US link lawmakers pleaded Tuesday for theevacuation of thousands of Afghan linkallies link, fearing a bloodbath as Americaends its longest war, but the administration said it did not want to setoff a panic.

“We cannot allow Kabul to be another Saigon,” Representative Mike McCaul,the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, referring to thechaotic helicopter lifts of people as US-allied South Vietnam fell in 1975.

McCaul showed a text message from a US link SpecialForces soldier about an Afghan link commandowho worked alongside him and was fearful that the Taliban will kill himafter September, the deadline set by President Joe Biden for withdrawal.

“I’m concerned that his prediction — many predictions — will comethrough and these people will be slaughtered by the Taliban,” he said.

He said that the United States should consider airlifting Afghans withpending applications to a third country, such as Bahrain, Kuwait or theUnited Arab Emirates, for visa processing.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the US link negotiator onAfghanistan, promised that the State Department would expedite visas butalso warned against presuming “the inevitability of a worst-case outcome.”

“We don’t want to signal panic and the departure of all educated Afghans byworst-casing and undermining the morale of the Afghanlink security forces,” Khalilzad said.

“So this is a delicate, complicated balance,” he said.

“I personally believe that predictions that Afghanlink forces will collapse right away arenot right.”

Representative Ami Bera, a Democrat, said there was a bipartisan consensusto get Afghan link allieslink “out of harm’s way.”

McCaul and Representative Gregory Meeks, the Democrat who heads thecommittee, earlier told Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a letter thatthe United States has a “moral obligation” to speed up visa processing.

Biden has ordered a withdrawal by the 20th anniversary of the September 11,2001 attacks that triggered America’s longest war, arguing that the UnitedStates has accomplished its primary goals in Afghanistan and can do littleelse.

Through a program launched more than a decade ago, the United States hasauthorized 26,500 immigration visas for Afghanlink interpreters, special operators andothers who took risks to work with the United States.

Only 16,000 visas have been issued with 18,000 applications pending,meaning a backlog of more than two years, Meeks and McCaul said. -APP/AFP