Australian citizens and visa holders turned back from Kabul airport despite having evacuation letters
Hundreds of Afghans offered an evacuation flight by the Australian government and told to travel to Kabul airport have been turned away at the gates by Australian soldiers.
There is growing despair in the Afghan capital over an apparent lack of coordination between Australian agencies and strict adherence to bureaucratic processes.
Two young women – orphans whose older brother is living in Australia as a permanent resident – were forced out of the airport after being inside for more than 24 hours. They were also invited by Australia to travel to the airfield on roads under Taliban control.
Australia was in the “back end” of its evacuation missions from Afghanistan, the defence minister said. About 1,700 people had been flown out of Kabul, but the situation in the capital was deteriorating by the hour, Peter Dutton warned on Tuesday.
Hundreds of Australian citizens and visa holders remained stranded in the captured Afghan capital. Some had spent days at the front gates of the airport trying to get inside only to be beaten and driven back by Taliban militants.
The Taliban has said they will not allow foreign forces to stay in Afghanistan beyond the 31 August deadline previously agreed with the US.
The departure of foreign troops would leave the airport – and almost all of the country – in the hands of the Taliban.
The road to Kabul airport, the only practicable way out of the country now, was chaotic and dangerous, with dayslong queues and regular Taliban violence.
Several sources in Kabul have said Australia’s rigid insistence on bureaucratic processes, in the midst of Afghanistan’s collapse, was condemning people to be stranded.
And a lack of communication between different departments and agencies of the Australian government – and between Kabul and Canberra – was blocking efforts by Australians and visa holders to reach the sanctuary of the airport.
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Former guards at the Australian embassy in Kabul, who had been sent home affairs “Australian Evacuation Flight Offer” letters instructing them to travel to Kabul airport, were forced to stand for hours in a sewage-filled drain to signal soldiers patrolling a boundary wall. They were nevertheless denied entry.
One guard said the situation outside the airport was worsening and was increasingly dangerous for women and children.
“If they [Australian authorities] can help us and send one soldier [outside], they can take us and check our papers and our children’s and let us inside.”
The office of Australia’s immigration minister had been informed of two orphaned Hazara young adults – with an older brother in Australia – who were approved for evacuation and received an email from the Australian government instructing them to go to the airport to board a flight. They have had a visa application in train for nine years.
Having passed several Taliban checkpoints and reached the secure section of the airfield, after 24 hours inside the airport they were told to go home by Australian authorities because they did not have a granted visa.
They were not told why they could not be granted an emergency evacuation visa inside the airport as others had been.
The Guardian is aware of at least two other groups of orphans in Afghanistan with relatives who are Australian permanent residents. They have longstanding visa applications afoot.
Australian citizens have told the Guardian they have shown passports to US troops guarding the perimeter of
the airport, only to be told they need visas, with the soldiers apparently unaware that citizens do not need a visa to enter their own country.
Others trying to reach Australia have reported seeing people in the crowd shot by Taliban while children have had limbs broken in the crush.
An Australian citizen with three female relatives – including his elderly mother – has tried four times to reach the US-controlled perimeter of the airport. The family received an email from Dfat instructing them to go to the airport but could not reach an Australian official who could grant access.
The family has been teargassed, shots have been fired nearby, and they have witnessed crushing amid the desperate crowds.
Canberra expects the situation to deteriorate further.
“If the US or UK were to seek additional time to continue evacuations – the answer is no. There would be consequences,” the Taliban spokesperson Suhail Shaheen said.
Dutton told parliament on Tuesday the Australian defence force was “obviously in the back end of this campaign now” with the situation likely to deteriorate “over the coming hours and in the next couple of days”.
The defence minister said he had spoken with the chief of Australian Defence Force, Angus Campbell, “about our evacuation plans and ways in which we can move our equipment, our assets and most importantly our people out safely in a timely way”.
The prime minister, Scott Morrison, said Monday night’s rescue of more than 650 people on five flights – including a New Zealand flight – was “our biggest night”.
Australia has signalled it would support an extension to the US-led operations but Morrison said his government had made “no assumptions about the Taliban”.
“We know their form,” Morrison told the Nine Network on Tuesday. “We’ve been going like we won’t be able to get another flight in the next day. So, we’ve been trying to make every flight as successful as possible.”
The federal opposition raised concerns on Tuesday about a Guardian Australia report that some Afghan employees who assisted Australia’s missions had been rejected under the locally engaged employee scheme because they did not apply within six months of ending their employment.
Labor’s foreign affairs spokesperson, Penny Wong, told the Senate the Taliban would not check people’s employment dates and asked the government whether that policy would be revised.
The government’s Senate leader, Simon Birmingham, replied that Australian officials on the ground in Kabul were ensuring visas were issued in emergency situations.
The independent MP Andrew Wilkie confronted the prime minister in parliamentary question time over
“the Afghanistan tragedy”. Wilkie also cited the Iraq and Vietnam wars as he pressed Morrison to commit to reform of Australia’s war powers to “ensure it is parliament calling the shots”.
Morrison rebuffed the idea, insisting troop deployments would remain an executive power.
The government faces increasing criticism for not acting sooner to rescue former interpreters and guards who had assisted Australia.
Julian Hill, the Labor MP for the Victorian seat of Bruce, targeted the government for its “inexcusable failure to bring to safety the interpreters and the thousands of staff who helped us over 20 years – our mates – as the veterans of Australia have been crying out for us to save”.