Four Things to Remember about Overseas Evacuations
Travel advisories are often taken for granted, as is registering with your government prior to overseas travel. I wrote this article before the start of my Global Risk & Intelligence newsletter.
As of August 18, 2021, up to 15,000 Americans remain in Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover.
We can be assured the U.S. government will do everything it can to evacuate those thousands of Americans (and presumably Afghans to whom we're morally obligated), and naturally I hope all of them return home safely.
A few thoughts based on my experience, including helping to plan what would have been the largest evacuation in U.S. military history--the evacuation of about 85,000 Americans and "designated foreign nationals" during the Fukushima nuclear reactor meltdown in 2011 (fortunately the meltdown did not create a risk level that required such a large-scale evacuation):
When the U.S. State Department or your respective foreign ministry recommends you do not travel to a country or part of a country (e.g, "Level 4 travel advisory: Do Not Travel"), it is best to heed that advice.
When the U.S. government recommends its citizens immediately leave a country, as the U.S. embassy in Kabul did on August 12, it is best to do so ASAP. The geopolitical ramifications of issuing such a recommendation, and of ordering the departure or evacuation of its embassy personnel, almost always means the country team (the ambassador, the diplomats, and security experts in the embassy) assesses that the risks to the safety of Americans outweigh the geopolitical risks of such recommendations and departures/evacuations.
Evacuation planning and operations are startlingly complex, even in permissive environments. For the aforementioned evacuation planning in Japan during the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, the tsunami damage and meltdown wasn't even a significant, direct contributor to the complexity of our planning. And Japan was a completely permissive environment. Yet our efforts were incredibly complex, and not only because of the historic number of potential evacuees. Now imagine the situation in Afghanistan. Today the American Embassy in Kabul issued a security alert that said "THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT CANNOT ENSURE SAFE PASSAGE TO THE HAMID KARZAI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT." [Bold and all caps in the embassy's original alert.] Complex.
U.S. citizens should always register with the State Department when traveling anywhere overseas (citizens of many other countries should be able to do the same with their foreign ministry). It takes only a few minutes, and it allows the embassy to contact you in the event of a crisis. The government's evacuation planning, and your ability to receive important updates from the embassy, might be made much easier. During our evacuation planning in 2011, we faced difficulties effectively locating and contacting a vast majority of the roughly 65,000 Americans living in Japan. Most had never registered with the State Department in regards to Japan--so we didn't know we would reliably get word to them on meeting points, rules for pets, etc. (social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook had far less users than they do now, 10 years later).
An idea from a very senior military officer to use U.S. intelligence assets to locate these U.S. citizens was quickly and rightfully rebuffed by senior military intelligence officers for legal reasons (despite what you see in many movies, a few illegal activities after 9/11, and disturbing reports on the use military intelligence assets during the civil rights protests last summer, the U.S. has very stringent intelligence oversight rules). These gaps in our knowledge pertaining to Americans in Japan further complicated our already complicated, intricate planning.
Duty of care is a responsibility of all employers, including NGOs in war zones. But careful planning and heeding your government's advice is also the responsibility of every employee and traveler.