特征——我认为人们不明白，在任何给定的一天的任何给定时刻，那些在接入点外的人群都处于向暴徒转变的边缘。
现在，将由美国领事官员帮助数百名其他美国人和数万名阿富汗伙伴逃离阿富汗，无论接下来会发生什么。
“这真的令人沮丧，”从美国驻加拿大大使馆飞往华盛顿协助疏散工作的第二名领事官员在谈到试图帮助在阿富汗的美国公民的电话或电子邮件时表示。
在某些情况下，这些单独的电话为美国公民和居民或有风险的阿富汗人进入喀布尔机场提供了个性化的指示，包括在面临高度攻击威胁的情况下，在接近大门之前要在一个集结点集合。
美国驻新德里大使馆的第三名国务院官员讲述了他与一名阿富汗妇女的谈话，这名妇女只会说波斯语的阿富汗方言达里语，但用她的基本乌尔都语和他蹩脚的印地语，他能够提供如何进入机场的指示。
第一位国务院官员说:“这让我们一直在前进——每个人都感受到了阿富汗人的绝望，都想帮助他们，都知道这是时间问题，我们帮助尽可能多的人的时间有限，每个人都各行其是。
但坚持这一时间表引起了对拜登的愤怒，共和党议员和一些退伍军人团体指责拜登抛弃了美国人，尤其是阿富汗盟友。
国际难民援助项目(IRAP)的政策顾问亚当·贝茨(Adam Bates)周二表示:“美国政府不愿意保护这些值得信赖的盟友，这是一个不合理的失败，本可以避免。“美国不仅有持续的道德义务，而且有保护他们和所有阿富汗盟友的法律义务。”
拜登在周二的一次讲话中否认了这一点，他表示，呆得更久会违反前总统唐纳德·特朗普与塔利班的协议，从而将更多美国军队置于危险之中:“这是一个选择，真正的选择——要么离开，要么升级。”
然而，对于第一位国务院官员来说，没有时间详细讨论他们在喀布尔机场设防大门内遇到的阿富汗人民的生死问题——如果美国政府不批准他们旅行，他们中的一些人被迫离开。
这位官员说:“人太多了，需求一直很大，我们只是努力做我们应该做的事情，让尽可能多的人出来。
这位官员自愿帮助处理人员，他和其他领事官员于8月17日抵达，就在喀布尔落入塔利班手中的两天后。领事官员轮班工作12小时，他们在美国特种部队的队伍后面等待，检查美国人、阿富汗人和其他获准进入机场的人的文件，然后才能通过另一队美国部队，登上疏散航班。
这位官员称，阿富汗和塔利班部队在周边“不断”鸣枪示警，使用了闪光弹和至少一次催泪瓦斯。他们补充说，大多数人等了三到五天才进去，称之为“可怕的”。
undefined更多:喀布尔机场混乱，人们挣扎着逃离
这位官员说:“那些试图通过这些大门的人，对他们来说是一次可怕的经历，作为领事官员，我们很高兴能够尽我们所能尽快评估他们的资格。
最令人心碎的场景是无人陪伴的未成年人，他们失去了父母，最终被困在机场的围墙内。据美国国务院官员称，他们中的许多人已经从喀布尔疏散到卡塔尔多哈，联合国儿童基金会在那里保管他们，并正在努力让他们与父母和家人团聚。
当被问及为什么有这么多孩子最终孤身一人时，这位官员说:“混乱。你甚至无法想象大门外的混乱。”
“在任何一天，我们都有30多个孩子被分开...他们都受到了创伤，”这位官员补充道。
一位当地消息人士上周告诉美国广播公司新闻，至少有四名儿童在他们的父亲被塔利班杀害，他们的母亲在机场外的人群中被压碎后成为孤儿。根据国务院官员的说法，其他人可能是被他们的父母“为了安全”才这样做的，“但我可以告诉你，任何这样做的父母都是出于绝望和对孩子的爱。”
来自美国和盟国，特别是挪威的官员在机场一起照顾他们，服务人员和他们一起玩耍，摇晃婴儿，并提供尿布、食物和瓶子等用品。这位官员说，挪威建立了一个团聚中心，“很快就不知所措了，有这么多孩子失散了”。
对于阿里和他的家人来说，他们至少还在一起。但是前面的路，也许是字面上的，还不清楚。
这家人告诉KGO，他们已经与阿富汗当地的其他美国人取得了联系，并在喀布尔留下了一个安全的住所来寻找自己的路。
Inside State Department officials' scramble to rescue Americans, Afghan partners
When the young boy, just 13 or 14 years-old, was safely inside the gates of Kabul's international airport, U.S. State Department officials there asked two questions: Where were his parents? And why was there blood all over his clothes?
"He said that somebody was killed right in front of him, and his whole family dispersed," said a State Department official, recounting their harrowing 12 days on the ground inAfghanistan.
They were one of dozens of U.S. diplomats who, along withthousands of U.S. troops, helped evacuate more than 123,000 of their fellow Americans, Afghans, and other foreigners fleeing the Taliban.
But that effort also left behind as many as 200 U.S. citizens who were trying to escape and the "majority" of Afghans who worked with U.S. diplomatic and military personnel, according to a senior State Department official, and now fear their lives areat risk from Taliban reprisals.
"Everybody who lived it is haunted by the choices we had to make and by the people we were not able to help depart in this first phase of the operation," said the senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity at the State Department's request.
The all-hands-on-deck effort marshaled hundreds of State Department personnel in Washington and at embassies around the world, even rivaling the global repatriation operation at the start of the coronavirus pandemic in spring 2020, according to officials.
Afghanistan Coordination Task Force, an emergency operation headquartered at the State Department, has brought together hundreds of U.S. officials across agencies, including from the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services, which manages refugee resettlement, and helped coordinate approximately 55,000 calls and 33,000 emails to U.S. citizens in Afghanistan to try to bring them to safety, according to the department. As that operation shifts to help Americans and Afghans left behind, the senior State Department official conceded the evacuation efforts weren't "pretty, it was very challenging. ... It involved some really painful tradeoffs and choices for everybody involved."
The youngest of those Americans still there may be "Ali," whose real name ABC News is not using to protect him and his family. The three-year-old boy was born in the Sacramento area, and both his father "Ramin" and mother "Sahar" are U.S. lawful permanent residents, or Green card holders. Ramin moved the family, including Ali's three older siblings, to Kabul a couple of years ago, drawn to a career as a social worker in his home country.
But with the collapse of the Afghan government - the speed of which surprised even U.S. officials - they scrambled to get out, the familytold ABC News affiliate KGO. They said they received instructions from the U.S. embassy in Kabul on how to approach the airport, but were beaten back and blocked by Taliban fighters - too fearful to attempt again.
The senior State Department official said while there was enough cooperation with the Taliban to get tens of thousands of evacuees through, it regularly broke down when the militant group's checkpoints were overwhelmed by the crowds or when messages from leadership didn't travel fast enough to fighters on the ground.
"We had zero ability to control that inflow beyond the physical gates of the airport complex," they told reporters Wednesday.
The State Department's operation also struggled to provide detailed instructions on how to access the airport to Americans and Afghan partners that wouldn't end up spreading through the massive crowds. Instead, any unique credential was quickly shared and became useless for U.S. and allied service members manning the fortified walls of Kabul airport.
"It was no longer a viable credential to differentiate among populations, and we simply did not have the people or the time to be able to try to sift through that crowd of people demanding access," the senior official said.
That meant especially for Afghans who worked for the U.S. -- sometimes known as SIVs, for the special immigrant visas they've applied for -- were left in the crowds.
"We weren't able to differentiate in the ways we all wanted to pull in those SIV populations," the senior official added, declining to provide any figures for how many were evacuated, but saying "anecdotal evidence" suggested the "majority" were not.
Operations to rescue Americans, Afghan partners, and other foreigners also became increasingly dangerous as the operation stretched on. The threat from ISIS-K became horribly real when a suicide bomber detonated explosives outside Abbey Gate last Thursday, killing at least 182 people, including 13 U.S. service members.
But officials were also concerned about the crowds themselves, especially as desperation grew with the clock ticking down to President Biden's Aug. 31 deadline.
"It's not a criticism of the people who were desperate to leave, it's just the characteristics of human behavior in those kinds of conditions -- I think people don't understand that those crowds that were outside the access points were on the verge of flipping to a mob at any given moment of any given day," said the senior official.
Now, it will be up to U.S. consular officers to help the hundreds of other Americans and tens of thousands of Afghan partners escape whatever comes next in Afghanistan.
"It was really disheartening," a second consular officer, who flew to Washington from the U.S. embassy in Canada to assist in evacuation efforts, said of the long shifts on the phone or emails trying to help U.S. citizens in Afghanistan.
In some cases, those individual calls provided personalized instructions for U.S. citizens and residents or at-risk Afghans to access Kabul airport, including a rally point to meet before approaching the gates amid the high threat of attack.
A third State Department official, based at the U.S. embassy in New Delhi, recounted talking to an Afghan woman who only spoke Dari, the Afghan dialect of Persian, but in her basic Urdu and his broken Hindi, he was able to provide instructions on how to access the airport.
"That kept us going all the time -- that everybody felt the desperation of the Afghans and wanted to help them and knew it was a matter of time, that we had limited time to help as many people as possible and everybody went out of their way," said the first State Department official.
But sticking to that timeline has drawn outrage against Biden, accused by Republican lawmakers and some veterans' groups of abandoning Americans and especially Afghan allies.
"The unwillingness of the U.S. government to protect these trusted allies is an unconscionable failure that could have been avoided," Adam Bates, policy counsel at the International Refugee Assistance Project, or IRAP, said Tuesday. "The United States not only has an ongoing moral, but also a legal obligation to protect them and all Afghan allies."
Biden rejected that in an address Tuesday, saying staying longer would have put more U.S. troops at risk by violating former President Donald Trump's deal with the Taliban: "That was the choice, the real choice - between leaving or escalating."
For that first State Department official, however, there was no time to dwell on the life-or-death implications for the Afghan people they encountered just inside Kabul airport's fortified gates - some of whom they were forced to turn away if they weren't cleared by the U.S. government to travel.
"There were so many people, the need was so great all the time, that we just tried to do what we were supposed to do and get as many people out," said the official.
Volunteering to help process people, the official arrived with other consular officers on Aug. 17, just two days after Kabul fell to the Taliban. Working 12-hour shifts, consular officers waited behind a line of U.S. special forces to check the documents of Americans, Afghans, and others who were granted entry to the airport -- before they could move through another line of U.S. forces and board evacuation flights.
Warning shots were being fired "constantly" by Afghan and Taliban troops on the perimeter, per the official, with the use of flash bangs and at least one instance of tear gas as well. Most people waited three to five days just to get inside, they added -- calling it "horrendous."
"The people that tried to get through those gates, it was a horrifying experience for them, and as consular officers, we were thrilled to be able to do what we could to evaluate their eligibility as quickly as possible," the official said.
Among the most heartbreaking scenes were the unaccompanied minors -- children who lost parents and ended up inside the airport's walls. Scores of them have been evacuated from Kabul to Doha, Qatar, where UNICEF has custody of them and is working to reunify them with parents and family, according to State Department officials.
Asked how so many children ended up alone, the official said, "Chaos. You can't even imagine the chaos that was outside the gate."
"On any given day, we had over 30 children that were separated ... They were all traumatized," the official added.
At least four children were orphaned after their father was killed by the Taliban and their mother was crushed in the crowds outside the airport, a source on the ground told ABC News last week. Others may have been pushed through "for safety" by their parents, according to the State Department official, "But I can tell you any parent that did that did that out of desperation and a love for their child."
Officials from the U.S. and allied countries, especially Norway, worked together at the airport to care for them, with service members playing with them, rocking babies, and providing supplies like diapers, food, and bottles. Norway set up a reunification center that "quickly got overwhelmed, there were so many children that were separated," the official said.
For Ali and his family, they are at least still together. But the road ahead -- perhaps literally -- is unclear.
The family told KGO that they have connected with other Americans on the ground in Afghanistan, leaving a safe house in Kabul to find their own way.
