DESPERATION DEEPENS AS EVACUATIONS FALTER
Flow of people trying to flee Taliban overwhelms global community
DESPERATION deepened around the airport here yesterday with evacuation operations in chaos and United States President Joe Biden warning he could not predict the outcome of one of the “most difficult airlifts in history”.
Six days after the Taliban took back power in Afghanistan, the flow of people trying to flee their feared hardline Islamist rule continued to overwhelm the international community.
Traffic, people and checkpoints choked roads to the airport, while families hoping for a miracle escape crowded between the barbed-wire surrounds of an unofficial no-man’s land separating the Taliban from US troops and remnants of an Afghan special forces brigade helping them.
Video of a US soldier lifting a baby over a wall at the airport here offered the latest tragic imagery of the utter despair, following horror footage of people hanging onto the outside of departing planes.
“Please, please, please help me... where should I go, what should I do,” one man, who said he worked for the US embassy in the mid-2000s, wrote on a WhatsApp group set up for people to share information on how to get out.
“I have tried to get there (to the airport) for some days, but I cannot reach. Please save me.”
Thousands of US soldiers are at the airport trying to shepherd foreigners and Afghans onto flights, but Biden admitted the troops’ presence offered no guarantees of safe passage.
“This is one of the largest, most difficult airlifts in history,” Biden said in a televised address.
“I cannot promise what the final outcome will be.”
Biden had set a deadline of Aug 31 to completely withdraw all troops from Afghanistan, but he flagged this could be extended to continue the airlifts.
“We’re going to make that judgment as we go,” he said.
About 13,000 people have left on American military aircraft, the White House said. Thousands of others have fled on other foreign military flights.