Commercial flight leaves Kabul carrying 200 passengers
An estimated 200 foreigners, including Americans, left Afghanistan on a commercial flight out of Kabul yesterday with the co-operation of the Taliban — the first such largescale departure since US forces completed their frantic withdrawal over a week ago.
The Qatar Airways flight to Doha marked a breakthrough in the bumpy co-ordination between the US and Afghanistan’s new rulers. A days-long standoff over charter planes at another airport has left hundreds of mostly Afghan people stranded, waiting for Taliban permission to leave.
A senior US official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorised to talk to the media, said the Taliban’s foreign minister and deputy prime minister helped facilitate the flight. Americans, US green card holders and other nationalities, including Germans, Hungarians and Canadians, were aboard, the official said.
Qatari envoy Mutlaq bin Majed alqahtani said another 200 passengers will leave Afghanistan today.
It was not immediately clear how many Americans were on board yesterday and how many were still in Afghanistan. The White House said before the flight that there were roughly 100 US citizens left in Afghanistan. But several veterans groups have said that that number is too low because many citizens never bothered to tell US officials they were in the country. And they said the figure overlooks green-card-carrying permanent US 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.
US 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 US, 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 US will continue trying to extract Americans and
Afghan allies who want to leave.
The airport was extensively damaged in the frenzied final days of the US airlift that evacuated more than 100,000 people. But Qatari authorities announced that it had been repaired with the help of experts from Qatar and Turkey and was ready for the resumption of international airline flights.
“I can clearly say that this is a historic day in the history of Afghanistan as Kabul airport is now operational,” al-qahtani said. He added: “Hopefully, life is becoming normal in Afghanistan.”