Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Aug 16: Over 200 Indians including Foreign Ministry staff and paramilitary soldiers tasked for their protection are believed to be still stranded and are yet to be evacuated from Afghanistan’s capital Kabul, official sources confirmed.
An Indian aircraft is parked at the Kabul airport which has plunged into chaos and the big concern is how to safely bring the staff from the Indian mission compound to the airport. The Taliban has enforced a curfew in the city, they said.
The Indians stranded in Kabul include some 100 personnel of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) tasked with protecting the Indian mission in Afghanistan.
The government, in Delhi, however, said on Monday that Hindus and Sikhs from Afghanistan would be given priority once commercial flight service begins from Kabul. As panic-stricken Afghans gathered at the airport to skip the war-torn country, India said it would “facilitate repatriation to India of those who wish to leave Afghanistan.”
“The government will take all steps to ensure the safety and security of Indian nationals and our interests in Afghanistan,” foreign ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said. Pointing to the situation in Kabul that’s “deteriorating by the day”, the ministry said, “We are in constant touch with the representatives of Afghan Sikh and Hindu communities. We will facilitate repatriation to India of those who wish to leave Afghanistan.”
“There are also a number of Afghans who have been our partners in the promotion of our mutual developmental, educational and people to people endeavours. We will stand by them,” Bagchi added.
Commercial flight operations from the Kabul airport have been suspended. “This has forced a pause in our repatriation efforts. We are awaiting the resumption of flights to restart the process,” Bagchi said.
Afghan airspace was shut on Sunday amid chaos at the Kabul airport, where US security forces fired in the air as the crowds became unmanageable. Later the airport was placed under a security cordon.
India has been evacuating her citizens as well as some Afghan nationals since Taliban started advancing as US and NATO forces withdrew. “We are aware that there are still some Indian nationals in Afghanistan who wish to return and we are in touch with them,” Bagchi said.
The Afghan airspace was closed for commercial flights after thousands of desperate people overran the tarmac this morning in the hope of getting out of the war-torn country, a day after the Taliban took control of the city. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has already left the country.
The Cabinet Secretary is meeting with Foreign Ministry officials to work out the evacuation plan, which is already in place, in detail, sources said.
With Afghanistan’s airspace closed, Air India flights coming from the US are likely to be re-routed, sources said. Flights AI-126 (Chicago-New Delhi) and AI-174 (San Francisco-New Delhi) will have to re-routed to a Gulf nation to refuel, they said, adding Air India is also working on new routes for flights that will depart later from India to the US.
The Afghanistan Civil Aviation Authority asked all transit aircraft to reroute, adding any transit through Kabul airspace would be uncontrolled, media reports said. Kabul’s flight information region covers all of Afghanistan.
