Former Australian embassy guards say they are running out of time to flee Afghanistan
Guards who protected Australia’s former embassy in Kabul say they are running out of time to escape Afghanistan, with the Taliban threatening to close the road to the airport and regularly firing over the crowds massing outside.
Some former Australian embassy guards have spent four days at the perimeter of the heavily guarded Kabul airport with their families trying to get past Taliban checkpoints and be accepted for entry by the foreign troops guarding the airfield.
Also trapped outside the airport are families who hold visas to Australia – with relatives in Australia – who have spent days on the crowded, dangerous road unable to get inside.
The Guardian is not revealing their identities for their safety, but is aware of one mother inside Kabul airport who has been separated from her children still stranded outside.
Another mother stuck at the gates has four young children with her, including a one-year-old.
A video posted online shows a Hazara man on Airport Road, with blood streaming from injuries to his head. In the footage, he says he is an Australian citizen and he had been beaten trying to reach the airport. A rifle being loaded, and gunfire, are heard close by.
The Department of Home Affairs has been told of another Australian visa holder – married to an Australian citizen – who reached the inner perimeter of the airport with her children, only to be escorted out by US troops and told to wait for Australian officials. She is understood to remain outside the airport.
Many of the former guards and interpreters who served Australian forces have been emailed visas and letters marked ‘Australian Evacuation Flight Offer’.
The letter advises Australian visa holders to travel to the airport “when you judge it is safe to do so, to await a planned outbound military flight”.
But those holding visas and letters say they have been driven back by the Taliban, or, if they pass those checkpoints, are rebuffed by soldiers who tell them they need visas in their passport.
“No one can go even near to the main gate because the Taliban starts firing back,” one former guard said from Kabul’s chaotic Airport Road.
“At the main Abbey gate, there is Taliban there: three times we went, three times they are firing to us (sic).”
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The window to escape Afghanistan is closing rapidly. And with Taliban control of the country solidifying daily, Kabul airport remains the only realistic route out for the vast majority seeking to flee.
The US president, Joe Biden, said the American military – on which all evacuation operations are contingent – was “currently on a pace to finish by August the 31st”. He said each day brought “added risk to our troops”.
The Taliban has consistently said foreign troops would not be allowed to remain in Afghanistan beyond the agreed 31 August deadline.
The Taliban spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid, has warned the Taliban manning the roadblocks will begin stopping Afghan nationals leaving the country, though this appears not to have yet been implemented.
He said the mass evacuation risked robbing Afghanistan of critical skills such as engineers and doctors.
Patrick Ryan, a former Dfat contractor in Afghanistan and advocate for Australia’s Afghan national staff, told the Guardian: “The situation around the Abbey gate and the south gate at the moment is getting absolutely critical. The Taliban is putting more and more pressure on, and we are running out of time.”
Ryan said Australian officials in Canberra and Kabul were being sent information about the location of Australian visa holders.
“But the information is ignored, and has not been shared or even acknowledged, resulting in people being at risk of real danger,” he said.
“These people are in a heightened level of distress, standing at the gates holding the Australian flag with no ADF or Dfat personnel in sight.”
Another Australian visa holder said those trying to escape Taliban rule were distraught at having to wait days outside the airport, and forced to stand in an open drain, filled with sewage, to plead to be allowed in.
“In one family there was a threeor four-month-old baby: the baby was crying because of the crowd ... his mum was in the water, she couldn’t feed the baby, because of the people standing in the dirty water. And the baby was crying and we took him up and said ‘put him on the wall, please let him, he has no oxygen’. And they [the soldiers] were shouting, ‘no, stay down, keep it with yourself’. These people, they didn’t help the small baby, three months of age. So how will they help us?”
Even after midnight, there were regular crushes within the crowd, and reports of women and children being tramped.
“We are here with our kids and with women,” another Australian visa holder said. “It is really dangerous in the crowd, and there is no other place to go.”
About 2,650 people had been flown out of Kabul on Royal Australian Air Force evacuation flights since the mission was launched a week ago, the Morrison government said.
That figure included Australian and New Zealand nationals, Afghan nationals who hold Australian visas, and citizens of other nations with whom Australia is cooperating. There were five flights on Tuesday night, with cabinet’s national security committee meeting daily to discuss the Afghanistan crisis.
The prime minister, Scott Morrison, was asked during question time on Wednesday whether Afghans with valid Australian visas who had protected the Australian embassy were left to wait outside Kabul airport, some standing in sewage before being turned away.
Morrison did not confirm or deny the report, but said Australian defence force personnel and government officials were “dealing with one of the most difficult situations anyone in this place could imagine”.
Pressed again on the matter, Morrison said reports of what was happening on the ground in Kabul were “very difficult to confirm” and it would be “very unwise” to comment on it without such confirmation.
“Australians are doing everything within their power, right now, to bring vulnerable people out of one of the most dangerous situations in the world,” he said.
An Australian Medical Assistance Team (known as Ausmat) will soon arrive in the United Arab Emirates, where evacuees have been taken before being transferred to Australia.
Another 148 evacuees arrived in Perth and Adelaide on Tuesday night, bringing to 419 the total number of people who had reached Australia since the start of the evacuation mission last week. Further flights were expected
to arrive in Australian capital cities in coming days.
“Our thoughts are with them as they deal with the trauma of these experiences and we warmly welcome them to our nation,” the foreign minister, Marise Payne, said.