0 for the unity of our country. i thank you very much for the way that you have kept us engaged and informed as decisions have been made. as you pointed out, the biden administration was dealt a very difficult hand on the withdrawal from afghanistan. we all recognize we needed to withdraw, the options were extremely limited. the mistakes made by previous administrations, we've talked about it. i think we need to understand that many of us did not support the 2002 campaign to go into iraq. one of those reasons was we wanted to complete the mission in afghanistan when we had a chance to do it when the taliban was diminished after our military came in after the attack on our country. instead we went into iraq which was not engaged in the 9/11 activities and we never finished afghanistan. a mistake made by the bush administration. we've already talked about the trump administration and setting a deadline and releasing prisoners and moving forward with the reduction of troops when there was really very little options the administration had. it doesn't negate the information that was made available to you about the strength of the afghan security forces and the ghani administration's will to stick with it in afghanistan. and i think many of us are interested in knowing how intelligence got that so wrong. and the contingency plans are ones that we really do want to review because it seems to us there had to be better ways to secure passage into the airport than what ultimately happened. but considering the hand that you were dealt and the crisis that developed evacuating 124,000 was a miraculous task. we congratulate all that were involved in the evacuation of so many people under such a short period of time under such difficult circumstances. i want to get to where we are today. during this process, the state department was very open to all members of congress, democrats, republicans, as we filtered information into you about vulnerable people and in an effort to get them out of afghanistan. today our offices are still being delugeed by requests to help people that are in afghanistan, ngos are working very aggressively. can you share with us the process you are using in order to filter information aboufosiv and those afghans that are at risk, how do we transmit that information and what process is in place so we can try to get these people out of afghanistan? >> thank you, senator. as i noted we've established a task force focused entirely on relocation to help those who wish to leave afghanistan whether they are any remaining american citizens, whether it's siv applicants or nationals of partner countries get out. and that involves a number of things. it involves for the american citizens case management teams. 500 individuals whose task is to be in constant contact with any remaining american citizens who wish to leave and that's what they're doing. it also includes with our legislative affairs office being in constant contact with you as well as with outside groups who have identified and are trying to help people who seek to leave. this here is the sum total of cases brought to us by members of this committee. just this committee that many of you have been working and we are deeply grateful for those efforts, for this information. it insures that when you send us the information, we put it into our database if it's not already there, we make sure we are able to track it and make sure we are able to coordinate with you. i recognize that especially in the early going during the evacuation itself, some of the feedback was lacking. we were trying to do all of this in realtime making sure we took in the information that you were providing and acting on it. in some cases we didn't get back to people to say here is what we've done. and we've been working to make sure we get back to everyone. i think we had 26,000 inquiries from congress. we've responded to 21,000 or 22,000 of them. >> we still have the categories of reporters that worked for us that are still in afghanistan. we have women officials that were officials in afghanistan that are at risk. we have ngos that worked with us in afghanistan, they are employees that are at risk. you are saying we still have an opportunity to work with you to get that information to the sources that you are using to try to arrange for their exit from afghanistan. >> absolutely. we very much invite that and want to make sure we have as best possible a unified, coordinated list so that we know what everyone is working on and we can track and we can help or we can take on depending on -- >> can i get your best guess on the numbers? at one point when we first started we thought there might be less than 100,000 u.s. citizens, sivs and afghans at risk that wanted to leave. obviously that number was low. we've already evacuated over 124,000. do we know how many u.s. citizens are in afghanistan that want to exit today, how many or siv status that want to exit and how many afghans at risk we want to help? >> on the american citizens who wish to leave the number is about 100. it is very hard to give a realtime number at any given moment because it is very fluid. by which i mean this, some people -- we're in direct contact with this group. some for very understandable reasons are changing their mind from day-to-day about whether or not they want to leave. others continue even now to raise their hands and say i am an american citizen in afghanistan, someone who had not identified themselves before. i think as all of you know very well, we do not require as a country our citizens to register or identify themselves to our embassies in any country in the world if they travel or reside there. >> do you have the numb berls for siv? >> that we're tabulating right now because we're trying to account for everyone who has come in. some people remain in transit countries, other people are now in the united states. we're putting all of those numbers together. the overwhelming majority of afghans are in one way or another at risk. some will be siv applicants, p1 or 2, or afghans at risk. we're breaking down the numbers and should have a breakdown in the next couple of weeks. senator rubio. >> mr. secretary, in your statement i think the most troubling thing is the following quote from you. even the most pessimistic assessment did not predict the government forces would collapse while u.s. forces remain and you cite general milley who said there was no indication there would be a rapid collapse of the afghan army and government. for much of last year i was the acting chairman of intelligence and now the vice chairman of intelligence and tracking it closely. going back to the beginning of this year i can't quote the titles of the pieces but let me say there are numerous pieces that would be categorized it will hit the fan. but let's just for a moment put that aside. i think any analysis those pieces to that conclusion. we had every reason to believe and to plan for the rapid collapse of the afghan military and the afghan government. at the beginning of 2020 by all admissions we had a bad status quo in afghanistan. we had a small footprint but a strong commitment to air support and that sustained the afghan security force efs' ability to resist the taliban. they were suffering the 10,000 casualties a year. the taliban was suffering casualties, too. but they enjoyed safe haven in pakistan. they were ariel -- able to rest, retrain and recruit. even before the withdrawal we had a terrible status quo. the security forces, small number of u.s. forces continued to die. we had u.s. losses as well. i want to mention that. the afghan government was corrupt and the taliban unchallenged safe haven in pakistan paraphrasing your own words, if after 20 years and hundreds of billion else of dollars in support, equipment and training there is not enough for the afghan government or the afghan security forces to become more resilient or self-sustaining what did we think was going to happen as that support began to be removed? what do we think was going to happen when the terrible status quo was changed? it doesn't take exquisite piece of intelligence or brilliant analysis to conclude if you radically change an already bad status quo by removing u.s. and nato forces by ending air support the status quo would collapse in favor of the taliban. it is not an argument in favor of staying but i think that ship has sailed. i know a lot of time has been spent on justifying the withdrawal. we're not debating the withdrawal. we had a terrible status quo as is but e by your own admission the afghan government billion of dollars and was not sustain. we should have known as we drew down support we should have seen the collapse. it is concerning that no one saw all of this and concluded that there was no reason to believe that there could be a rapid collapse. more to that point, we began to see clearly signs weeks ago that this is where it was headed. without air strikes the taliban maneuvered going from intimidating the small afghan outposts to getting them into quitting. we saw afghan outposts began to quit. the taliban went from surrounding the small provincial capitals to surrounding major cities with 5,000 to 8,000 taliban fighters weeks before at the same time i believe on july 8th president biden was still giving the naive optimistic prediction of the fighting abilities of the afghan forces. we could see them meticulously focused on the north and methodically and carefully splintering the remains of any sort of resistance weeks before the fall of kabul you could see the taliban was headed towards doing something they hadn't done before. isolate kabul from the north, cutting off all the supply routes. so we knew before -- we knew weeks before we were headed for taliban control of the north, all the traditional routes of taliban encroachment on kabul nearly sealed. kabul faced the prospect of no fuel and afghan government unable to mount any viable opposition and sustained defense. what did we think was going to happen? all of those things were in place at the time. i have think the most concerning part of it if we didn't have analysis. this was a failure of policy and planning. we have the wrong people analyzing this. someone didn't see this. either someone didn't see it or didn't want to see it. we wanted to be out by september 11th so we could have some ceremony arguing we pulled out of afghanistan on the anniversary of 9/11. the fact of the matter is where it leads us now on top of the other things from a geopolitical perspective is not a good place. china, russia, iran look at this botched withdrawal and they see incompetence that they could exploit. the europeans, allies, who had very say or control over the timing and execution of all this, they are now have to be wondering about our reliability, the credibility of our defense agreements with them but also have to be really upset at the prospects of a massive refugee crisis landing right on their borders here very soon. in india, i know announcement there will be a meeting of the quad fairly soon, a good development if you're india you look at this and saying if the united states allowed pakistan to unravel their standing, the pakistani rolle in all this and multiple administrations are guilting of ignore it. it is a taliban victory in the pakistani government. if the united states could have a third-rate power like pakistan unravel its aims, what chance do they have of confronting china? so i think this leads us in a terrible situation. i go back to the initial point. i don't know how it is possible if in fact the people in charge of our foreign policy did not see all these factors and conclude there was a very real possibility of a very rapid collapse then we have the wrong people making military and diplomacy decisions in our government. >> senator, i'm happy to respond briefly in the time that we have. as you know from your own expertise and leadership on these matters, there are constant assessments being done and in this particular case assessments being done of the resilience of afghan security forces, afghan government, and different scenarios established from worst case to best case to everything in between. and ultimately the -- they land someplace and there will always be voiced and important we listen to all of them talking about exclusively the worst case, some best case, some in between. here is what i can say in this setting, and we can take this up as well in other settings. back in february, the assessment of the overall assessment of the community was that after a complete u.s. military withdrawal that could potentially in the worst case scenario lead to the taliban capturing kabul within a year or two. so that's back in february. that was more or less where things stood in the winter and into the spring. by july and you are exactly right, that the situation was deteriorating as the taliban continued to make progress on the ground throughout the summer. in july, the i.c. indicated it was more likely than not the taliban would take over by the end of the year, the end of this year. that said, we the intelligence community did not say that the country-wide collapse of all meaningful resistance would be likely to occur in a matter of days and you referenced chairman milley as i did earlier. nothing that he or i or we saw suggested this government and security force evers would collapse in a matter of 11 days. you are right that i think we need to look back at all of this because to your point, we collectively over 20 years invested extraordinary amounts in those security forces and in that government. equipment, training, advice, support. hundreds of millions of dollars. based on that as well as based on what we were looking at realtime again we did not see this collapse in a matter of 11 days. but it is important that we go back and look at all of this. >> senator shaheen. >> thank you, mr. chairman and thank you, secretary blinken for appearing before the committee today. i appreciate and share the frustration of my colleagues over the challenges with the evacuation over the situation of special immigrant visa and the taliban's treatment of women and other minorities. i agree with your assessment that where we were when we got to that evacuation was because of the failure of both democratic and republican administrations. and i want to know where that outrage was when year after year for 10 years starting with senator mccain i and others in the senate tried to get more special immigrant visa applicants through the process so that they could leave afghanistan, leave the threat and come to the united states and there were a few republicans in the senate who blocked us year after year from getting more siv applicants to the united states. i want to know where that outrage was during the negotiations by the trump administration and former secretary pompeo when they were giving away the rights of women and girls and when secretary pompeo came before this committee and blue off questions about what they were doing to have the taliban have women at the negotiating table for that peace treaty. i think there is a lot of regret and recriminations to go around. the important thing for us to do now is to figure out how we can work together to address those people that still need to be evacuated from afghanistan and also to insure that we can do everything possible with the international community to help protect the human rights of the women and girls who remain in the country and those minorities. so mr. secretary that's where i will put my effort. i do think we need an accounting. that's important for history and for us going forward. but let's stop with the hypocrisy about who is to blame. there are a lot of people to blame and we all share in it. now, mr. secretary, as you know i was one of those who was opposed to our withdrawing from afghanistan. a lot of my concerns were around the rights of women and girls if afghanistan fell into the hands of the taliban. i want to ask you now, and you have been very specific on briefing calls that you share the concern and i recognize that you believe it is a priority for this administration to do what you can to protect the rights of women and girls. can you talk specifically about what steps the department is taking to provide for the safety of women and girls and how we are trying to rally the international community behind that effort? >> yes, thank you, senator. let me start by thanking you personally for your leadership for a long time now on these issues both on the sivs and the work that we've been able to do to try to improve the program but more work needs to be done. as well, of course, as on women and girls from advancing women peace and security and that agenda to insuring that there is an equal playing field for women and girls. you made a huge difference. i have to say over the last 20 years, we have made a difference. collectively in afghanistan and possibly the biggest difference we made was for women and girls, access to education, access to healthcare, access to work, and opportunity. all of that was as a result of many of the efforts that we made and that this congress made and supported including with very, very significant assistance. this is hard. i was in kabul after the president announced his decision. i met with women leaders from the then parliament, ngos, lawyer, human rights defenders, listened and heard from them about their concerns about the future. just the past couple of weeks when i was in doha and ramstein i talked to young women and girls who we had evacuated and heard from them. both of their gratitude for having been evacuated but their deep concerns -- more than deep concerns about the future for the women and girls who remain in afghanistan. so with that bearing in mind, we have done a few things and this is what we really want to work closely with you and every member. one, we've worked to rally the international community to set very clear expectations of the taliban going forward to include the expectation that it will uphold the basic rights of women and girls as well as minorities. and that's visible in the statement that more than 100 countries have signed of our initiative and also in a u.n. security council resolution that we initiated and got passed. i know people say it's a statement or security council resolution, it doesn't matter. in the case of the security council resolution to cite one example significant sanctions from the united nations on the taliban. there are travel restrictions on the taliban. and the idea that if the taliban is in violation of the security council resolution that we established it will get any relief just on that alone, the u.n. sanctions or travel restrictions, i think that's pretty clear that won't happen. that is just one point of leverage. we've been working to make sure the international community speaks with one voice and acts together including on this. that's one. second, we want to make sure that assistance continues to flow. humanitarian including assistance directed at the special needs of women and girls. we are doing that consistent with our sanctions and we're able to do that by working through ngos and the u.n. agencies. now, i don't want to sugar coat this because we know that while the taliban seeks and will probably support and protect basic humanitarian assistance through these agencies like for food and medicine, it may be a different storey when it comes to things directed specifically at women and girls. we'll be very focused on that and trying to make sure that assistance can go through that it is monitored effectively including by the agencies doing it. i spent some time talking with the head of the united nations effort on this in terms of having a clear monitoring mechanism for that and carry it forward. next, we'll soon appo