Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Aug 22: India has managed to fly out about 400 of its nationals stranded in Afghanistan on Sunday even as a NATO diplomat said at least 20 were killed in the past seven days in and around Kabul airport during the hasty evacuation process being carried out by several countries after Taliban takeover of the Afghan capital.
The British military has confirmed seven Afghan civilians to be killed in the crowds near Kabul’s international airport amid the chaos with thousands of people trying to use any available means to flee from the country after the Taliban takeover.
India on Sunday evacuated 168 people including 107 Indians from Kabul in a military transport aircraft of the IAF while a group of 87 Indians who landed in Delhi from Tajikistan capital of Dushanbe and a group of 135 Indians who were flown in from Doha.
Earlier on Saturday, at least 72 Afghan Sikhs and Hindus, including two Members of Parliament representing the minority community, were stopped by the Taliban from boarding an IAF aircraft and returned from the Kabul airport.
A sense of relief and gratitude was palpable among the evacuees from Afghanistan as they landed at Ghaziabad’s Hindon airbase on Sunday morning, after days of uncertainty following Kabul’s fall to the Taliban. Among the 168 people coming by the IAF C-17 heavy-lift military transport aircraft flight were 107 Indians and 23 Afghan Sikhs and Hindus.
The group included Afghan lawmakers Anarkali Honaryar and Narender Singh Khalsa and their families, people familiar with the evacuation mission said. Terming India his “second home,” Khalsa narrated his horror story which unfolded as their vehicle was separated from a convoy of those being taken to the Kabul airport for rescue. “I feel like crying…Everything that was built in the last 20 years is now finished. It’s zero now,” a visibly emotional Afghanistan’s senator Narender Singh Khalsa said.
India has decided to vaccinate Afghanistan returnees against polio for free as a preventive measure against the wild polio virus, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said on Sunday. The minister also shared a photo where returnees could be seen getting jabs at the Delhi international airport. Afghanistan and Pakistan are the only two countries in the world where polio is still endemic.
All evacuees will be moved to the Bangla Sahib Gurdwara next. Many of the evacuees are from a Gurdwara in Kabul, where they have been staying for days. This evacuation comes almost a week after the last batch of Indians – the staff at the Indian Embassy in Kabul – reached Gujarat’s Jamnagar.
Also, three other flights – Air India, IndiGo and Vistara – also carrying Indians evacuated from Kabul landed in the national capital from Tajikistan’s capital Dushanbe and Qatar’s Doha earlier in the day.
India has been allowed to operate two flights per day from Kabul to evacuate its nationals stranded in Afghanistan. The permission was granted by American and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces which have been controlling operations of the Hamid Karzai International Airport after the Afghan capital fell to the Taliban on August 15.
In a string of tweets, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi posted details of the evacuation efforts by Air India and IndiGo flights. He also posted a short video clip where the evacuees can be seen chanting “Bharat Mata Ki Jai”, adding more evacuation flights will follow.
Earlier, Indian citizens waiting outside Kabul airport for evacuation flights were taken to a nearby police station for questioning and checking of travel documents, a top government source said, amid worrying reports from local media that they had been abducted by the Taliban, which took control of the capital city last Sunday after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country.
The British military said a panicked crush of people trying to enter Kabul’s international airport killed seven Afghan civilians in the crowds showing the danger still posed to those trying to flee the Taliban’s takeover of the country.
The Defence Ministry said in a statement on Sunday that “conditions on the ground remain extremely challenging but we are doing everything we can to manage the situation as safely and securely as possible.” The airport has been the focal point for thousands trying to flee the Taliban.
The deaths come as a new, perceived threat from the Islamic State group affiliate in Afghanistan has seen US military planes do rapid, diving combat landings at the airport surrounded by Taliban fighters. Other aircraft have shot off flares on takeoff, an effort to confuse possible heat-seeking missiles targeting the planes.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether those killed had been physically crushed, suffocated or suffered a fatal heart attack in the crowds. Soldiers covered several corpses in white clothes to hide them from view. Other troops stood atop concrete barriers or shipping containers, trying to calm the crowd. Gunshots occasionally rang out.
The US military said an Afghan woman gave birth aboard an Air Force C-17 that flew from the Middle East to Ramstein Air Base in Germany. The base is being used as a transit post for people being evacuated from Afghanistan. The military’s Air Mobility Command tweeted that the mother began having complications during the flight Saturday. It says: “The aircraft commander decided to descend in altitude to increase air pressure in the aircraft, which helped stabilise and save the mother’s life.”
A Taliban spokesman said on Sunday that its commanders were set to meet former governors and bureaucrats in more than 20 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces over the next few days to ensure their safety and seek cooperation. “We are not forcing any former government official to join or prove their allegiance to us, they have a right to leave the country if they would like,” the official said. .”We are seeking complete clarity on foreign forces’ exit plan,” the Taliban official added. “Managing chaos outside Kabul airport is a complex task.”
Meanwhile, Pakistan has temporarily suspended Kabul flight operations and is not evacuating anyone at the moment, media reports said. The state-run Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) was the sole commercial airline that had been operating flights to and from Kabul during the past few days to help in the evacuation of diplomats and foreign nationals from Afghanistan after the Taliban seized power in the war-torn country last week.
PIA on Saturday “temporarily suspended Kabul flight operations owing to lack of facilities and heaps of garbage at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport tarmac,” Geo News reported.
The former British prime minister Tony Blair, who deployed troops to Afghanistan 20 years ago after the 9/11 attacks, said the US decision to leave has “every Jihadist group round the world cheering.” In a lengthy essay posted on his website late Saturday, Blair said the decision to withdraw troops was “tragic, dangerous, unnecessary.” He added that Britain has a “moral obligation” to stay until “all those who need to be are evacuated.”
Former US President Donald Trump launched on Saturday a sustained attack on President Joe Biden’s handling of the retreat of US forces from Afghanistan, which he called “the greatest foreign policy humiliation” in US history.
Trump, a Republican who has dangled the possibility of running again for president in 2024, has repeatedly blamed Biden, a Democrat, for Afghanistan’s fall to the Islamist militant Taliban, even though the US withdrawal that triggered the collapse was negotiated by his own administration.
“Biden’s botched exit from Afghanistan is the most astonishing display of gross incompetence by a nation’s leader, perhaps at any time,” Trump said at a boisterous rally packed with his supporters near Cullman, Alabama.
The US President Joe Biden and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez agreed two military bases in southern Spain can be used to receive Afghans who have worked for the US government, the Spanish government said on Sunday.
In a 25-minute telephone conversation on Saturday night, Biden and Sanchez agreed Moron de la Frontera near Seville and Rota near Cadiz can be used for refugees from Afghanistan until their travel to other countries is arranged.
“Pedro Sanchez and Joe Biden agreed the use of the bases of Moron and Rota to host Afghans who worked with the US while in transit to other countries,” the Spanish government said in a statement on Sunday. Sanchez tweeted on Saturday: “I have just had a meaningful conversation with President Joe Biden in which we have addressed several topics of common interest, particularly the situation in Afghanistan and the collaboration between our governments in the evacuation of citizens from that country.”
The UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace issued what could be read as a plea to Washington for more flexibility over US President Joe Biden’s August 31 target date to complete the rescue missions.
“If the US timetable remains, we have no time to lose to get the majority of the people waiting out,” he wrote in the Mail on Sunday. “Perhaps the Americans will be permitted to stay longer, and they will have our complete support if they do.”
US President Joe Biden has said the deadline could be extended for the airlifts. “I think we can get it done by then, but we’re going to make that judgment as we go,” he said Friday
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab is seeking to speak to his US counterpart Secretary of State Antony Blinken to discuss extending the August 31 deadline, according to the Sunday Times.
As information emerged from inside the US security establishment, the US’ top national security officials had assembled at the Pentagon early on April 24 for a secret meeting to plan the final withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. It was two weeks after President Joe Biden had announced the exit over the objection of his generals, but now they were carrying out his orders. The plan was a good one, the group concluded.
Four months later, the plan is in shambles as Biden struggled to explain why a withdrawal most Americans supported went so badly wrong in its execution. On Friday, as scenes of continuing chaos and suffering at the airport were broadcast around the world, Biden went so far as to say that “I cannot promise what the final outcome will be, or what it will be — that it will be without risk of loss.” The Biden administration is was said to be considering calling on U.S. commercial airlines to provide planes and crews to assist in transporting Afghan refugees once they are evacuated from their country by military aircraft.
A week after Taliban took control of Kabul, banks, passport offices and other government and private offices remained shut causing major delays and issues for citizens at the Afghan capital, it said.
