With the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, the international airlift, over which 123,000 people were evacuated from Afghanistan, also ended. The first civilian machine has now carried 110 people out of the country after the Taliban came to power. So is the evacuation going on after all?
Around 110 foreigners – including 15 German citizens – have been brought out of the country on board the first civilian evacuation machine from Afghanistan since the withdrawal of the US troops. As the Foreign Office announced on Thursday evening in Berlin, it was mainly women and children. “The opportunity to leave the country presented itself at very short notice,” it said. US citizens, Canadians and Ukrainians were also on board the Boeing 777, the AFP news agency learned from a source familiar with the mission.
The passengers left the aircraft of the Qatari airline Qatar Airways that took off in Kabul in Doha on Thursday, as AFP reporters observed. They would be housed there in a center for Afghan refugees, AFP learned. Initially, there was talk of around 200 passengers. Later, in circles familiar with the process, “about 113” passengers were spoken of.
“I didn’t tell my family I was going, but I left them a message this morning at 7:00 am,” said 45-year-old Leena Asisi upon arrival in Doha. “I’m sorry not only for my family, but for many people. We have to remain hopeful,” she added.
An Afghan-American dual national who had come to Kabul airport with his family told AFP reporters in the Afghan capital that he had only been informed a few hours beforehand about the possibility of leaving the country. “We had contact with the State Department who called me this morning and told me to go to the airport.”
Kabul Airport is to be reopened to international traffic
Apparently, further evacuations from Kabul are planned: “We will continue to work intensively on creating more opportunities to leave the country in the next few days and will actively inform the people concerned about this,” announced the Foreign Office. Berlin would like to thank the government of Qatar for the “close and trusting cooperation over the past few weeks”. British Foreign Minister Dominic Raab also thanked Doha “for making a flight with 13 British nationals possible”. The Dutch Foreign Minister Sigrid Kaag said that 13 nationals had been flown out.
Qatar and Turkey have recently started renovating the infrastructure at Kabul Airport. The Qatari special envoy for Afghanistan, Mutlak al-Kahtani, spoke of a “historic day” for the airport. This is an important step on the way to “reopening the airport for international flights”. After landing in Doha, Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani thanked the Taliban for their “cooperation”. The Washington White House called the Taliban’s behavior in this case “flexible and professional”.
The US did not initially want to disclose how many US citizens had been flown out. More than 30 US citizens and people with permanent residence in the US were offered a place in the machine, said Foreign Office spokesman Ned Price. However, “not all” of them decided to leave Afghanistan. Price also stressed that Washington hoped for more evacuation flights.
123,000 people evacuated via international airlift
The evacuation flights from Kabul, which began after the radical Islamic Taliban came to power, ended at the end of August with the withdrawal of US troops. About 123,000 people were flown out of Afghanistan via the international airlift within a few weeks. But not all foreigners willing to leave and vulnerable Afghans were brought out of the country in time. This triggered strong international criticism of the chaotic withdrawal of international troops.
Qatar is a key player in the Afghanistan crisis. In the Gulf state, negotiations between the Taliban and the US government about a troop withdrawal from Afghanistan took place in 2020. Negotiations were later held in Qatar between the militia and the Afghan government at the time. The Qatari foreign minister also held a meeting with his Iranian colleague on Thursday.
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