Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2024 September 16

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September 16

Update on Americans left behind in Afghanistan?

Does anyone have any info on how many Americans escaped or were rescued from Afghanistan since 9/1/2021? I was able to find this report https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/14/afghanistan-800-evacuated-taliban-00051525 which says that up to 1000 may have been rescued as of 8/14/2022 (just a little shy of 1 year later), but nothing whatsoever about anyone being rescued after that point -- does anyone happen to have any more recent data? 2601:646:8082:BA0:8DD6:288C:9231:9FF3 (talk) 02:42, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

According to this, the number in 2023 is 6000. Despite the wording, I assume this includes people who evacuated themselves via any means necessary.

According to this article, an American went back to Afghanistan voluntarily, after the Taliban rule started there. In January 2023 the US government ended relations with the Taliban, so even an attempt at contact with this American (who was arrested by the Taliban soon after arriving) had to go through Qatari intermediaries. So it's unlikely we'll have more data apart from rare reports like the one cited by Axios. --Komonzia (talk) 03:27, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! So, 5x as many Americans escaped in the second year as in the first -- is that right? Any info on when was the most recent known escape/rescue of Americans from Afghanistan? I want to know whether this is still ongoing, or whether it has ended since the Axios report (i.e. whether there is still hope that some of the missing Americans might still get out, or not!) 2601:646:8082:BA0:8DD6:288C:9231:9FF3 (talk) 08:27, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

That was fun to search for. 633 citizens relocated from Afghanistan in the first half of FY2024. The number of citizens that the US State Department thinks are in Afghanistan, fluctuates, because it's an estimate. In all of FY2023 they say the total relocated was 649. See this report: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45122 -- In the grey box on page 13 in the PDF file, there's basically a little timeline from different times the State Department mentioned the figures. But the text in the PDF says that it's page 10.

Citations numbered:

• Footnote № 80 - A congressional hearing, a statement by Mark Milley
• Footnote № 81 - Remarks by Antony Blinken
• Footnote № 82 - State Department press briefing in 2022
• Footnote № 83 - State Department, Office of Inspector General, in 2023
• Footnote № 84 - Operation Enduring Sentinel etc, as reported to Congress in May 2024

Personally: I'd say there is still hope. Normally a sovereign state (with some measure of rule of law, where citizens don't want to escape from or defect) sees its obligation to assist citizens abroad as inviolable, but fluctuating and sometimes with strings attached. Chances are high especially if that person can make it to an embassy (of any country that also deals with the US). Komonzia (talk) 22:34, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! So, after an all-time peak of over 4000 in the second half of 2022, most of whom were either rescued by NGOs and other private groups or escaped on their own (which is the only mathematically possible scenario in which all of our sources could be true), the number fell back down to about 600 or so per year and has remained fairly steady from 2023 through today -- is this an accurate reading? And no, for the record, I don't personally have family or friends missing in Afghanistan (I do have some acquaintances, including an ex-girlfriend, who are veterans, as well as a girlfriend who has veterans in her family, but all of these people have returned alive and more-or-less in one piece) -- my question was motivated purely by a patriotic concern for my fellow compatriots! 2601:646:8082:BA0:6476:FF00:52DD:3E66 (talk) 10:15, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

I'd say the trend is probably accurate but the numbers might not be the total you are interested in. I am not sure whether the numbers in this report are only the ones the State Department has evacuated/relocated with their own resources, there may be others who left Afghanistan some other way. This report also includes lawful permanent residents (green card holders) and their family members in the ~600 figures. There may also be US citizens who left Afghanistan, but did not go back to the US - not included in these figures. Komonzia (talk) 17:08, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

Right, I'll have to subtract the 600 or so green card holders from the total, because these are most likely Afghans who obtained a green card in the weeks leading up to the Taliban takeover, but were too late to get out of Dodge -- and I'm specifically not interested in those, because my interest is specifically in US citizens trapped over there (and BTW, this wipes out almost half of the number in the last report!) And this brings up another issue: what's the temporal percentage distribution between US citizens and Afghan refugees over the period covered by this report (in other words, how many of the 649 people who got out during 2023 were US citizens and how many were Afghans, vs. how many were US citizens and how many were Afghans of the 633 who got out during 2024?) Because I have a feeling that this figure may be increasingly tipping away from US citizens and toward Afghans -- it does seem very unlikely that an American could survive a whole 3 years in hiding in a country like Afghanistan, with an implacably hostile population and without anyone to play the role of Miep Gies and help them! (And the tremendous spike in the number of Americans fleeing in late 2022 would also seem to support the hypothesis that there may have been an imminent threat to their lives which prompted them to flee, or that most of them were simply at the end of their tether and had to either take their chances escaping or face their fate!) 2601:646:8082:BA0:6476:FF00:52DD:3E66 (talk) 00:08, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

I think the reports to Congress were more motivated by how the federal government was using & assigning the budgets assigned to its departments, rather than specifics over whether those evacuated were US citizens or not. Maybe one for a FOIA request, or something a congressperson can pressure the Department on at the time they make their next report related to Afghanistan. (FOIA requests can be submitted by individuals or by organisations, e.g. newspapers.) The report does imply that it's hard to even know how many US citizens are in Afghanistan, partly because some people keep going back.

If it's anything like European-style releases of statistics, there might be an interest in lumping categories together to preserve the privacy of those statistics. For example, hypothetically, if there are only 20 US citizens in the 600 figures, it's too easy to find out (identify, or deanonymise) who the 20 are by correlating other sources. So it makes sense, for privacy reasons, to aggregate it more.

That is, or is related to, k-anonymity or differential privacy

I still think the trend over time is accurate, though. Komonzia (talk) 20:28, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

Ohio electoral College ballot

Hi. I was focusing on the Ohio electoral College ballot. I'm assuming that the law binding the Electors is recent, but that's not what I'm interested in. I'm interested in another thing; has the ballot always been like this and with this voting pattern? Thank you. https://www.google.it/search?client=safari&sca_esv=d952126bfb55194b&channel=iphone_bm&sxsrf=ADLYWII5zLiXk7noxSfdtgkxZ-Cc0BsHrw:1726498793319&q=ohio+electoral+college+ballot&udm=2&fbs=AEQNm0Be9hsxO5zOUoY5v2srYNPRTu3Itgszrbw0RIeZwqqIPwewOjDw9o0IZmt1hLTj6iHT9JmUe2o4jjqKop5JThr7Pb10lnLYDtef36mVAsAvy7E2KdWhU9UBYe9Xa7U1cdI66e8o3K_FSUcxSILkZ2KDIUwMmCrtwUyl9iv-YZSVSY8DQ-E&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwitnp-a3ceIAxXZ8rsIHaidBLIQtKgLegQIDhAB&biw=2133&bih=1021&dpr=0.9#vhid=Ee7trIRML2RWaM&vssid=mosaic Andreoto (talk) 19:16, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

I can't get a clear view of the elector's ballot. Is it the inset image on the google search? I'm not confident it will be the same for both of us, always, and the link to the Columbus Dispatch article does not have the image in it. SamuelRiv (talk) 21:02, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

This one is different; it is from December 2016. But it is not different; in fact, it is identical in the expression of the vote. Has it always been like this? https://x.com/JonHusted/status/810835549141483520

It appears that you are referring to the paper submitted by the electors to Congress. They are not official and are mainly ceremonial. They are often printed on heavy stock paper so they can be framed by the electors to keep after the election. The votes are supposed to be delivered to Congress from each state, then delivered to the Senate for a joint session, where the President of the Senate opens and reads each vote. Nothing at a Federal level states what kind of paper or decoration must be used. It must state who the vote is for and which state the elector's vote is from. Everything else is just fluff. Some states double it up. Arizona, as an example, sends a certified statement of their entire vote, signed by each elector. Separately, each elector receives a fancy certificate to keep. It should also be pointed out that in every election, crazy people send in fake electorial election papers to try and mess with the election, as if Congress would actually be fooled by such nonsense. 75.136.148.8 (talk) 22:09, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. But the image in the link depicts presidential electors ballots, they are not documents. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Andreoto (talk • contribs) 15:38, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Correction to my request. Was the Ohio ballot, in the past, also designed for a possible faithless elector, or has it always been as it is at present, where the Elector only has to affix his signature to cast his vote? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Andreoto (talk • contribs) 19:45, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

I think the problem is the assumption that those pretty cards are what is submitted. What is submitted to Congress is a paper with the vote stated and all of the elector's signatures at the bottom. The pretty ballots are keepsakes, not the official vote. Nearly all states do this. They submit a certified letter to Congress that states, basucally, Ohio's 17 electoral votes go to XXXX for Presdient and XXXX for Vice-President, signed by ... a list of 17 signatures. That makes it far more difficult to have a faithless elector. That method is becoming the norm with more states adopting it. If you are interested, this is Ohio's electoral vote in 2020. You can see that there are multiple copies, so everyone gets one, and that they all sign the same paper. 75.136.148.8 (talk) 17:14, 19 September 2024 (UTC)