The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Americans among 200 to fly out of Kabul
An estimated 200foreigners, including Americans, left Afghanistan on a commercial flight out of Kabul.
KABUL >> An estimated 200 foreigners, including Americans, left Afghanistan on a commercial flight out of Kabul on Thursday with the cooperation of the Taliban — the first such large-scale departure since U.S. forces completed their frantic withdrawal over a week ago.
The Qatar Airways flight to Doha marked a breakthrough in the bumpy coordination between the U.S. and Afghanistan’s new rulers. A dayslong standoff over charter planes at another airport has left hundreds of mostly Afghan people stranded, waiting for Taliban permission to leave.
A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to talk to the media, said the Taliban’s foreign minister and deputy prime minister helped facilitate the flight. Americans, U.S. green card holders and other nationalities, including Germans, Hungarians and Canadians, were aboard, the official said.
Qatari envoy Mutlaq bin Majed al-Qahtani said another 200 passengers will leave Afghanistan on Friday.
Ten U.S. citizens and 11 greencard holders made Thursday’s flight, State Department spokesman Ned Price said. Americans organizing charter evacuation flights said they knew of more U.S. passport and green-card holders in Mazar-e-Sharif and elsewhere awaiting flights out.
The White House said before the flight that there were roughly 100 U.S. citizens left in Afghanistan. But several veterans groups have said that that number is too low because many citizens never bothered to tell U.S. officials they were in the country. And they said the figure overlooks greencard-carrying permanent U.S. residents living in Afghanistan who want to leave.
Many thousands of Afghans remain desperate to get out, too, afraid of what Taliban rule might hold. The Taliban have repeatedly said foreigners and Afghans with proper travel documents could leave. But their assurances have been met with skepticism, and many Afghans have been unable to obtain certain paperwork.
U.S. lawmakers, veterans groups and others are pressing the Biden administration to ensure that former Afghan military interpreters and others who could be in danger of Taliban reprisals for working with the Americans are allowed to leave.
In the U.S., National Security Council spokesperson Emily Horne said that Thursday’s flight was the result of “careful and hard diplomacy and engagement” and that the Taliban “have shown flexibility, and they have been businesslike and professional in our dealings with them in this effort.”
“This is a positive first step,” she said, adding that the U.S. will continue trying to extract Americans and Afghan allies who want to leave.
As Taliban authorities patrolled the tarmac, passengers presented their documents for inspection and dogs sniffed luggage laid out on the ground. Some veteran airport employees had returned to their jobs after fleeing during the harrowing chaos of the U.S.-led airlift.
Irfan Popalzai, 12, boarded the flight with his mother and five brothers and sisters. He said his family lives in Maryland.
“I am an Afghan, but you know I am from America and I am so excited” to leave, he said.
The airport was damaged in the final days of the U.S. airlift that evacuated over 100,000 people, but Qatari authorities announced it was ready for the resumption of international flights.