We’ve launched a new blog at the link below – head there for the latest:
Summary
Alex Mistlin here signing off with a summary of the latest developments from Afghanistan.
- As many as 1,500 Americans remain in Afghanistan, according to Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state. The US state department believes there were roughly 6,000 Americans in Afghanistan on 14 August, before the Taliban took control of Kabul.
- The UK foreign office has updated its travel advice for Afghanistan, warning of an “ongoing and high threat of terrorist attack: and advising against all travel to the country.
- More than 10,000 people at Kabul airport are waiting to be evacuated according to Pentagon estimates.
- The Taliban have agreed to let Afghans leave Afghanistan after the US withdrawal deadline of 31 August, the German military have confirmed.
- The Turkish military has begun evacuating from Afghanistan, reports Anadolu Agency, a Turkish state-run news agency.
- A group of 200 workers who guarded World Bank projects in Afghanistan for the last 10 years until they lost their jobs last week have sent a desperate plea to the British government to rescue them urgently.
- The Taliban threatened and physically abused United Nations staff, according to an internal document seen by Reuters.
- British nationals of Afghan origin are being overlooked in the evacuation from Kabul, lawyers and campaigners have claimed
- Two thousand Afghan interpreters and others who worked for the British government are still to be airlifted out of Kabul by the RAF, defence sources said as the emergency evacuation reaches its final stages.
- The US military airlift will continue until the final hours of the 31 August deadline, set by President Joe Biden, Pentagon officials said earlier today.
- The Chinese and Russian leaders, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, have vowed to counter “threats of terrorism” emerging from Afghanistan in a phone call.
The FCDO’s updated advice comes after Defence Secretary Ben Wallace told MPs in a call earlier that Afghans wanting to flee the country would be better off heading for the border and trying to make their way to a third country rather than travel to Kabul airport.
Nearly 2,000 Afghan interpreters and other staff who worked for Britain still need to be evacuated from Afghanistan.
Latest figures from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) showed that 11,474 people had been able to leave the country since the evacuation mission Operation Pitting began on 13 August.
This figure includes embassy staff, British nationals, those eligible under the Afghan relocation and assistance policy (Arap) programme, as well as some evacuees from allied countries.
The MoD said the UK has evacuated almost 7,000 Afghan individuals and their families.
The UK government has advised anyone who can leave Afghanistan safely to do so.
The FCDO also warn against travelling by road as “there have been allegations of people being mistreated on their way to Kabul International Airport”.
The British government have suspended all non-essential operations at the British embassy in Kabul on account of the deterioration in the security situation. The FCDO is only providing consular assistance remotely and is extremely limited.
The government has urged those in need assistance to call +44 1908 516 666 and select the option “Consular services for British nationals”.
Updated
UK Foreign Office warns of "ongoing and high threat of terrorist attack"
The UK foreign office has updated its travel advice for Afghanistan, warning against all travel to the country. “The security situation in Afghanistan remains volatile,” it warns.
The foreign office also warned against travelling to Kabul airport:
There is an ongoing and high threat of terrorist attack. Do not travel to Kabul Hamid Karzai International Airport. If you are in the area of the airport, move away to a safe location and await further advice.”
New York Times journalist Farnaz Fassihi has tweeted a picture of an empty plane chartered to evacuate Afghans.
Fassihi says passengers could not get through Taliban checkpoints and US military gates at the airport to make the flight in time.
The US military continues to assist in the evacuation effort, but the Pentagon has confirmed that they will not remain involved beyond the 31 August deadline.
A 345-seat chartered plane to evacuate Afghans leaves Kabul empty today because they couldn't get through Taliban checkpoints and US military gates at airport.
— Farnaz Fassihi (@farnazfassihi) August 25, 2021
Crushing.#Afghanistan pic.twitter.com/sgzbuDbWSv
Updated
One of the Taliban’s most prominent spokespeople, Zabihullah Mujahid – @Zabehulah_M33 – has given his first sit-down interview (paywall) to a western outlet since arriving in Kabul to the New York Times.
Updated
BBC World News anchor Yalda Hakim has tweeted footage of anti-Taliban resistance fighters in Andarab, Baghlan province.
The National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF) told the BBC it had thousands of people ready to fight.
Anti-Taliban resistance fighters Andarab, Baghlan province. The movement claims this is one of three districts they have managed to recapture from the Taliban #Afghanistan pic.twitter.com/CFMmd0Q14n
— Yalda Hakim (@BBCYaldaHakim) August 25, 2021
Updated
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, says the US will use “every diplomatic, economic assistance tool to ensure those who want to leave Afghanistan past 31 August can do so”.
He says they are “looking at a series of options” for keeping the US embassy in Kabul after the country’s military has fully withdrawn.
The US government is rushing to evacuate its citizens from Afghanistan as the 31 August deadline draws near.
Updated
Our world affairs editor, Julian Borger, has posted a pair of tweets on Blinken’s briefing.
Tony Blinken talks about Afghan interpreter whose two-year old daughter was trampled to death outside the airport.
— Julian Borger (@julianborger) August 25, 2021
"I've got two small kids of my own. Reading that story, and others, was like getting punched in the gut."
Blinken says that the US would continue to push for vulnerable Afghans to leave the country after the military departure.
— Julian Borger (@julianborger) August 25, 2021
"We certainly have points of incentive and points of leverage with a future Afghan government to help make sure that that happens."
Updated
An “unexpectedly high number” of children and infants have been passed to UK troops in Kabul, PA reports.
PA quotes Lt Col Benjamin Caesar, a trauma and orthopaedic surgeon from 16 Medical Regiment, Royal Army Medical Corps.
Caesar has been working in a hospital set up for injured personnel and Afghans going through the evacuation process at Kabul airport.
Caesar said success would mean:
No coalition forces significantly injured or left behind, no injured UK service personnel, and as many Afghan nationals who wish to leave being brought to safety.
Updated
As many as 1,500 Americans remain in Afghanistan, Blinken says
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said the state department believes there were roughly 6,000 Americans in Afghanistan on 14 August, before the Taliban took control of Kabul.
Since then, about 4,500 Americans had been evacuated, and another 500 US citizens were in contact with the state department about leaving the country.
That leaves about 1,000 Americans who may still be in Afghanistan and are not in contact with the US government. Blinken said the state department is “aggressively” reaching out to those people multiple times a day and in multiple different ways.
The secretary of state noted these numbers were “dynamic calculations” that were being refined hour by hour, as more evacuation flights leave Kabul.
The figure contradicts earlier reports that as many as 4,100 Americans were still to be evacuated. The erroneous figure has been blamed on a mistake by a US state department official.
Updated
Refugee groups have described a “disorganised, barely-there” US evacuation effort for the county’s Afghan allies.
AP: Sunil Varghese, policy director with the International Refugee Assistance Project, warned that the US was leaving many to risk physical assault and death at Taliban checkpoints.
Varghese said:
It’s 100% up to the Afghans to take these risks and try to fight their way out...Those with young children and pregnant are willing to take those beatings to get out.
Just days are left before the US military is to start shutting down its anchoring role in the evacuation effort. The White House says it has evacuated more than 88,000 people, including 19,000 in the last 24 hours, in the 10 days since the Taliban entered Kabul, making it one of the biggest air evacuations ever.
Updated
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and Pakistan’s prime minister, Imran Khan, discussed Afghanistan, and the formation of a new government, in a phone call, the Kremlin said.
The importance of promoting intra-Afghan dialogue, which would facilitate creation of an inclusive government, was underscored during the talk, Reuters reports.
The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said on Tuesday that Russia, China, the United States and Pakistan were interested in serving as mediators in resolving the crisis in Afghanistan.
Updated
Fox News Correspondent Jacqui Heinrich has tweeted that a US State department official misspoke and the 4,100 figure quoted earlier for is inaccurate.
State Department now tells me the BRIEFER MISSPOKE on this call, and the 4100 number is not accurate.
— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) August 25, 2021
State did not provide an accurate number, said Blinken will speak to this later. https://t.co/fYV9aDVScU
CNN Lead Anchor Jake Tapper has also tweeted to confirm:
State Department says the briefer misspoke … more when they clarify https://t.co/Gqa3idS8Y4
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) August 25, 2021
The US state department believes at least 4,100 US citizens are still attempting to leave Afghanistan, CNN reports.
The US military airlift will continue until the final hours of the 31 August deadline, set by President Biden, Pentagon officials said earlier.
Updated
More than 88,000 people, including 19,000 in the last 24 hours, have been evacuated in the 10 days since the Taliban entered Kabul, making it one of the biggest air evacuations ever.
The US military says planes are taking off on average every 39 minutes.
Although the airlift is due to last until Tuesday 31 August, the US military said it would shift its focus in the final two days from assisting fleeing civilians to evacuating its own troops.
Biden has ordered all troops out by the end of the month, spurning pleas from European allies for more time to get people who helped Nato countries in 20 years of war to safety.
Updated
Summary
The latest breaking developments from Afghanistan as world governments rush to evacuate their citizens from Afghanistan as the 31 August deadline draws near.
Get in touch if there’s anything we’ve missed: @amistlin
- More than 10,000 people at Kabul airport are waiting to be evacuated according to Pentagon estimates.
- The Taliban have agreed to let Afghans leave Afghanistan after the US withdrawal deadline of 31 August, the German military have confirmed.
- The Turkish military has begun evacuating from Afghanistan, reports Anadolu Agency, a Turkish state-run news agency.
- A group of 200 workers who guarded World Bank projects in Afghanistan for the last 10 years until they lost their jobs last week have sent a desperate plea to the British government to rescue them urgently.
- The Taliban threatened and physically abused United Nations staff, according to an internal document seen by Reuters.
- British nationals of Afghan origin are being overlooked in the evacuation from Kabul, lawyers and campaigners have claimed
- Two thousand Afghan interpreters and others who worked for the British government are still to be airlifted out of Kabul by the RAF, defence sources said as the emergency evacuation reaches its final stages.
- The US military airlift will continue until the final hours of the 31 August deadline, set by President Joe Biden, Pentagon officials said earlier today.
- The Chinese and Russian leaders, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, have vowed to counter “threats of terrorism” emerging from Afghanistan in a phone call
- The UK foreign secretary has been urged to help evacuate two Afghan aid workers employed by a Scottish charity set up in the memory of the kidnapped aid worker Linda Norgrove.
- France will end evacuation operations from Afghanistan in the coming hours or days before the 31 August deadline, a government spokesman said.
- The leader of a resistance movement to the Taliban has vowed to never surrender but is open to negotiations with the new rulers of Afghanistan, according to an interview published by Paris Match today. Ahmad Massoud has retreated to his native Panjshir valley north of Kabul along with former vice-president Amrullah Saleh.
- Germany will keep evacuating people from Afghanistan as long as it is responsible to do so, the chancellor, Angela Merkel, told conservative lawmakers, adding, however, that this is only possible with the United States.
- Covid-19 vaccinations in Afghanistan have dropped by 80%, the UN agency UNICEF said, warning that half of the few doses delivered to the country so far are close to expiry.
Updated
Interviewed live on CNN moments ago, Britain’s former ambassador to the US Peter Westmacott said insurgent Isis-K forces were “a wild card” in Afghanistan, especially amid the tense situation involving ongoing frantic evacuations of foreign nationals and Afghan aides from Kabul - both for foreign governments trying to get people out and for the Taliban.
“They are the sworn enemy of the Taliban,” he said. “So you have within close proximity of an airport, where US and UK [personnel] are face to face with the Taliban, you have this wild card.”
He warned that Isis-K members could see crowds of people pressing to get into the airport and at the airport as a “lucrative” target, which posed a threat to the US forces controlling the airport and the Taliban. He said he was worried about “nasty” forces of terrorism “sloshing around” in the Afghanistan arena.
Westmacott discussed the talks that the CIA director, William Burns, held in Kabul with the Taliban leader, Abdul Ghani Baradar, and speculated that he might be negotiating a contingency plan if the US has not evacuated all those they want to evacuate by the end of 31 August.
“There are still thousands and thousands of people who need to leave, Afghans who have their documentation in order, and you would not like to see them left behind to fend for themselves,” he said.
Updated
The Turkish military has begun evacuating from Afghanistan, reports Anadolu Agency, a Turkish state-run news agency.
Turkish officials confirmed to Reuters that the Taliban asked Turkey for technical help in running Kabul airport after the departure of foreign forces but insisted that Turkey’s military will also fully withdraw by the 31 August deadline.
But Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government has said for months that the country could maintain a presence at the airport if requested.
Updated
British nationals of Afghan origin are being overlooked in the evacuation from Kabul, lawyers and campaigners have claimed as Dominic Raab said nearly all single-nationality UK citizens had been airlifted from the Taliban-controlled country.
About 50 British citizens, many with dual Afghan nationality, were understood to be outside Kabul airport on Wednesday.
Some said they were waving their UK passports aloft in a desperate bid to flee as the deadline for western forces’ departure closed in.
You can read Amelia Gentleman’s full story below:
Updated
Taliban threatened and physically abused United Nations staff
The Taliban threatened and physically abused United Nations staff, according to an internal document seen by Reuters.
Dozens of incidents contained in an internal UN security document seen by Reuters that describes veiled threats, the looting of UN offices and physical abuse of the organisation’s staff since 10 August, shortly before the Taliban swept to power.
The Islamist militant movement has sought to reassure Afghans and western powers that they will respect people’s rights, reports of reprisals have undermined confidence.
The Taliban did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the UN incident list.
The group has said it would investigate reported abuses, and has also encouraged encourage NGOs to continue working in the country.
Updated
The US military airlift will continue until the final hours of the 31 August deadline, set by President Joe Biden, Pentagon officials said on Wednesday.
John Kirby, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said:
The military will continue to evacuate needed populations all the way to the end.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, is expected to elaborate further on the detail of the evacuation of Americans. The state department has not publicly said how many Americans it believes are still hoping to leave.
John Kirby, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said more than 4,400 American citizens have been evacuated, an increase of about 400 from Tuesday. More than 80,000 people, mostly Afghans, have been airlifted since 14 August.
Updated
Reuters reports the German military picked up 21 German citizens in Kabul overnight for evacuation.
The German defence minister, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, said earlier that she could not confirm an end date for evacuations from Kabul as it depended on the situation on the ground.
Updated
Alex Mistlin here taking our Afghanistan live blog. If you’re on the ground, have info or have spotted a mistake then DM me on Twitter: @amistlin
The Pentagon is not very happy about the surprise visit of two congressmen to Kabul airport yesterday. Democrat Seth Moulton and Republican Peter Meijer, both of them Iraq veterans, said they made the stealth visit for the purpose of oversight of a critical situation.
“We were not aware of this visit, and we are obviously not encouraging VIP visits to a very tense, dangerous and dynamic situation at that airport and inside Kabul generally,” the Pentagon spokesman, John Kirby, said.
He added that he did not know whether the two visitors had taken seats on planes that would have gone to American or Afghan evacuees, but Kirby said pointedly: “They certainly took time away from what we had been planning to do that day.”
Updated
Asked about a report in Politico overnight that the threat of an attack on Kabul airport by Isis could jeopardise the evacuation, Maj Gen Hank Taylor said he would not go into specific threat but “we know, as previously reported, there is a threat.”
“This has been a dangerous place that has had threats by Isis, and we continue to ensure that we collect [intelligence], and keep the force protection to the highest levels possible to ensure that we’re able to continue the evacuation operation.”
As the evacuation goes on, the Pentagon made clear today that military personnel and equipment would take up an increasing share of the capacity.
The US military presence at the airport is already beginning to draw down, from 5,800 at its peak in the past few days, to 5,400 now.
On the subject of the 31 August deadline, the Pentagon line remains the same. The military is working towards that date, but as a matter of course, has contingencies in case it needs to be extended. Apparently, in military-speak, such options are called “branches and sequels”.
Updated
The Taliban have agreed to let Afghans leave Afghanistan after the US withdrawal deadline of 31 August, AFP reports a German envoy as saying.
#BREAKING Taliban agree to let Afghans leave Afghanistan after US withdrawal deadline of August 31: German envoy pic.twitter.com/RNJR68lgFd
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) August 25, 2021
Updated
The Pentagon has said there was a US helicopter rescue mission last night that brought people stranded in Kabul city to the airport.
“Last night, during the period of darkness, there was an operation to safely evacuate evacuees back into Kabul. They are at HKIA (Hamid Karzai international airport), and they’re safely preparing to be evacuated,” said Maj Gen Hank Taylor.
Pentagon spokesman, John Kirby, would not give further details other than saying there were less than 20 evacuees on the flight.
It is the third such helicopter rescue, but the Pentagon said yesterday the US military was also conducting extractions by road, but would not release details for security reasons.
Updated
The Chinese and Russian leaders, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, have vowed to counter “threats of terrorism” emerging from Afghanistan in a phone call.
The two leaders “expressed their readiness to step up efforts to combat threats of terrorism and drug trafficking coming from the territory of Afghanistan”, according to the statements issued by both Beijing and Moscow.
The phone call on Wednesday came immediately after leaders from the G7 held an emergency meeting on the developing situation in Afghanistan. Boris Johnson, who chaired the meeting, said the group had agreed to ask the Taliban for guarantee of safe passage from Afghanistan.
In the phone call, Xi and Putin also spoke of the “importance of establishing peace” in Afghanistan and “preventing the spread of instability to adjacent regions”.
Xi said that his country “respects Afghanistan’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, pursues a policy of non-interference in Afghanistan’s internal affairs, and has always played a constructive role in the political settlement of the Afghan issue”, according to Xinhua.
In the past week, Chinese commentators have been discussing to what extent Beijing should step into the vacuum left by the US in the volatile central Asian country. Zhou Bo, a former senior colonel in the People’s Liberation Army, wrote in the New York Times that China “is ready to step into the void left by the hasty US retreat to seize a golden opportunity”.
But others pointed to Afghanistan’s long history of political and security instability. “China shouldn’t rush to invest in Afghanistan,” said Liu Zongyi, secretary general of the China and South Asia Cooperation Research Center at the prestigious Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (SIIS) last week.
In Moscow, while the Kremlin has been cautiously optimistic about the new leadership in Kabul, Putin has warned of Afghan militants entering neighbouring countries as refugees.
Putin has also criticised the involvement of outside powers in Afghanistan’s domestic affairs and said Moscow had “learned lessons” from the Soviet Union’s decade-long invasion of the country.
Additional reporting by AFP news agency
Updated
More than 10,000 people at Kabul airport waiting to be evacuated - US military official
The Pentagon is giving its regular morning update on the progress of the evacuation operation. According to Maj Gen Hank Taylor, 90 flights left in the past 24 hours with 19,000 people, a new daily record. Of that total, 11,700 people left on 42 US military transports.
Another 7,800 went on 48 planes flown by coalition nations and other countries. On average a flight left Kabul every 39 minutes. At the moment there are 10,000 people at Kabul airport waiting for a flight out.
The US military will continue its evacuation effort from Kabul airport until the 31 August deadline if needed, but on the last couple of days it will prioritise the removal of US troops and military equipment.
Updated
Four Russian military planes evacuated Russian and other nationals from Kabul on Wednesday on the orders of the president, Vladimir Putin, as Moscow held military exercises involving its tank forces in neighbouring Tajikistan.
The flights mark a shift in Russia’s stance on Afghanistan. Its ambassador to Kabul had previously praised the Taliban’s conduct and said the group, still officially designated a terrorist organisation in Russia, had made Kabul safer in the first 24 hours than it had been under the previous authorities.
But the Kremlin said the situation was very tense and, citing the presence of Islamic State in Afghanistan as well as the Taliban, said that the terrorist threat was “very high”.
The Russian defence ministry said it was evacuating more than 500 people from Afghanistan, including Russians and citizens of Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine.
Updated
Kabul airport’s air traffic now seems to be at a stable level due to an increase in military aircraft evacuating people, new Guardian analysis has revealed.
Fewer than 15 aircraft arrived or departed each day between 16 and 19 August, according to data from Flightradar24.
It has recovered to about 60 a day between 20 and 21 August – the latest day for which data is available. This is around half the level seen before the Taliban seized power in Kabul.
Updated
Summary
That’s it from me, Robyn Vinter. Here’s a summary of the day’s events as I hand over to my colleague Jessica Murray.
Western nations today rushed to evacuate people from Afghanistan as the 31 August deadline for the withdrawal of foreign troops drew closer and fears grew that many could be left behind to an uncertain fate under the country’s new Taliban rulers.
In one of the biggest such airlifts ever, the United States and its allies have evacuated more than 70,000 people, including their citizens, NATO personnel and Afghans at risk, since 14 August, the day before the Taliban swept into the capital Kabul to bring to an end the 20-year foreign military presence.
- A group of 200 workers who guarded World Bank projects in Afghanistan for the last 10 years until they lose their jobs last week have sent a desperate plea to the British government to rescue them urgently.
- Two thousand Afghan interpreters and others who worked for the British government are still to be airlifted out of Kabul by the RAF, defence sources said as the emergency evacuation reaches its final stages.
- The UK foreign secretary has been urged to help evacuate two Afghan aid workers employed by a Scottish charity set up in the memory of the kidnapped aid worker Linda Norgrove.
- France will end evacuation operations from Afghanistan in the coming hours or days before the 31 August deadline, a government spokesman said.
- The leader of a resistance movement to the Taliban has vowed to never surrender but is open to negotiations with the new rulers of Afghanistan, according to an interview published by Paris Match today. Ahmad Massoud has retreated to his native Panjshir valley north of Kabul along with former vice-president Amrullah Saleh.
- Germany will keep evacuating people from Afghanistan as long as it is responsible to do so, Chancellor Angela Merkel told conservative lawmakers, adding, however, that this is only possible with the United States.
- Covid-19 vaccinations in Afghanistan have dropped by 80%, the UN agency UNICEF said, warning that half of the few doses delivered to the country so far are close to expiry.
- Afghanistan’s only boarding school for girls has temporarily relocated to Rwanda, its co-founder has said, just days after a video of her burning class records to avoid Taliban recriminations was widely shared on social media.
- A former Royal Marine who has been campaigning to have dozens of people and hundreds of animals at his sanctuary evacuated from Afghanistan has been offered a glimmer of hope after the defence secretary said UK officials would help.
- Dominic Raab said he is unclear how many people will be left behind in Afghanistan once British troops withdraw by 31 August. The UK foreign secretary said the figure depends on “the window” left in terms of timing and how many people they manage to process over the next few days.
- Raab has said 9,000 British nationals, Afghans who worked for British forces and those at risk, journalists and Chevening scholars have been evacuated from Afghanistan since 15 August. Raab said this Taliban regime needs to be more “inclusive” and “moderate” compared to the previous Taliban.
-
Two members of Congress flew unannounced into Kabul airport in the middle of the ongoing chaotic evacuation Tuesday, stunning State Department and US military personnel who had to divert resources to provide security and information to the lawmakers, US officials said.
- Spain will not be able to rescue all Afghans who served alongside its troops in Afghanistan because of the “dramatic” situation on the ground, Defence Minister Margarita Robles said on Tuesday. Robles said Taliban checkpoints and violence were making it difficult for people to reach Kabul airport to catch one of Spain’s daily military flights out of Afghanistan.
- Joe Biden has rejected the pleas of domestic and international allies to keep troops in Afghanistan for evacuation efforts beyond 31 August, citing the growing threat of a terrorist attack.
- Reports are filtering in that the United States has started to take some of the 6,000 troops it has in Afghanistan out of the country, as it accelerates evacuations. The US president did not take any questions after his White House remarks, and did not mention this point. Moments earlier, the White House press secretary had declined to discuss it at the media briefing.
Mexico received 124 media workers and their family members from Afghanistan, including New York Times journalists, the government said on Wednesday, as people flee after the Taliban militant group’s takeover.
They arrived at Mexico City’s international airport early on Wednesday morning, where the country’s foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, waited to greet them.
He said:
Mexico has decided to support human rights applications for refuge, asylum and humanitarian visas for people in Afghanistan who have asked to have this humanitarian condition.
A day earlier, five members of Afghanistan’s all-girls robotics team arrived in Mexico.
Mexico has pledged to aid Afghan women and girls amid concern about their treatment under Taliban rule. Ebrard said on 18 August that the country was processing refugee applications of Afghan citizens, especially women and girls, with the aid of Guillermo Puente Ordorica, Mexico’s ambassador in Iran.
Ebrard helped to quickly arrange the journalists’ departure from Kabul, which included a stopover in Qatar, before their eventual arrival to Mexico, according to the New York Times.
Reuters evacuated a group of 73 people made up of its workers and their families to Pakistan from Afghanistan on Monday.
Updated
Images here of banners from the protest by former World Bank security staff who fear they have been left behind in Afghanistan by the British government.
Updated
A video from LA Times foreign correspondent Nabih Bulos here of what it’s like on the ground near the Baron Hotel, which the UK is using to process refugees.
#Afghan-s with permission to evac to the #UK gather for processing near the Baron hotel. Gargantuan queues. pic.twitter.com/dX5YYW7BIN
— Nabih (@nabihbulos) August 25, 2021
World Bank guards plead with British government for protection
A group of 200 workers who guarded World Bank projects in Afghanistan for the last 10 years until they lose their jobs last week have sent a desperate plea to the British government to rescue them urgently.
“Please help us before our killing,” they said in a message to world during a protest staged at a secret location in Kabul on Wednesday.
The group of men and women are terrified they will be left behind, targeted by the Taliban, and murdered.
One of the group, who emailed the Guardian, said:
When Taliban occupied Kabul the world Bank closed its office in Kabul and now the employees are in a state of despair. The only wish of them is to introduce them to SIV or ARAP to save them and their families. Our lives is like prisoners and we between life and death. … Please help us before our killing.
One banner said at their protest today:
All embassies have already relocated their security employees but still we have [sic] left here, and our lives are on [sic] danger.
Our lives are under threat, please accept our asylum.
Updated
Afghanistan: 2,000 people who worked for UK still to be airlifted
Two thousand Afghan interpreters and others who worked for the British government are still to be airlifted out of Kabul by the RAF, defence sources said as the emergency evacuation reaches its final stages.
There also remain an unidentified number of “special cases” – human rights activists, judges, LGBTQ+ advocates and others – placed on a special list by the Foreign Office waiting to get out, plus a small number of single-nationality Britons.
Meanwhile, an inquest in the UK heard today that a five-year-old Afghan refugee who died after falling from a hotel window was found on top of a neighbouring multistorey car park.
Mohammed Munib Majeedi, known as Munib, fell from a ninth-floor window at the Oyo Metropolitan hotel in Sheffield, where he was quarantining with his family after arriving from Afghanistan, last Wednesday.
Updated
A little more detail from AP on the news France is due to cease evacuations in the coming hours or days.
A French government spokesperson, Gabriel Attal, has said France will continue its evacuation operation in Kabul “as long as possible”. However, he added, “we will likely need to anticipate a few hours, maybe a few days ahead” of the American forces’ departure from Kabul airport.
“We will continue as long as possible,” he said. “Due to extreme tension on the ground ... and the scheduled departure of American forces, these evacuations are a true race against time.”
Attal declined to elaborate on how many people are still waiting for evacuation by France in Kabul. A 10th flight carrying evacuees landed in Paris on Wednesday, with 21 French and 220 Afghan nationals, including 130 children onboard, according to the French Office of Immigration and Integration.
In total, at least 1,720 Afghans and 100 French people have been evacuated by France since the beginning of the operation last week. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, promised France would evacuate Afghans who worked for the country as well as activists and others under threat.
Updated
The UK foreign secretary has been urged to help evacuate two Afghan aid workers employed by a Scottish charity set up in the memory of the kidnapped aid worker Linda Norgrove.
Norgrove was killed during an attempted rescue by US special forces after she was kidnapped in Afghanistan in 2010. Her parents, Lorna and John Norgrove, set up a foundation in her name which has since helped secure scholarships for 200 Afghan women, 100 of whom are training to be doctors.
The couple have asked for urgent assistance to help evacuate the foundation’s two female employees, who are sisters, one of whom has a husband and infant child. They are Hazara, an ethnic minority that emphasises education for girls which has been persecuted by the Taliban.
France set to end Afghanistan evacuations in coming hours or days
France will end evacuation operations from Afghanistan in the coming hours or days before the 31 August deadline, a government spokesman said on Wednesday.
However, the spokesman could not set a precise deadline as to when its Afghanistan evacuations would end as the deadline for the withdrawal of foreign troops drew closer with no sign that the Taliban might allow an extension.
The Taliban have captured more than 100 Russian-made helicopters in various states of operability, the head of a Russian state arms exporter has said, but will be largely unable to use them with little access to maintenance crews and spare parts.
As the Taliban overran the Afghan army and took control of large stores of arms and vehicles, it also captured at least 100 Mi-17 Hip helicopters, a Russian-made transport aircraft procured by the US for the Afghan armed forces because it was comparatively cheaper and easier to fly than US-made UH-60 Black Hawks.
“The helicopter fleet there is large – more than 100 Mi-17 helicopters of various types,” said Alexander Mikheev, the head of the Russian state exporter Rosoboronexporter, according to the Interfax news agency. “Of course, this fleet requires repair, maintenance and spare parts supply.” A large portion of the fleet could already be grounded, he said.
Italy’s prime minister Mario Draghi has urged G7 leaders to redirect funds destined for Afghan military forces towards humanitarian aid.
“Italy will redirect those resources that were destined for military forces in Afghanistan towards humanitarian aid and I ask you all to join this commitment, compatibly with the situation of your countries,” according to sources present at the virtual summit, Italy’s news agency Ansa has reported.
According to Milex, Italy’s independent monitoring project focusing on military spending, Italy has spent €8.7bn since 2001 during its mission in Afghanistan.
Draghi stressed the need to “maintain a contact channel even after the 31 August deadline and the possibility of transiting from Afghanistan in a safe way’’.
“Furthermore”, he added, “we must ensure that international organisations have access to Afghanistan also after this deadline”.
Italy’s PM also urged the G7 to involve Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and India.
On Wednesday, Defence Minister Lorenzo Guerini said some 3,741 Afghans have been evacuated from Kabul, on 44 flights, and 2,659 of them are already in Italy.
Hungary’s evacuation efforts from Afghanistan are nearing an end after 500 people were airlifted from Kabul, the country’s foreign minister Peter Szijjarto said on Wednesday.
“The exact timing will be announced by the commander of the army, which may happen as soon as today,” Szijjarto said, adding that most evacuees were Afghan nationals who had supported a Hungarian charity or Hungarian troops there.
A plane carrying 240 Afghan nationals including 126 children landed in Budapest on Wednesday. It was not clear if there were other nationals on the plane as well.
Hungary, an opponent of irregular migration to Europe, has rejected any plans to accommodate large numbers of Afghan refugees.
Updated
Here is Peter Beaumont’s full report on the news Poland is to end its airlift evacuations from Afghanistan:
About 19,000 people were evacuated from Kabul on Tuesday, according to a Reuters report. The figure lifts the total number airlifted out of Afghanistan since 14 August to 82,300, the White House said on Wednesday.
In the past 24 hours, 42 US military flights and 48 coalition flights helped evacuate people from the Afghan capital amid the Taliban takeover, it said.
A bit more on Poland’s decision to halt airlifts from AP:
A number of troops will remain briefly to carry out some procedures that include closing the base, Marcin Przydacz, a Polish deputy foreign minister, said.
Poland has used over a dozen planes to bring hundreds of evacuees to Warsaw. Some later travelled on to other countries.
The chaos at the airport has transfixed the world after the Taliban’s blitz across Afghanistan saw it seize control of a nation that received hundreds of billions of dollars in reconstruction aid and security support since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that followed the 11 September terror attacks.
Afghans poured onto the tarmac last week, and some clung to a U.S. military transport plane as it took off, later plunging to their deaths. At least seven people died that day, and another seven died Sunday in a panicked stampede. An Afghan security force member was killed Monday in a gunfight under unclear circumstances.
Thousands have thronged the airport in the days since, with the Taliban firing into the air in an attempt to control the crowds.
European nations, including American allies Germany and the United Kingdom, had pressed for a longer window to continue evacuations past the deadline next week. CIA director William Burns even travelled to Kabul on Monday to meet the Taliban’s top political leader. However, Biden has stuck to the deadline, even after an emergency online summit of the Group of Seven nations.
Patricia Lewis, director of the international security program at the Chatham House international affairs think-tank, said the practical deadline for the evacuations to stop was “the next couple of days.”
You can’t just say, ‘OK, midnight, we’ll stop now, we’ll just pack up gently’. There’s a huge amount of stuff that has to be done, including getting all the people out who are doing the job and all the equipment, all of the stuff that they need to get out, that they don’t want the Taliban to get hold of.
All of the allies are highly dependent on the U.S. for military cover, particularly air cover. They can’t put their own people at risk, so it really depends on when the US starts packing up.
Poland has halted its airlift evacuations from Kabul’s international airport over safety concerns, the government said, as Western nations prepare to end operations helping those fleeing the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan ahead of America’s looming withdrawal.
Marcin Przydacz, a Polish deputy foreign minister, said that a group taken from Kabul and now in Uzbekistan was the last evacuated by Poland. Another plane is on its way to Warsaw. He said his nation made its decision after consulting with the US and British officials.
After a long analysis of reports on the security situation we cannot risk the lives of our diplomats and of our soldiers any longer.
A total of 662 evacuees from Afghanistan landed at the American base in Sicily, the US Department of State said in a note.
The initial group of evacuees were flown out from Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul to al-Udeid Air Base, Qatar, and arrived at the Naval Air Station (NAS) in Sigonella, as part of Operation Allies Refuge, the U.S. Department of State’s mission for the safe evacuation of U.S. citizens, Special Immigration Visa applicants and other at-risk Afghans as quickly and safely as possible.
Capt. Kevin Pickard, commanding officer of NAS Sigonella, said:
To see how this base is able to pull in support, all across Italy, is truly impressive.
The people we’re helping are going to be joining our American family. We’re proud to welcome them with open arms.
Sigonella, known as the “Hub of the Med”, which is also a Nato and Italian air base, is serving as a transit location for evacuees before their onward movement to other locations.
“The base designated two barracks buildings as temporary lodging on base for evacuees, along with Halal dining, religious and recreation areas,’’ reads the statement.
The Navy release did not yet clarify for how long the refugees will remain in the base or which is their final destination.
Rear Adm. Scott Gray, Commander, Navy Region Europe, Africa, Central, said:
This is a short-notice mission that is a national priority for NAS Sigonella and team.
They have moved heaven and earth to be ready to take care of folks leaving a desperate situation and are treating them with dignity and respect. They didn’t just complete the mission. They went above and beyond to help the Afghan people to the best of their abilities and with hearts full of empathy.
Afghan resistance leader vows to never surrender after being denied weapons to fight the Taliban - Paris Match interview
The leader of a resistance movement to the Taliban has vowed to never surrender but is open to negotiations with the new rulers of Afghanistan, according to an interview published by Paris Match today.
Ahmad Massoud, the son of legendary Afghan rebel commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, has retreated to his native Panjshir valley north of Kabul along with former vice-president Amrullah Saleh.
“I would prefer to die than to surrender,” Massoud told French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy in his first interview since the Taliban took over Kabul. “I’m the son of Ahmad Chah Massoud. Surrender is not a word in my vocabulary.”
Massoud claimed that “thousands” of men were joining his National Resistance Front in Panjshir valley, which was never captured by invading Soviet forces in 1979 or the Taliban during their first period in power from 1996-2001.
He renewed his appeal for support from foreign leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron, and expressed bitterness at being refused weapons shortly before the fall of Kabul earlier this month.
Massoud said, according to a transcript of the interview published in French:
I cannot forget the historic mistake made by those I was asking for weapons just eight days ago in Kabul.
They refused. And these weapons - artillery, helicopters, American-made tanks - are today in the hands of the Taliban.
Massoud added that he was open to talking to the Taliban and he laid out the outlines of a possible agreement.
We can talk. In all wars, there are talks. And my father always spoke with his enemies,” he said.
Let’s imagine that the Taliban agreed to respect the rights of women, of minorities, democracy, the principles of an open society. Why not try to explain that these principals would benefit all Afghans, including them?
Massoud’s father, a francophile with close links to Paris and the West, was nicknamed the “Lion of Panjshir” for his role in fighting against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s and the Taliban regime in the 1990s.
He was assassinated by Al-Qaeda two days before the 11 September 2001 attacks.
Germany will keep up Kabul evacuations for as long as the US does, Angela Merkel says
Germany will keep evacuating people from Afghanistan as long as it is responsible to do so, Chancellor Angela Merkel told conservative lawmakers, adding, however, that this is only possible with the United States, two sources said.
Thousands of people are still desperate to flee the country after Kabul fell to the Taliban last week and before a 31 August deadline.
Germany’s Bundeswehr has so far flown more than 4,500 people out of Afghanistan, tweeted the foreign ministry. Around 3,700 of them are Afghan nationals, with women and girls making up about half the number.
Many journalists and human rights activists are among those who have been flown out, it said.
Broadcaster ARD had earlier reported that German evacuations may stop as soon as Wednesday.
“There will be no special path for Germany. All steps are being closely agreed with partners,” one source quoted Merkel as saying.
Merkel said in Tuesday there are intensive discussions on whether a civilian-operated airport in Kabul could be used after that deadline.
Covid-19 vaccinations in Afghanistan drop by 80%
In the first week following the Taliban conquest of Kabul, Covid-19 vaccinations in Afghanistan have dropped by 80%, the UN agency UNICEF said, warning that half of the few doses delivered to the country so far are close to expiry.
The Taliban seized control of the Afghan capital on 15 August, having already captured most of the country earlier in the month after the United States decided to withdraw military forces after 20 years of war.
Since the Taliban takeover “there’s been an 80% drop in people reached with COVID-19 vaccines,” a spokesperson for UNICEF told Reuters.
In the week starting on 15 August, 30,500 people had been vaccinated in 23 of the 34 provinces of the country, whereas the previous week 134,600 people were inoculated in 30 provinces, according to figures provided by UNICEF, which coordinates the rollout of Covid-19 shots distributed across the world by the World Health Organization (WHO) vaccine programme Covax.
Noting the UN agency has been calling on all Afghan healthcare workers, including women, to return to work, the UNICEF spokesperson said:
The drop is understandable, as in situations of chaos, conflict and emergency, people will prioritize their safety and security first.
The spokesperson declined to comment about whether the drop in inoculations was also the result of Taliban’s possible vaccine scepticism, but warned about risks caused by a protracted slowdown in the vaccination campaign.
Nearly 2 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine delivered to Afghanistan, which is about half of the total so far, expire in November, the UNICEF spokesperson said.
WHO data show that only 1.2 million doses had been administered as of Aug. 20 in Afghanistan, which has a population of 40 million.
Gavi, which co-leads Covax with the WHO, said the programme has so far delivered over 4 million doses to Afghanistan.
Declining to comment on whether vaccinations had been hampered by the Taliban, a Gavi spokesperson told Reuters:
Our priority today is to work with UNICEF and WHO country offices (..) to ensure our ability to continue the country’s COVID-19 vaccination programme.
Britain’s failure to persuade the US to extend the evacuation from Afghanistan into September does not mean the “special relationship” with Washington is over, the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, has said.
He made the comment in an interview following the virtual G7 summit, which resulted in President Biden rejecting calls from the UK and other European partners for the evacuation mission from Afghanistan to be extended beyond 31 August.
Afghanistan's only girls boarding school relocates to Rwanda
Afghanistan’s only boarding school for girls has temporarily relocated to Rwanda, its co-founder has said, just days after a video of her burning class records to avoid Taliban recriminations was widely shared on social media.
Shabana Basij-Rasikh, who escaped Kabul with 250 students and staff, urged the world to “not avert your eyes” from the millions of girls left behind.
“See those girls, and in doing so you will hold those holding power over them to account,” said Basij-Rasikh in a tweet, as she vowed to return to Afghanistan.
Updated
In this week’s Guardian Weekly, as critics round on President Joe Biden’s abrupt handling of the US pullout from Kabul in particular, our world affairs editor Julian Borger asks whether the fall of Kabul signals the end of the long era of American interventionism – and if so, what will take its place?
Then, Guardian correspondents Jason Burke and Emma Graham-Harrison – both of whom have reported extensively from Afghanistan – examine what the takeover signifies for Islamist extremism around the world, and how far the Afghan Taliban’s claims to be a more tolerant ruling force than before can be taken at face value.
Fresh hope for ex-marine’s efforts to rescue 200 cats and dogs from Kabul
A former Royal Marine who has been campaigning to have dozens of people and hundreds of animals at his sanctuary evacuated from Afghanistan has been offered a glimmer of hope after the defence secretary said UK officials would help.
Paul Farthing, known as Pen, had already been given authorisation to get his people out but continued working with supporters to secure safe passage for 140 dogs and 60 cats they were caring for at the Nowzad shelter he founded in Kabul after serving with the British army in Afghanistan.
As thousands flee Afghanistan, some refugees want to go back, AFP reports.
From trucks stuffed with carpets, bedding, clothes and even goats, around 200 Afghan refugees look beyond the horizon toward Spin Boldak in their country’s south, waiting to return home from Pakistan.
Dreading another period of harsh rule after the Taliban’s rapid takeover following the US troop withdrawal, thousands have been desperately trying to flee Afghanistan, with chaotic images emerging from the Kabul airport.
But some families want to repatriate to their homeland, saying the Taliban will bring stability to the war-torn nation.
“We emigrated from Afghanistan during bombing and hardships, when Muslims were in trouble, now, praise be to Allah, the situation is normal, so we are returning to Afghanistan,” Molavi Shaib told AFP while waiting at the border.
Divided by a 10-foot-deep trench filled with barbed wire, the mountainous boundary separating Spin Boldak from Chaman in Pakistan’s southwest sees thousands crossing the trade route every day.
As scores try to escape Taliban rule, Pakistan has ramped up security at the border, making the process more stringent.
Muhammad Nabi said:
People want to return but they are not allowed to cross, we request the Pakistani government to allow us to cross the border because there’s no war, and peace has been established.
We have our household with women and kids waiting - we want them to cross the border.
Pakistan has housed over two million Afghan refugees since the first wave of war broke out in Afghanistan over 40 years ago, with numbers fluctuating based on the conflict’s intensity, but the country has said it is not in a position to take in any more.
Displaced Afghans have long complained about feeling unwelcome with little access to employment and citizenship rights.
Many have become pawns in a diplomatic blame-game between the countries, which have accused each other of aiding militant groups. Islamabad has long been seen as protecting the Taliban and could be one of the few governments with close ties to the new regime in Kabul.
With dust blowing over their belongings and children squeezed in between the furniture, dozens of trucks are parked in Chaman’s barren fields, as returnees complete document checks and wait for their crossing to be approved.
On the back of one truck, a teenage boy holds a baby, surrounded by a hodgepodge of household goods including a bucket, a bed and a bicycle. Another boy sits next to him on a yellow cushion while a white goat can be seen milling about between them.
The returnees say they will have better lives in Afghanistan.
Wali Ur Rahman told AFP:
I am returning to Ghazni, now peace has been established and we are happy that we are returning back to our home. It’s much better to go back and settle there.
His words are a jarring contrast to the images from Kabul airport where people have clung to the exterior of planes and at least one person has fallen to their death off a departing jet.
Many of those trying to get out of Afghanistan fear reprisals from the Taliban after working for foreign governments that fought the militants during the 20-year war.
But Nabi said he was confident the end of the conflict would bring a brighter future.
“We migrated here to Pakistan because of the ongoing war in Afghanistan, now peace has been established,” he said.
Unclear how many people will be left behind in Afghanistan, says UK foreign secretary
Dominic Raab said he is unclear how many people will be left behind in Afghanistan once British troops withdraw by 31 August.
The UK foreign secretary said the figure depends on “the window” left in terms of timing and how many people they manage to process over the next few days.
He told ITV’s Good Morning Britain:
It’s also how many want to come, as there are some finely balanced cases.
Raab also declined to comment on whether British troops would return to Afghanistan in the future.
I’m not going to speculate on that while we’re in the middle of withdrawals.
The United Kingdom retains the right to exercise self-defence in relation to our nationals in our country. We’re not getting into speculating about that.
The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, has said the government is working with former marine Paul Farthing and his animal charity to try to get him and his staff out of Afghanistan.
Farthing, known as Pen, has campaigned to have both his employees and the animals in their care evacuated in a plan he has dubbed Operation Ark.
On Monday, he announced that the UK government had granted visas for all his staff and their dependants – totalling 68 people – but the evacuation of the shelter’s animals has remained a sticking point.
In an update today, Raab told LBC:
We’re trying to do all we can for the staff, but in terms of the animals, and the question of whether they can be prioritised ahead of the other people that are trying to get out, I don’t have anything more to add to what the defence secretary, I think, rightly said in the last 24 hours.
Updated
The UK foreign secretary said “with hindsight” he would not have gone on holiday to Crete with the Taliban advancing on Kabul.
Dominic Raab told BBC Breakfast he was “caught unawares” by the speed of the Taliban’s advancement, but he said it was “nonsense” to say he was “lounging around on the beach all day”.
The cabinet minister was heavily criticised for the timing of his five-star holiday and for not returning to the UK when the situation in Afghanistan became clearer.
However, Raab said he was working while in Crete and that he did not go paddleboarding, as reported, because “the sea was actually closed”.
He told Sky News:
The stuff about me being lounging around on the beach all day is just nonsense. The stuff about me paddleboarding, nonsense, the sea was actually closed, it was a red notice.
I was focused on the Cobra meetings, the Foreign Office team, the director and the director general, and the international engagement.
Updated
Here’s the video of Joe Biden saying the US is “on pace” to finish its Afghanistan evacuation efforts by 31 August, despite pleas of domestic and international allies to keep troops on the ground.
The US president cited a growing terrorist threat as a reason to continue its mass evacuation.
‘The sooner we can finish, the better. Each day of operations brings added risk to our troops,’ he said
Uganda’s government says 51 people evacuated from Afghanistan have arrived in the East African country at the request of the United States.
Authorities said in a statement that the group, transported to Uganda in a chartered flight, arrived early today. That statement said they included men, women and children. No more details were given on the identities of the evacuees.
Ugandan officials said last week the country would shelter up to 2,000 people fleeing the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan. They said the Afghans would be brought to Uganda in small groups in a temporary arrangement before they were relocated elsewhere.
Uganda has long been a security ally of the US.
Updated
Russia is preparing to evacuate more than 500 people on four military planes from Afghanistan — its first airlift operation since evacuations from Kabul began.
The Defence Ministry has said that it will airlift the nationals of Russia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine from Kabul.
Teams of medical workers will be present on each plane, the ministry said, should any of the evacuees require medical attention.
The evacuations will be carried out upon orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the ministry noted.
The UK Foreign Secretary has said Britain wants to “exercise the maximum moderating influence that it can” to prevent the Taliban from turning Afghanistan into a breeding ground for terror.
Dominic Raab said Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s decision to hold the G7 meeting on Tuesday was “incredibly important” but also the Government needed to “broaden that group of like-minded countries as well”.
He told Times Radio:
I’ve been speaking to China, Pakistan, India and we’ll be trying to convene meetings of the permanent members of the Security Council to agree the contours for the way forward.
In terms of the leaders, we will use all the leaders at our disposal. Sanctions potentially, access to the international financial institutions... If they (the Taliban) want aid going into Afghanistan, it won’t go through the Taliban, they’ll have to provide a permissive environment for NGOs (non-governmental organisations) and the UN.
The Taliban’s return to power threatens Afghan women’s hard-won property rights, with thousands who fled their homes during the militants’ takeover at particular risk of losing their land and houses for good, rights groups and researchers said.
The Taliban imposed a strict Islamic law that largely denied women property rights during its 1996-2001 rule, but since then local authorities have been granting property titles to widows, divorced women and other female-led households.
Taliban leaders have sought to present a more moderate face since seizing power, saying women’s rights will be protected under the framework of Islam, but campaigners fear the fragile progress on property titles will be set back, Reuters reports.
Heather Barr, interim co-director of the women’s rights division at Human Rights Watch, said:
Women already faced many challenges in exercising their property rights, but with the return of the Taliban they have become even more vulnerable.
It’s very difficult to imagine the Taliban respecting women’s property rights, and this will have devastating impacts on women who are struggling to protect themselves and their families.
Control of land and natural resources has long been a contentious issue in Afghanistan, where only about 12% of land is arable, according to the World Bank, and 40 years of conflict have left warlords and powerful landlords in control.
Dysfunctional legal systems, corruption, a lack of transparency and accountability, and the loss of records and legal documents made it hard to resolve land disputes even during recent years of relatively better governance.
Now, there will likely be an increase in land disputes as families abandon their homes, and the Taliban seeks to settle scores and restrict women’s rights, said Jon Unruh, an associate professor at McGill University in Montreal.
There will almost certainly be significant confiscations of lands and properties by the Taliban as they seek to punish some, reward others and make money by trafficking in confiscated housing.
While Afghanistan’s civil laws give women equal rights to own land and property, security of tenure is usually tied to men, and cultural norms and customary practices often deny women these rights, particularly those who are widowed or divorced.
There are an estimated 2 million widows in Afghanistan.
Less than 5% of land ownership documents in the country include the name of a female owner, according to some estimates.
Under a new legal framework of the previous government, co-titling of state land was made mandatory, with men required to add their wives’ names on certificates.
Thousands of such certificates have been issued, according to the World Bank.
The fate of these titles “will be an issue, with probably a robust effort on the part of the Taliban to destroy, falsify or sell them to others”, said Unruh, who studies land rights in conflict situations.
Properties of women “will be a particular problem. This is likely to be an area where the Taliban feel especially justified in confiscating them”, he added, citing the group’s strict view on girls and women being educated or working.
The Taliban has said it was “not interested in anyone’s private property, rather it considers protection of lives and properties its primary responsibility”.
More than half a million people have already been displaced by the violence in Afghanistan so far this year, according to the United Nations, with women and children making up some 80% of those forced to flee since the end of May.
For these women - and for those trying to save their homes by staying behind - it would be very difficult to insist on their property rights, said Bilquees Daud, a lecturer at the Jindal School of International Affairs in India.
Daud, who is Afghan, said:
Particularly for widows and female-headed households who need a male companion to even step outside now, it will be very difficult to exercise their property rights.
Under the Taliban’s fundamentalist view of Sharia law, the denial of property rights to women will mean they’re left destitute, or forced into marriage simply to put a roof over their heads.
Dominic Raab has said “almost all” single-nationality UK citizens who want to leave Afghanistan have been brought home.
Asked on Sky News if all British nationals are out of the country, the UK foreign secretary said:
Mono-nationals, so single-nationality UK who have got documentation, the lion’s share, almost all of them that want to come out have been brought home.
The ones that are remaining, and we have done an amazing job, two-and-a-half thousand UK nationals if you go back to April... what remains are rather complex cases, large family units where one or other may be documented or may be clearly a national, but it’s not clear whether the rest of them are.
It is “very probable” that France’s operations to evacuate its citizens and partners from Afghanistan will end on Thursday, French European Affairs Minister Clement Beaune told C News TV.
Beaune also told C News that a new agreement regarding migration was needed between the European Union and Britain, Reuters reports.
Dominic Raab has said “it’s clear that the troops will be withdrawn by the end of the month” from Afghanistan.
Asked about Tuesday’s G7 meeting, the 31 August deadline, and President Biden’s comment that the sooner the the evacuation in Afghanistan is finished the better, the UK foreign secretary told BBC Breakfast:
Well look, it’s clear that the troops will be withdrawn by the end of the month.
More from UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab’s Sky News interview this morning:
He said the UK evacuation effort in Afghanistan is working towards the end of August, but time will also be taken to withdraw the military operation.
Asked about suggestions the withdrawal could begin within 24 to 48 hours, Raab said:
I’m not going to give the precise timeline. What we do know is that we are working towards the end of the month.
The military planners will work out how much time they need to withdraw their equipment, their staff, and what’s really important is we will make the maximum use of all the time we have left.
He said in the last 24 hours:
We have secured 2,000 back to the UK, so the system is operating at full speed, at full capacity and we will use every last remaining hour and day to get everyone we can back, the British nationals, the Afghans who worked so loyally for us, we are getting the Chevening scholars back, also women’s rights defenders and journalists.
We will work to the end of August, but we will take back from that, you step back from that, the time that we need to withdraw our military operation.
I can’t give you the precise details because we want to make sure we use every last hour and day to keep this rate up.
The Taliban has put an exit date of 31 August for all foreign evacuations.
UK foreign secretary: 9,000 British nationals and Afghans who worked for Britain now evacuated
UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has said 9,000 British nationals, Afghans who worked for British forces and those at risk, journalists and Chevening scholars have been evacuated from Afghanistan since 15 August.
Discussing the Taliban’s press conference on Tuesday where they said the US should not be “encouraging” highly skilled people to leave Afghanistan, Raab said the group needs to be more “inclusive” and “moderate” compared to the previous Taliban.
He told Times Radio:
If the Taliban leadership, as they were saying overnight, want to avoid the brain drain, they’re not going to be able to do that by coercively blocking the border.
You’ll just see a larger flow of refugees going out and they’ll have to be processed.
They’re not going to be able to avoid the refugee crisis by just a few roadblocks, they’re not going to be able to hermetically seal the Afghan border, which is rugged and wide-ranging.
If they’re really serious about avoiding the brain drain, which was the language that the Taliban spokesperson said, they’re going to have to find a way to bring in other factions to be more inclusive and to be more moderate compared with the previous Taliban.
UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the UK “would like to see Kabul airport go back to being functional”.
Asked on Sky News about reports the airport could switch back to allowing people to leave on civilian aircraft rather than military flights, and asked if the UK has had conversations with the Taliban about that possibility, Raab said:
We do engage with the Taliban militarily on the ground, and in Doha with the political representation.
We would like to see Kabul airport go back to being functional. That will require the security on the ground, it will require it to be done safely, and of course it will require the Taliban to live up to their assurances about allowing safe passage out.
They’ve actually so far tried to be constructive, as we have seen with the numbers we have got, and tried to be constructive in their own way, and what we have then got to do is test them beyond the withdrawal date, will they still allow safe passage, as they have undertaken, will they allow humanitarian groups the permissive environment to be able to operate?
So, there is a next stage of engagement, not recognition, engagement with the Taliban, and we will hold them very clearly to the assurances that they are already stating.
Robyn Vinter here.
For years the Taliban’s top spokesman shunned the public eye, even as he amassed hundreds of thousands of followers online where he live-tweeted the insurgency.
But days after the Taliban captured Kabul following the collapse of the US-backed government, Zabihullah Mujahid presented himself to the public for the first time in a surprise press conference in the Afghan capital, AFP reports.
At first glance, there was little that distinguished the Taliban spokesman from its other leaders - the middle-aged jihadist sported a black turban and full black beard framing a stony demeanour carved from decades of war.
“We have expelled the foreigners,” he proclaimed in his opening remarks.
Just days earlier, Mujahid announced via social media the assassination of leading government spokesman Dawa Khan Menapal, boasting that the killing had been orchestrated “in a special attack” carried out by the Taliban.
The spokesman is now sitting in Menapal’s old seat, seeking to allay concern about how the Taliban will rule.
“All those on the opposite side are pardoned from A to Z,” said Mujahid as he fielded questions from the remnants of the Afghan press corps.
“We will not seek revenge.”
For years, there was a debate as to whether Mujahid was even a single person - his moniker serving as cover for the Taliban’s sprawling information wing.
But Mujahid was real and relaxed in his public debut, delivering assurances in a live broadcast on behalf of a group that once banned television.
When asked if the Taliban expected to be forgiven following their brutal campaign of violence that brought death and destruction to Afghan cities, Mujahid did not sidestep.
The losses, however devastating, were worth it, he argued.
“A huge occupying force was defeated,” he explained.
Notorious for banning TV and radio under their iron-fisted rule in the 1990s, the Taliban have adapted to the ever-changing nature of modern media and deftly used it to their advantage.
Richard Stengel - a former under secretary of state for the Obama administration - wrote in a New York Times editorial:
The Taliban understand that the information war is modern warfare.
They are not trying to build a new platform; they’re trying to integrate into and dominate the existing landscape.
Mujahid is believed to oversee a vast public relations operation that has coordinated countless press releases, interview requests and questions from journalists in recent years.
Outside of his social media presence, Mujahid and his team also managed an impressive network of WhatsApp groups, where they delivered real time updates directly to journalists.
Little is known about the spokesman’s past roles in the movement, but his impact on their string of victories has been monumental even as other spokesmen emerged and took on more public roles from the Taliban’s political office in Doha.
Under Mujahid’s leadership, the Taliban effectively owned the battlefield narrative during the group’s final offensive this summer, providing detailed sketches of its fighters’ movements as the Afghan government stayed largely silent.
The Taliban’s victory appeared all but inevitable, according to the narrative presented by the Taliban press office, as government forces surrendered en masse often without a shot fired.
During the last 10 days of the war, Mujahid would announce the fall of every new city to the Taliban with a tweet, becoming the de-facto minister of information of the conflict that his group was winning rapidly.
Now in power, Mujahid will be faced with a new task - convincing Afghans and the international community that the Taliban are able to transition from fighting to governing.
“All issues can be resolved with talks,” Mujahid told reporters Tuesday.
“We give our brothers reassurances. We have the same country and the same goals.”
That’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today. I’ll leave you in the capable hands of my colleague Robyn Vinter. Thanks for following along – and stay tuned for the latest.
Everyone is to blame for the catastrophe in Afghanistan, except the people who started it. Yes, Joe Biden screwed up by rushing out so chaotically. Yes, Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab failed to make adequate and timely provisions for the evacuation of vulnerable people.
But there is a frantic determination in the media to ensure that none of the blame is attached to those who began this open-ended war without realistic aims or an exit plan, then waged it with little concern for the lives and rights of the Afghan people: the then US president, George W Bush, the British prime minister Tony Blair and their entourages:
Updated
A former UK ambassador to Washington says Mr Biden’s reputation and legacy have been permanently damaged by the withdrawal.
Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Lord Renwick said Mr Biden had promised in his election campaign to regain the respect of the world for the US.
“Instead, his abandonment of Afghanistan and the manner in which it was carried out has been greeted with appalled dismay by allied governments and jubilation in Moscow and Beijing,” Lord Renwick wrote.
“For President Biden, the ‘nice guy’ image has gone out of the window. His reputation and legacy have been tarnished for good.”
Lord Renwick said vice-president Kamala Harris would also find it difficult to restore her reputation, having “promised a new emphasis internationally on women’s rights”.
Summary
Here are the key developments from the last few hours:
-
Two members of Congress flew unannounced into Kabul airport in the middle of the ongoing chaotic evacuation Tuesday, stunning State Department and US military personnel who had to divert resources to provide security and information to the lawmakers, US officials said.
- Spain will not be able to rescue all Afghans who served alongside its troops in Afghanistan because of the “dramatic” situation on the ground, Defence Minister Margarita Robles said on Tuesday. Robles said Taliban checkpoints and violence were making it difficult for people to reach Kabul airport to catch one of Spain’s daily military flights out of Afghanistan.
- Joe Biden has rejected the pleas of domestic and international allies to keep troops in Afghanistan for evacuation efforts beyond 31 August, citing the growing threat of a terrorist attack.
- Reports are filtering in that the United States has started to take some of the 6,000 troops it has in Afghanistan out of the country, as it accelerates evacuations. The US president did not take any questions after his White House remarks, and did not mention this point. Moments earlier, the White House press secretary had declined to discuss it at the media briefing.
- The European Union has announced it’s freezing a billion euros in development aid it has set aside for Afghanistan over the next seven years, as Brussels sought to use its financial leverage to secure assurances over the Taliban’s treatment of women and minority groups.
- UK prime minister Boris Johnson has asked the Taliban to guarantee safe passage for British evacuations out of Afghanistan. Joe Biden later said that US evacuations depended on cooperation by the Taliban. The G7 nations held an emergency meeting earlier today.
South Australia has welcomed people fleeing Afghanistan after the arrival of a repatriation flight from Kabul, according to state Premier Steven Marshall. The flight touched down early on Wednesday morning with 89 people on board.
They were taken to a city quarantine hotel to begin two weeks in supervised isolation in accordance with Covid restrictions.
Mr Marshall said the state government reached out to the Commonwealth when it heard about the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan.
“A very distressing situation for all the people involved,” he said.
“We want to play our part and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Afghan community here in South Australia.”
The arrivals from Kabul are not included in SA’s current weekly cap of 265 for the return of Australians from overseas during the coronavirus pandemic. Mr Marshall said it was expected some would remain in South Australia permanently.
It was understood some on board were Australian citizens and some were on humanitarian visas.
More on Afghan refugees in India:
Ashabuddin Hamdar, who has lived in Lajpat Nagar since December 2018 and runs a modest Afghan burger street stall, looked pale and anxious at the mention of the Taliban. It was threats from the Taliban in 2014, after he refused to work with them in his village, which ultimately led to him fleeing Afghanistan. He left behind his wife and six-year-old son and three-year-old daughter in Kapisa province, 100 miles from Kabul.
“I could not join the Taliban, I am no terrorist,” said Hamdar. Three weeks ago, the Taliban sent his wife a warning. “The Taliban told my wife that if I didn’t return, they would kill her and my family,” he said. “So I haven’t slept for weeks since. I see my children’s faces in all the children here. I am so worried for them. But if I go back now I will be killed.”
According to UN figures from 2020, there are about 16,000 Afghan refugees living in India, the majority of whom are living in Delhi. Lajpat Nagar was built to house refugees fleeing Pakistan after partition in 1947, but over the decades, particularly from the early 1990s when the Taliban began to emerge, it became home to the Afghan community:
They call it little Kabul and it’s not hard to see why. In this lively corner of south Delhi, the streets of Lajpat Nagar are lined with Afghan pharmacies, supermarkets, travel agents and beauty parlours, with Dari Persian signage almost as common as Hindi. Delhi’s residents will trek across the city just for the Afghan restaurants, and for a taste of the thick, steaming ovals of naan bread baked in the numerous Afghan bakeries in the neighbourhood.
But in recent days, a sombre mood has taken over this usually bustling enclave, where thousands of Afghans have settled, some as early as 1979. As Kabul fell to the Taliban last Sunday, many of those who had sought safety in India as refugees feared it sounded the death knell for them ever being able to return home:
The BBC’s Seoul correspondent Laura Bicker reports that when Afghans evacuated by the Korean government enter South Korea, they will do so as “people of merit” rather than as refugees:
380 Afghans who worked for the Korean government in Afghanistan will arrive in South Korea tomorrow according to MOFA. They will not be entering as refugees, but as people of merit to the country says the Foreign Ministry.
— Laura Bicker (@BBCLBicker) August 25, 2021
For years, Afghanistan’s Hazara community has suffered some of the country’s most violent assaults, AFP reports:
Now, with the Taliban back in control, the majority Shiite Muslim group fears the Sunni hardliners may again turn on them, just as they did during their last regime in the 1990s.
And even as the Taliban have pledged a softer rule this time, a statue of a prominent Hazara leader was vandalised just days after the Islamists swept back into power.
The group took the brunt of escalating violence as Islamic State suicide bombers targeted their mosques, schools, rallies and hospitals in western Kabul’s Hazara enclave of Dasht-e-Barchi, killing hundreds of people.
Fearing they will again be slaughtered when international troops exit Afghanistan this summer, some in the community have started to rearm, with a small militia based in Wardak province recruiting and training Hazaras to fight back.
Days after the Taliban returned to power, the statue of a prominent Hazara leader in Bamiyan – where the famed Buddhas were also destroyed two decades ago – was decapitated.
The incident spurred fears that the militants still hold a grudge against the community, and that they may crack down again soon.
More from that convoy on the ay to Kabul airport, via AFP:
“Everybody had a reason to leave,” a journalist on the convoy said.
“Some were journalists, others women university students... then there were those who worked with foreigners.”
One girl was in tears at the hotel before the convoy set off.
“The day the Taliban came, I knew life was over for me in Afghanistan.” she said.
“Living under their rule would mean burying all my ambitions in life.”
Those on the convoy were now waiting for their turn to be evacuated to the West via a coronavirus isolation camp in Qatar.
“My children are crying because they are exhausted, but I am telling them hang on a bit more for the flight to come and then we are saved,” said Haji Hamid, with his wife and four youngsters in tow.
“Death and oppression would be stalking us if we stayed,” he said.
“I keep telling them ‘one day, you’ll thank me’.”
British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has offered a glimmer of hope for a former Royal Marine seeking to secure the passage of 200 dogs and cats alongside his animal shelter staff out of Afghanistan.
Paul Farthing, known as Pen, founded the Nowzad shelter in Kabul after serving with the British Army in Afghanistan in the mid-2000s, with the organisation rescuing dogs, cats and donkeys.
Since the collapse of the Afghan government, he has campaigned to have his staff and their families as well as 140 dogs and 60 cats evacuated from the country in a plan he has dubbed Operation Ark.
On Monday, a jubilant Mr Farthing announced the UK Government had granted visas for all his staff and their dependants – totalling 68 people – but the evacuation of the shelter’s animals has remained a sticking point.
Mr Wallace had insisted the animals would have to wait behind since the UK would prioritise the evacuation of people aboard RAF flights out of Kabul.
This is quite the map:
Humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan.#AFPgraphics map of Afghanistan showing recent developments in the conflict and humanitarian crisis pic.twitter.com/iThXrKOXDc
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) August 25, 2021
Afghans aboard a convoy of buses that was given a Taliban escort to Kabul’s airport have spoken to AFP of the heartbreak of driving past huge crowds desperate to join them.
Tens of thousands of people are gathered around the airport north of the capital in the hope of getting a flight out of the country.
A journalist aboard the convoy that left a downtown hotel early Sunday told AFP a huge crowd was camped at an intersection close to the airport - many sleeping in the open. Families hoping for a miracle escape were crowded between the barbed-wire boundaries of an unofficial no man’s land separating Taliban fighters from US troops and the remnants of an Afghan special forces brigade helping them.
“As soon as they saw our convoy they got up and ran towards the buses,” he said.
“They were showing us their passports or other documents... One man came to my window with wife and child and waved his passport saying ‘I have a British visa, but can’t get in. Please let us on the bus’.”
There have been reports of the Taliban stopping, harassing and even detaining Afghans trying to flee, but the reporter said his convoy passed largely without incident.
“The didn’t care about us,” he said.
Australian painter Ben Quilty has written for the Guardian about what Australia can do better:
Blaine Flower Diddams was killed in Afghanistan in 2012. He was a handsome man with a glowing smile. His two children and his wife were swept into the media glare when their beloved husband and father was brought home in a C-130 Hercules transport plane.
Blaine’s daughter, Elle-Lou told me that, in hindsight, her little family wished they’d refused the very public nature of her dad’s funeral. It was the first time she’d met the then Australian prime minister, Julia Gillard. It must be a distinctly difficulty way to grieve, with dignitaries that you have never met before, in front of a country’s media.
Last week Elle-Lou called me. From nowhere an Afghan man, who I cannot name, had sent her a plea for help. He had sent her the details of his service to the SASR as a fixer and translator and he attached a photo of himself, with Elle-Lou’s dad, arms around each other, beaming at the camera next to a spectacular river in the Uruzgan valley. Several men who have served with Blaine before he died, and with the Afghan translator, have also written glowing reports of the man’s support and relationship to the ADF and to the Australian action in Afghanistan.
As Blaine’s interpreter messaged me, why would all the Afghan people have visas in place for countries like Australia when the allies had promised peace, democracy and stability? We entered Afghanistan as bullies and we left as cowards. My hopes for Blaine’s interpreter are not high.
Here are some clips from Biden’s speech earlier:
We have made significant progress in the last ten days. pic.twitter.com/yySjGDwFO6
— President Biden (@POTUS) August 25, 2021
Five members of an all-girl Afghan robotics team have arrived in Mexico after fleeing Kabul.
“We give you the warmest welcome to Mexico,” Martha Delgado Undersecretary for Multilateral and Human Rights at the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs told the women as she greeted them during a news conference at Mexico City’s airport.
Mexico has pledged to aid Afghan women and girls in the wake of the US withdrawal. Mexico’s Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said on Twitter on 18 August that the country had begun “processing of the first refugee applications of Afghan citizens, especially women and girls who have requested it,” with the aid of Guillermo Puente Ordorica, Ambassador of Mexico in Iran.
Tuesday’s safe arrival in Mexico was made possible by an “extensive international effort and coordination from a group of volunteers” who helped the girls, according to a volunteer who requested anonymity for fear of the safety of the families that remain under Taliban control.
Other members of the robotics team landed in Qatar in recent days.
More on Spain’s evacuation efforts, via AFP:
Spain has been evacuating its nationals and local contractors from Afghanistan via Dubai since the Taliban swept to power 10 days ago.
The Spanish government has not said how many people it plans on taking out but has insisted it would continue evacuating “as many people as possible”.
“We will continue to bring out all people at risk until the last possible moment,” Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska told reporters at Torrejon de Ardoz airbase after a plane landed carrying 290 refugees, mostly Afghan women and children.
Including the latest arrivals, Marlaska said “1,105 people” had landed in Spain. Of those, 613 had already made their asylum requests, with the rest either in transit or linked to a group that had worked with the US.
Two more planes are due on Wednesday, he said, with the first due at dawn.
Robles said on Monday that Spain could only carry out evacuation flights as long as Kabul airport was controlled by US troops.
Spain has agreed to host up to 4,000 Afghans who will be airlifted by the United States to airbases in Rota and Moron de la Frontera in southern Spain.
Under an agreement signed by Madrid and Washington, the evacuees may stay at the airbases, which are used jointly by the United States and Spain, for up to 15 days.
Spain warns that it will have to leave some Afghans behind
Spain will not be able to rescue all Afghans who served alongside its troops in Afghanistan because of the “dramatic” situation on the ground, Defence Minister Margarita Robles said on Tuesday.
AFP: Robles said Taliban checkpoints and violence were making it difficult for people to reach Kabul airport to catch one of Spain’s daily military flights out of Afghanistan.
“We will evacuate as many people as possible but there are those who will stay behind for reasons that don’t depend on us but on the situation there,” Robles told Cadena Ser radio.
“Even for those who reach Kabul, access to the airport is very complicated,” she said, describing the situation as “dramatic” as aggression from the Taliban increases.
Her remarks came as US President Joe Biden said Washington would stick to its August 31 deadline to pull American forces out of Afghanistan following talks with his G7 counterparts, US media reported.
With the deadline looming, Robles said Spanish troops were trying to help Afghans stuck outside Kabul airport.
“Until this morning, it was impossible to leave Kabul airport. In the last few hours, an option has been under way... because the Taliban violence is very intense,” she told reporters, without giving further details.
The New York Times’ Afghanistan editor:
Are the defense companies who made billions off the war in Afghanistan doing anything to support evacuation efforts or to help resettle Afghan refugees?
— Lauren Katzenberg (@Lkatzenberg) August 25, 2021
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a statement Tuesday evening taking note of the desire of some legislators to visit Afghanistan and saying she was writing to “reiterate that the Departments of Defense and State have requested that Members not travel to Afghanistan and the region during this time of danger.
“Ensuring the safe and timely evacuation of individuals at risk requires the full focus and attention of the US military and diplomatic teams on the ground in Afghanistan.”
Two US members of Congress fly to Kabul unannounced, prompting 'fury'
Two members of Congress flew unannounced into Kabul airport in the middle of the ongoing chaotic evacuation Tuesday, stunning State Department and US military personnel who had to divert resources to provide security and information to the lawmakers, US officials said.
Massachusetts Democrat Seth Moulton and Michigan Republican Peter Meijer flew in and out on charter aircraft and were on the ground at the Kabul airport for several hours.
That led officials to complain that they could be taking seats that would have otherwise gone to other Americans or Afghans fleeing the country, but the congressmen said in a joint statement that they made sure to leave on a flight with empty seats.
“As Members of Congress, we have a duty to provide oversight on the executive branch,’” the two said in their statement.
“We conducted this visit in secret, speaking about it only after our departure, to minimise the risk and disruption to the people on the ground, and because we were there to gather information, not to grandstand.”
Two officials familiar with the flight said that State Department, Defence Department and White House officials were furious about the incident because it was done without coordination with diplomats or military commanders directing the evacuation.
The US military found out about the visit as the legislators’ aircraft was inbound to Kabul, according to the officials. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing military operations.
One senior US official said the administration saw the lawmakers’ visit as manifestly unhelpful and other officials said the visit was viewed as a distraction for troops and commanders at the airport who are waging a race against time to evacuate thousands of Americans, at-risk Afghans and others as quickly as possible.
Am Australian migration lawyer and former army officer has warned that Afghans with Australian visas could die if electronic documents continue to be knocked back – via AAP.
Glenn Kolomeitz, who served in Afghanistan, represents hundreds of Afghans entitled to protection in Australia. He says people on the ground are being turned away after perilous trips to Kabul’s airport because they don’t have hard copy visas.
“That is going to cost lives,” Mr Kolomeitz told ABC radio. “These people have made it to the gate, they’re doing everything they’re being asked to do and they’re being turned away at these chaotic gates.”
He said a breakdown in communications within the Department of Foreign Affairs was causing the problem.
“Getting turned away at that critical juncture is just heartbreaking,” the former officer said.
“One of our families got to one of the gates and they were fired at by Taliban.”
Mr Kolomeitz said the mission was entering a critical juncture and urged Defence chief Angus Campbell to order soldiers to let more people through.
“It’s frustrating. This is insane,” he said.
But he said hundreds of people had been evacuated including interpreters, security guards and others who helped Australian forces.
Australia has evacuated another 750 people from chaos in Afghanistan as the United States holds firm on its withdrawal deadline, AAP reports.
Four more flights departed Kabul airport overnight, taking the total number of people rescued as part of Australia’s efforts to 2400.
Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews said Australia would continue to lift people out of Kabul for as long as possible.
“The situation there is absolutely diabolical so we will do what we can for as long as we can,” she said.
Australians, Afghan visa holders and other people from allied nations were extracted in the latest round of flights. A third flight of evacuees has landed in Adelaide, taking the total brought from Dubai to Australia after being airlifted out of Kabul to 419.
Here is how two charity organisations have navigated the Taliban checkpoints to get to the airports, via AP:
An Afghan worker for an Italian charity tried twice to enter Kabul’s chaotic airport, to secure her promised seat on an evacuation flight. The crush was too much, and on her second attempt she feared she would die in the stampede. Getting the attention of Western troops, never mind being believed by them, was impossible.
Amina, who asked to use a pseudonym for her own protection, wanted to give up and stay behind, despite the threat posed by Taliban rule against anyone, especially women, who had worked with Western organisations.
Then, her charity, Nove Onlus, came up with a system: They created a WhatsApp group administered by an Afghan in a safe country to share instructions and information on Taliban checkpoints. Each member was geolocated and identified as they approached the airport.
All they needed was a password of sorts: Flash a red handkerchief tied around the wrist to the alerted Italian soldiers who waded into the crowd to pluck them out.
Such simple, one-off signals have helped save hundreds of Afghan workers who worked with Western organisations and are trying to escape the country with their families, but who haven’t had time to organise formal paperwork.
Another Italian NGO, Pangea, had its workers write a P on the palm of their hands in an agreed signal to Italian military.
‘When I saw the Italian army, I climbed on a pole and I raised my arm with that red scarf and also with Italian flag in my hand,’ Amina said. It worked.
She was among a group of 150 — Afghan women and their families — who landed in Rome on an evacuation flight early Tuesday. Pangea has brought to safety 30 activists and more than 200 of their family members, some of whom arrived in Italy on Monday.
And what happens to those who don’t leave?
The United States, its allies and the United Nations will have to decide how to deal with a looming humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan.
More than 18 million people – over half Afghanistan’s population – require aid, according to the US (via Reuters) and half of all Afghan children under the age of five already suffer from acute malnutrition amid the second drought in four years.
The World Health Organization says it has only enough supplies in Afghanistan to last a week after deliveries were blocked by restrictions at Kabul airport and it is concerned the upheaval will push up coronavirus infections.
The Taliban have assured the US it can pursue humanitarian work, but the world body will insist on women’s rights and access to all civilians.
Many thousands of Afghans who officials and advocacy groups say face potential retribution at the hands of the Taliban will not be able to leave by Biden’s deadline, Reuters reports.
The Association of Wartime Allies, a refugee resettlement group, estimates 250,000 Afghans, including interpreters and drivers and other workers who helped the US effort need to be evacuated, but only 62,000 have left since July.
The State Department says the aim is to help at-risk Afghans leave even after the troop withdrawal and that Washington will put pressure on the Taliban to ensure they are able to do so.
“What does not end when the military mission ends is our commitment to at-risk Afghans,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said on Monday.
“We will hold the Taliban to this; the rest of the world will as well: that individuals who seek to leave after the US military is gone will have an opportunity to do so.”
Updated
What happens next
So, now that Biden has dug his heels in about the 31 August deadline – that is next week Tuesday – what happens next?
US officials have said the withdrawals of troops must begin no later than Friday to be completed by 31 August – although there are reports that it has already started.
The troops at Kabul airport include Marines and paratroopers, and as they begin to leave, it will slow down the pace of evacuations for everyone.
Biden said earlier that so far 70,000 American citizens, NATO personnel and Afghans at risk have been evacuated from Kabul. He has said that the US will evacuate any citizen who wants to leave and officials have said they will evacuate as many at-risk Afghans as possible.
The Pentagon has also committed to evacuate the roughly 500 Afghan soldiers who have been helping to protect Kabul airport.
Updated
#Afghan women's right's activist Mahboub Seraj: "For every Afghan woman tonight, my sisters, I love you so much from the bottom of my heart.. Please don't give up hope. Don't be afraid. Things are going to change. There's nothing in this world is going to stay the same." https://t.co/D5vw5Nznv9
— Jane Ferguson (@JaneFerguson5) August 24, 2021
Quick almost sidebar: US vice-president Kamala Harris’ trip from Singapore to Vietnam was delayed by several hours on Tuesday by an investigation into two possible cases of the so-called Havana syndrome in Hanoi, administration officials said.
The investigation was in its early stages and officials deemed it safe for Harris to make her scheduled stop in Vietnam, which is part of her trip across Asia meant to reassure allies about American foreign policy amid the tumultuous evacuation of US forces from Afghanistan:
Reports emerge that US has started to take some of the 6,000 troops out of country
There are continuing reports that the United States has started to take some of the 6,000 troops it has in Afghanistan out of the country, as it accelerates evacuations of Americans and selected Afghans and gets closer to the day, 31 August, when it is due to pack up its presence entirely and exit the country.
In her briefing earlier, White House press secretary Jen Psaki would not confirm whether US military are starting to pull out. But an unnamed defence official told the Washington Post earlier that some troops not critical to the evacuation mission have been removed already.
The US had 2,500 military personnel left in the country until a couple of weeks ago then, as the Taliban quickly surged across the country taking control, the US sent additional troops until the number was meant to be 5,000.
Then that total was increased to 6,000 as Kabul fell to the Taliban on Sunday 15 August, the Afghan president fled, the Afghan military had crumbled and in about 11 days the takeover of the country by the extremist Islamist insurgency force that had been kept at bay for 20 years was complete.
CNN has also reported the troop withdrawals, citing two unnamed defence official:.
So far, the reduction does not affect the mission,’ one of the officials said, adding that the commander on the ground can decide what military personnel are in units that are no longer required. That decision can be based on a few factors, including the number of gates open at the airport, the number of people coming through and more.
‘If you can have a smaller mission set and still conduct the mission, then you can reduce your footprint and reduce your risk,’ the official said.
Biden sticks to 31 August deadline
Joe Biden has rejected the pleas of domestic and international allies to keep troops in Afghanistan for evacuation efforts beyond the end of the month, citing the growing threat of a terrorist attack.
In a move likely to fuel criticism that America is abandoning Afghan partners to the Taliban, the US president made clear that he is resolved to withdraw forces from Kabul airport by next Tuesday’s deadline.
“We are currently on a pace to finish by August the 31st,” Biden said at the White House on Tuesday. “The sooner we can finish, the better. Each day of operations brings added risk to our troops.”
The president acknowledged that completing the airlift – one of the biggest in history – by 31 August depends on the Taliban continuing to cooperate and allowing access to the airport with no disruption to operations.
Biden also noted that he has asked the Pentagon and the state department for “contingency plans to adjust the timetable should that become necessary”.
He continued: “I’m determined to ensure that we complete our mission, this mission. I’m also mindful of the increasing risks that I’ve been briefed on and the need to factor those risks in.”
These “acute and growing” risks include possible terrorist attacks by Isis-K, the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate that is also a sworn enemy of the Taliban, he said. “Every day we’re on the ground is another day we know that Isis-K is seeking to target the airport and attack both US forces and allied forces and innocent civilians”:
Summary
Hi, my name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be bringing you the latest developments from Afghanistan as they happen.
As always, if you’d like to get in touch or send news you think we may have missed, the best place to reach me is on Twitter @helenrsullivan.
Here is the key news from the last few hours:
- Joe Biden has rejected the pleas of domestic and international allies to keep troops in Afghanistan for evacuation efforts beyond 31 August, citing the growing threat of a terrorist attack.
- Reports are filtering in that the United States has started to take some of the 6,000 troops it has in Afghanistan out of the country, as it accelerates evacuations. The US president did not take any questions after his White House remarks, and did not mention this point. Moments earlier, the White House press secretary had declined to discuss it at the media briefing.
- The European Union has announced it’s freezing a billion euros in development aid it has set aside for Afghanistan over the next seven years, as Brussels sought to use its financial leverage to secure assurances over the Taliban’s treatment of women and minority groups.
- UK prime minister Boris Johnson has asked the Taliban to guarantee safe passage for British evacuations out of Afghanistan. Joe Biden later said that US evacuations depended on cooperation by the Taliban. The G7 nations held an emergency meeting earlier today.
