This is John Batchelor, conversation with my colleague Mary Kessel, former senior advisor to the Secretary of State, Afghanistan.

Testimony and blogs by men who have gotten out under the Special Immigration Visa, S.I.V.

Now American citizens have family left behind.

Many people left behind. What is to be done? I ask Mary, is it possible the State

Department can act upon these requests from American citizens or people who are in

America with permission.

Mary gives a very pointed answer as to how we got into this tragedy

and that there's no clear way out of it.

At least the Biden administration has not found a way to help the people who were left behind.

Here's Mary Kessel, more of this tonight.

No, it's very hard for us, if not impossible for us to help.

We don't have a State Department presence in Afghanistan. The Chinese and the Russians do, but we're certainly not going to work through them to get our people out. We typically work through the Swiss and difficult situations like that in places for example like Iran

So no I mean this was one of the great tragedies of the way that the Biden Harris team withdrew from Afghanistan, they left people behind.

And let's be clear, John.

Under our administration, we negotiated a conditions-based withdrawal. Both sides, the Afghan government and the Taliban had to meet certain conditions in order for us to draw down troops.

And that's why we still had several thousand troops that were able to help the Afghan army keep the peace by the time President Biden took office in January of 2021.

They waited eight months later was when the president made the decision to withdraw in such a

Irresponsible manner and people paid with their lives and they're still paying as you point out.

It's a tragedy and it didn't have to happen.