Antony Blinken, Secretary of State: “Many of you have asked how many U.S. citizens remain in Afghanistan who want to leave the country? Based on our analysis, starting on August 14, when our evacuation operations began, there was then a population of as many as 6,000 American citizens in Afghanistan who wanted to leave. Over the last 10 days, roughly 4,500 of these Americans have been safely evacuated, along with immediate family members.”

“Over the past 24 hours, we’ve been in direct contact with approximately 500 additional Americans and provided specific instructions on how to get to the airport safely. We’ll update you regularly on our progress in getting these 500 American citizens out of Afghanistan. For the remaining roughly 1,000 contacts that we had who may be Americans seeking to leave Afghanistan, we’re aggressively reaching out to them multiple times a day through multiple channels of communication, phone, email, text messaging to determine whether they still want to leave and to get the most up to date information and instructions to them for how to do so.”

“While evacuating Americans is our top priority, we’re also committed to getting out as many Afghans at risk as we can before the 31st. That starts with our locally employed staff and the folks who’ve been working side by side in our embassy with, with our diplomatic team. And it includes special immigrant visa program participants and also other Afghans at risk. It’s hard to overstate the complexity and the danger of this effort. We’re operating in a hostile environment in a city and country now controlled by the Taliban with the very real possibility of an ISIS-K attack. We’re taking every precaution, but this is very high risk.”

“But let me be crystal clear about this. There is no deadline on our work to help any remaining American citizens who decide they want to leave to do so, along with the many Afghans who have stood by us over these many years and want to leave and have been unable to do so. That effort will continue every day past August 31st.”

“Taliban have made public and private commitments to provide and permit safe passage for Americans, for third country nationals and Afghans at risk going forward past August 31st. The United States, our allies and partners and more than half of the world’s countries, 114 in all issued a statement making it clear to the Taliban that they have a responsibility to hold to that commitment and provide safe passage for anyone who wishes to leave the country, not just for the duration of our evacuation relocation mission, but for every day thereafter.”

“The nature of that engagement and the nature of any relationship depends entirely on the actions and conduct of the Taliban. If a future government upholds the basic rights of the Afghan people, if it makes good on its commitments to ensure that Afghanistan cannot be used as a launching pad for terrorist attacks directed against us and our allies and partners. And in the first instance, if it makes good on its commitments to allow people who want to leave Afghanistan to leave, that’s a government we can work with. If it doesn’t, we will make sure that we use every appropriate tool at our disposal to to isolate that government. And as I said before, Afghanistan will be a pariah.”