Afghanistan: US changes evacuations at Kabul airport amid threat.
Thousands in Afghanistan count on delivery of pledge
Afghanistan – Tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan waited nervously on Saturday to see whether the United States would deliver on President Joe Biden’s new pledge to evacuate all Americans and all Afghans who aided the war effort. Meanwhile, the Taliban leader arrived in Kabul for talks with the group’s leadership on forming a new government.
Time is running out ahead of Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline to withdraw most remaining U.S. troops, and the president on Friday night did not commit to extending it. He faces growing criticism as videos depict pandemonium and occasional violence outside the airport, and as vulnerable Afghans who fear the Taliban’s retaliation send desperate pleas not to be left behind.
In a new security warning, the U.S. Embassy on Saturday told citizens not to travel to the Kabul airport without “individual instructions from a U.S. government representative,” citing potential security threats outside its gates. And yet crowds remained outside its concrete barriers, clutching documents and sometimes stunned-looking children, blocked from flight by coils of razor wire.
Tens of thousands of translators and other Afghan wartime helpers, along with their close family members, are seeking evacuation after the Taliban’s shockingly swift takeover of Afghanistan in a little over a week’s time. The fall of Kabul marked the final chapter of America’s longest war, which began after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who negotiated the religious movement’s 2020 peace deal with the U.S., was in Kabul for meetings with the group’s leadership, a Taliban official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the news media. Baradar’s presence is significant because he has often held talks with former Afghan leaders such as ex-president Hamid Karzai.
Evacuations continued, though some outgoing flights were far from full because of the airport chaos, Taliban checkpoints and bureaucratic challenges. A German flight on Friday night carried 172 evacuees, but two subsequent flights carried out just seven and eight people, respectively.
On Friday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said around 1,000 people a day were being evacuated amid a “stabikabul, lization” at the airport. But on Saturday, a former Royal Marine-turned charity director in Afghanistan said the situation was getting worse, not better.
“We can’t leave the country because we can’t get into the airport without putting our lives at risk,” Paul Farthing told BBC radio. “You’ve all seen the scenes – it is not different today to any other time.”
Farthing said he has been told by British authorities that a flight back to the U.K. has a seat for him, but not for the 25 staff from his animal welfare charity Nowzad and their families.
On Friday, a defense official said about 5,700 people, including about 250 Americans, were flown out of Kabul aboard 16 C-17 transport planes, guarded by a temporary U.S. military deployment building to 6,000 troops. On each of the previous two days, about 2,000 people were airlifted.