ONE PLEA: ‘TAKE OUR CHILDREN TO SAFETY’
THERE ARE TONS OF PEOPLE WAITING OUTSIDE THE CIVILIAN CAMP. THEY JUST SENT THE SAME EMAIL TO EVERYONE TO COME HERE BECAUSE THERE IS A FLIGHT TODAY. — UN EMPLOYEE AMONG HUNDREDS OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN OUTSIDE AIRPORT
The desperation was palpable as a baby in a green dress was passed from hand to hand over the heads of a crowd packed too tightly to move.
Then someone raised another little girl to pass on to the British soldiers behind the barbed wire outside Kabul international airport.
‘The crowd had one purpose, and one plea: take our children to safety if you cannot take us.
Meanwhile, Taliban fighters used captured American weapons to disperse another packed crowd of men, women and children. They waded into the throng, thumping people with rifle butts and opening fire — not in the air, but straight ahead, taking aim.
Thousands of people who worked for Western armed forces over the past 20 years have rushed to Kabul airport since Sunday, hoping for a place on one of the military transport planes that every so often roar into the summer sky.
They have been encouraged by promises by British, American, Canadian and other Western governments that none of their former allies would be left behind to face the wrath of the Taliban.
Ben Wallace, the U.K. Defence Secretary, said Thursday that “most” of those cleared for evacuation were making it to the airport and on to the planes.
More than 500 British nationals, Afghans and those on the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) resettlement scheme, and third country nationals were flown out of Kabul on RAF transport aircraft yesterday, while the U.S. State Department said 6,000 people were processed and waiting to board flights.
A Foreign Office spokesman said: “U.K. military personnel are helping to maintain security at the airport in Kabul to allow hundreds of eligible people to safely depart every day.”
But thousands more are trapped between the barbed wire, the concrete airport perimeter, Taliban security details and a confusion that has seen many being turned away despite being cleared for travel.
“We have all these documents, but now we have been here for eight hours in this crowd,” said Masoud Zamani, displaying passports with U.K. visas for himself and his parents. “Will we get inside the airport?”
Others, including women and children, spent nearly 24 hours outside after being told by Western authorities they were cleared to fly.
“There are tons of people waiting outside the civilian camp. They just sent the same email to everyone to come here because there is a flight today,” said one UN employee sitting among hundreds of women and children outside the airport late on Wednesday night.
On Thursday morning the woman, who had U.S. travel papers and had been told she was on the evacuation list, gave up. “They promised to open the door at 8 a.m., but they didn’t open it. We are going home. No other choice,” she said.
Taliban fighters perched atop captured American Humvees and wearing the fatigues of the Afghan army they defeated only days ago watched over growing crowds surrounding the airport.
Young children ran down gridlocked streets, selling water and fruit to the hundreds trapped in cars, while women in abaya gowns struggled to pull suitcases through a passageway filled with hundreds of people.
Men used their scarves to wipe the sweat off their faces as they watched young Taliban fighters loudly shouting at the crowd to “move back” in order to establish some kind of crowd control.
The militants were also on the look out for cameras, running at anyone holding a cellphone and interrogating them about why they were filming. The Taliban’s approach to crowd control is thuggish, crude and has reinforced the determination of many Afghans here to escape the group’s rule.
One woman who works for the Adam Smith Institute and was trying to flee after receiving death threats, called her sister to say the fighters were “throwing hot water” on the women waiting at the eastern gate of the airport.
Meanwhile paratroopers stood feet apart from the militants they previously fought, separated by little more than barbed wire and vehicles, as they had no choice but to co-operate with the Taliban to keep the evacuation moving.
For now, the uneasy partnership mostly functions.
But that could change at any time.
The mission is expected to wrap up at the end of the month, the date President
Joe Biden originally set for full withdrawal.
Biden indicated on Wednesday that he might be willing to extend the U.S. deployment, but that would be dependent on Taliban patience.
For the crowds at the airport gate, and thousands of others still in hiding in Kabul, that question could be the difference between life and death.
GIRL LIFTED FROM CROWD
From the surging crowd of people outside Kabul airport, a small girl is lifted up over the high perimeter wall and passed into the hands of an American soldier.
The moment this week was filmed and widely distributed on social media.
It is not clear whether the girl was being reunited with her family within the airport premises or simply handed over to others in an attempt to get her on board a flight.
When asked about the footage of the child, U.K. Defence Minister Ben Wallace said Britain was unable to evacuate unaccompanied children from Afghanistan, although he understood that the girl was being flown out with her family.
“We can’t just take a minor on their own,” Wallace told Sky News.
MAN WHO DIED IN FALL FROM PLANE WAS FOOTBALLER
The Afghan who died after he fell from a U.S. plane has been identified as a former national youth team footballer who feared the Taliban would “crush his dreams.”
Zaki Anwari, 19, had clung to the wheel of the C-17 military aircraft flying out U.S. personnel as it took off from Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport on Monday.
Anwari and two others were trying to make it out of the country on the jet’s fuselage to flee advancing Taliban militants. Video footage later showed bodies tumbling from the aircraft.
A supporter of Inter Milan, Anwari had played for the Afghan youth team for several years.
Friends on social media claim that Anwari had decided to escape Afghanistan as he wanted to make a career in football and believed that his dreams would not come true if the Taliban was back in power. He was among the three people who died when the plane, filled with more than 600 refugees, took off with the men holding on.
BOY, 5, DIES IN FALL FROM HOTEL
A five-year-old boy who plunged to his death from a hotel window in Sheffield, England, was an Afghan refugee who had only been in the country a matter of days after fleeing the Taliban with his family, it has emerged. Mohammed Monib Majeedi was pronounced dead on Wednesday afternoon after he fell from the ninth floor of the Metropolitan Hotel.
The boy had been staying there along with his mother and father, two brothers and two sisters, after being placed there by the local authority just four days earlier.
The family were given refuge because his father, Omar, had been working at the British embassy in Kabul as a humanitarian worker.
The boy is thought to have been leaning out of the window when he fell through a narrow gap on to the car park.