A pregnant American woman trying to escape Afghanistan with her husband and father was forced to hide after being blocked by the Taliban and kicked in the stomach, and as the US completed its withdrawal from the militant-controlled country.
California Rep. Darrell Issa is working on trying to get her out and described her harrowing experiences that forced her to go into hiding in an interview on Fox & Friends Tuesday.
'She was kicked in the stomach, but she was kicked in the stomach well after - as she got through the first checkpoint for hours, waiting for those people at the south point to supposedly come and get her,' the Republican lawmaker said.
'It wasn't until it was clear they had closed, they weren't taking anyone else for quite a while that finally, she accepted that she was going to have to go back and hide in her apartment.'
She never made it onto a US military evacuation flight. The last C-17 jet left Hamid Karzai International Airport at 3:29 p.m. ET on August 30. It carried the remainder of troops on the ground, embassy staff including Ambassador Ross Wilson, and Major General Christopher Donahue.
No American civilians were on the last five flights to leave.
Before US forces left, Issa said the woman made 'multiple trips' to the airport.
'We've agreed that she's going to stay sheltered in place, hiding her identity and hoping that her friends will continue to bring her food and keep her secret until frankly we can come up with something new,' he said.
Rep. Darrell Issa is trying to help her out of the Taliban-controlled country, along with an elderly couple in their 80s who 'did not get in' the airport despite showing their American passports
As recently as three hours ago Issa's team had been working with the trapped American on a 'possible alternative' involving a third party group but was deemed to be 'too dangerous.'
An elderly couple in their 80s are also in contact with the congressman after being trapped in Kabul.
Issa said they 'repeatedly went to the gate, waited at the gate with their blue passports, and did not get in.'
Those accounts stand in stark contrast to President Joe Biden's promise to get every American out of Afghanistan before the military ends its 20 year occupation.
'If there's American citizens left, we're gonna stay to get them all out,' he told ABC's George Stephanopoulos on August 18.
Issa said: 'Anyone that says that they didn't break a promise to the American people and leave people behind is wrong. Anyone who says that there aren't people stranded is wrong.'
Taliban fighters gather along a street during a rally in Kabul on August 31 as they celebrate after the US pulled all its troops out of the country
'These people were stranded, they did everything they were supposed to do and they simply were not a priority at the end.'
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday that a 'small number' of Americans remain who want to leave the war-torn country.
'We believe there are still a small number of Americans, under 200 and likely closer to 100, who remain in Afghanistan and want to leave,' he said in a speech at the State Department Monday night – with remarks delayed for more than two hours.
The number was somewhat lower than estimates in the final hours as the Biden administration's troop withdrawal deadline approached.
He said 'about' 6,000 Americans had been flown out of the country or departed in an airlift of 123,000 people.
Blinken vowed to use diplomacy and leverage to bring out any Americans, allies, or Afghanis who assisted the US and want to leave, as critics pounded Biden for allowing the withdrawal before all Americans were out, comparing those who remained to hostages.
Blinken mentioned land routes through Afghanistan's rough terrain. Here Afghan resistance movement and anti-Taliban uprising forces personnel patrol along a road in Rah-e Tang of Panjshir province on August 29, 2021
'We made extraordinary efforts to give Americans every opportunity to depart the country,' he said.
He said the US and allies plan to hold the Taliban to keep the airport open and allow safe passage. 'Any engagement with the Taliban-led government in Kabul will be driven by one thing only – our vital national interests,' he said.
He also mentioned new ways out - including 'overland routes,' which means driving across Afghanistan's famously inhospitable terrain.
'We have no illusion that any of this will be easy or rapid,' Blinken said, calling it an 'entirely different phase of the evacuation.'
'We will hold the Taliban to their commitment on freedom of movement,' he said – on a day when US forces departed the airport in Kabul, leaving it intact, while scuttling aircraft that were left behind.
That commitment will likely be tested in the coming days. Since the US pullout accounts of Americans and Afghan interpreters who were left behind by Biden's withdrawal have been trickling in through US media outlets.
An American citizen who worked as an interpreter for the US military during the war in Afghanistan told CNN's Chris Cuomo on Monday night that she is now stranded.
The woman spoke under the pseudonym 'Sara' to protect her identity.
CNN's Chris Cuomo on Monday interviewed 'Sara,' an American national who was left stranded in Afghanistan after the US military removed the last remaining troops from the country just hours before
She described how she was sheltering 37 women and children in her home as she tried to organize them safe passage out of the country.
But she was unaware that the last US plane was leaving, after US forces completed their withdrawal almost 24 hours ahead of their August 31st deadline.
'I just found out that they left, and I was just silent for a while,' the woman, who goes by the pseudonym 'Sara,' told CNN on Monday.
'I just can’t believe no one told me this was the last flight'.
Sara said that she has tried to help Afghans who had helped American forces during the 20-year war flee after the Taliban took control of Kabul.
She says there are nearly two dozen children in her home in Afghanistan, some of whom are disabled. The children have begged her to help get them out of the country.
Sara added: 'And I just went, walked around the rooms, and I saw the young kids are sleeping and they have no clue what happened this morning, that the last flight is gone and we’re left behind.'
Since she worked as an interpreter with the US military, she and anyone who comes into contact with her are in danger from the Taliban, she said.
‘We are in danger, and we need to be saved,’ the woman told CNN.
'It's heartbreaking.’
'I just don't even know what to say to you. Whoever was trying to help me and support me, even they did not tell me that...this was the last flight.
'So I still had hope that we would leave. If not all of them, at least some kids and some mothers who had disabled kids.
'I had hope for them.'
Taliban gunmen lit up the night sky over Kabul with tracer fire after the final U.S. military transport plane left the airport
Fireworks, gunfire and explosions erupted in Kabul's night sky as the Taliban celebrated victory over the U.S. and declared 'full independence' after the final flight left the city's airport carrying troops and diplomats just after midnight
Sara told CNN that before the American forces departed for good, she went to the Kabul airport and tried to get the attention of US military personnel.
She said she screamed in their direction that she was an American national but that the soldiers didn’t hear her. The crowd at the gate was then dispersed using tear gas, though it is unclear who fired the irritant.
Sara said she had all of the necessary permits and documents for her and special immigrant visa applicants, but instead the military airlifted Afghans who did not have paperwork that entitled them to leave the country.
‘If America could not help me when they were on the ground, how can they help me when they're gone?’ she said.
‘Is anyone going to rescue me?’
'I went to so many different missions with [the US] military, so many different missions in different provinces,' she said.
'I never had that heartbeat like I have it today, this morning, when they told me the Americans left. They left us to whom? To those people who were always wanting to kill us?
'And now I am by myself here with 37 people.'
Meanwhile Taliban gunfire and fireworks lit up the night sky over Kabul to celebrate the American withdrawal, with celebrations continuing into Tuesday.
Fake coffins draped with the British, American, French and NATO flags were paraded through the streets of Khost in Afghanistan today as the Taliban celebrated the end of western 'occupation'
The Taliban held mock funerals for American, British, French and NATO forces Tuesday as thousands turned out on the streets of major cities to celebrate the end of the west's 20-year war.
Coffins draped with the US, UK and French flags as well as NATO's insignia were paraded through the streets of Khost by crowds flying the Taliban's emblem - just two weeks after anti-Taliban protests in the same city.
In Kandahar - a traditional stronghold of the Islamists - thousands also turned out waving white Taliban flags to celebrate what the group is referring to as its 'independence day', hours after the final American troops boarded an evacuation flight out of the country.
Speaking from the runway at Kabul airport this morning - and surrounded by Taliban special forces units dressed head to toe in American gear - spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid hailed the 'victory' over western forces.
'It is an historical day and an historical moment.... we liberated our country from a great power,' he added, saying the last 20 years should serve as a 'big lesson for other invaders [and] a lesson for the world.'
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