Filenews 21 August 2021
The evacuation of civilians from Kabul on flights from Hamid Karzai airport continues at a frenzied pace. The U.S. alone evacuated about 3,000 people on Thursday, a White House official said.
In total, more than 18,000 people have left since Sunday. According to estimates, 10,000-15,000 American citizens were in Afghanistan on the Sunday that Kabul fell, who must leave the country, and another 80,000 are Afghan citizens and their families who have helped the Americans over the past 20 years and are at risk from the Taliban. How many of them the US will be able to remove is unknown. Joe Biden said that if necessary, U.S. troops will remain at the airport after August 31 to continue the evacuation operation of U.S. citizens. For the Afghans he gave no answer.
Germany will send two light helicopters to Kabul to evacuate Germans in distress or in remote areas, while a German government spokesman said a German citizen was shot and is at Kabul airport, but his life is not in danger. The two helicopters are expected to arrive in the country later in the day.
Britain will carry out its last flight to leave Kabul in four days on the basis of an accelerated timetable for exiting Afghanistan. Yesterday it was announced that the last human evacuation flight may need to depart on Tuesday, before the scheduled departure of US forces on August 31.
Other countries also want to evacuate tens of thousands of people. But even getting to the airport is difficult, as the Taliban do not let many, mostly Afghans, pass through the checkpoints, while thousands of people crowd the gates of the airport. Thus, scenes of despair are observed, where parents give their babies to the soldiers over the barbed wire, hoping to meet them later inside the airport. It should be noted that the European powers that remove their citizens and Afghans from Kabul depend on the stay of the Americans. When they leave, they cannot keep the airport on their own.
At the same time their anxiety for those who will be left behind was expressed by the UN. Most Afghans cannot leave their homeland and those who may be in danger have no clear way to escape, the international refugee agency's agency said. Sambia Mantou, a spokeswoman for the UNITED NATIONS High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), reiterated the agency's call for neighbouring countries to keep their borders open so people can seek asylum in light of what she called an "ongoing crisis".
The Taliban are trying to convince themselves that they have changed. But the reality is very different as the new oppressors of Afghanistan have already given signs, proving that they are just as bloodthirsty as the previous generation of Islamists, who ruled the country with an iron fist and fury against dissidents from 1996 to 2001.
According to a report in the hands of the UN, the Taliban are looking for members of the police, armed forces and intelligence services of the previous regime as well as those who had cooperated with NATO forces. The Taliban have carried out targeted door-to-door visits" to the homes of those they want to arrest, as well as to the homes of their family members. The checks on anyone who attempts to approach Kabul airport are also adapted to this model.
