Ashraf Ghani has Fled the Country, Air India Flight Returns from Kabul with 129 Passengers
Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Aug 15: Even after advising the government forces to fight till the end and protect Kabul, the Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani is learnt to have left the country with his core team, official news sources said.
A senior interior ministry official told the media that the Taliban rebels were coming “from all sides” into the capital but gave no further details. There were no reports of fighting.
The president fled the country while 129 passengers checked into AI-244, Air India’s last commercial flight that took off on Sunday from Kabul, the capital of strife-hit Afghanistan, sources have said. They are expected to arrive in New Delhi tonight. The airline’s three-times-a-week flight to Kabul remains uncertain, given the Taliban terrorists’ near-total take over of that country, they said.
Earlier, after taking off from Delhi in the morning today, AI-243 landed safely in Kabul after an hour’s delay amid the turmoil. The 2.2-hour flight had to delay landing Kabul’s air traffic control (ATC) was unavailable to help even as the Taliban reached the city’s outskirts, the report said.
A charter flight to Kabul was cancelled earlier today, sources said. With the spike in military activity in the Kabul airspace, operating civilian flights has become challenging.
The scheduled Delhi-Kabul Air India flight took off on time from the Capital’s Indira Gandhi National airport a little after noon but the reality on the ground in Afghanistan changed dramatically before it could commence its landing. The flight had to hold in the air for nearly an hour. The Taliban army, which has swept the war-torn country, reached the outskirts of Kabul and officials in Kabul’s air traffic control were not available to help Air India Flight 243 land. The commercial, passenger flight finally landed an hour later, amid tense
The United States evacuated diplomats from its embassy by helicopter and a government minister said power would be handed over to an interim administration.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement that the group was in talks with the government for a peaceful surrender of Kabul.
“Taliban fighters are to be on standby on all entrances of Kabul until a peaceful and satisfactory transfer of power is agreed,” the statement said. The entry into the capital caps a lightning advance by Taliban and the collapse of the Afghan government defence has stunned diplomats — just last week, a US intelligence estimate said Kabul could hold out for at least three months.
Power would be handed over to a transitional administration, the government’s acting interior minister, Abdul Sattar Mirzakawal, said in a tweet on the Tolo news channel. “There won’t be an attack on the city, it is agreed that there will be a peaceful handover,” he said without elaborating.
The head of the Taliban’s political bureau, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, is heading to Kabul from Doha, a Taliban source in the Qatari capital said. A tweet from the Afghan presidential palace account said firing had been heard at a number of points around Kabul but that security forces, in coordination with international partners, had control of the city. Many of Kabul’s streets were choked by cars and people either trying to rush home or reach the airport, residents said. “Some people have left their keys in the car and have started walking to the airport,” the residents said.
Another said: “People are all going home in fear of fighting.” Afghans have fled the provinces to enter Kabul in recent days, fearing a return to hardline Islamist rule.
Early on Sunday, refugees from Taliban-controlled provinces were seen unloading belongings from taxis and families stood outside embassy gates, while the city’s downtown was packed with people stocking up on supplies.
US officials said diplomats were being ferried by helicopters to the airport from its embassy in the fortified Wazir Akbar Khan district. More American troops were being sent to help in the evacuations after the Taliban’s surge brought the Islamist group to Kabul in a matter of days. “Core” US team members were working from the Kabul airport, a US official said, while a NATO official said several EU staff had moved to a safer, undisclosed location in the capital.
In a statement late on Saturday, the Taliban said its rapid gains showed it was popularly accepted by the Afghan people and reassured both Afghans and foreigners that they would be safe. “The Islamic Emirate,” as the Taliban calls itself, “will, as always, protect their life, property and honour, and create a peaceful and secure environment for its beloved nation,” it said, adding that diplomats and aid workers would also face no problems.
Biden said his administration had told Taliban officials in talks in Qatar that any action that put US personnel at risk “will be met with a swift and strong US military response.” He has faced rising domestic criticism as the Taliban have taken city after city far more quickly than predicted. The US president has stuck to a plan, initiated by his Republican predecessor, Donald Trump, to end the US military mission in Afghanistan by August 31. Biden said it was up to the Afghan military to hold its own territory.
“An endless American presence in the middle of another country’s civil conflict was not acceptable to me,” Biden said on Saturday. Qatar, which has been hosting so-far inconclusive peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban, said it had urged the terrorists to cease fire.
