U.S. helicopters have ferried 96 Afghans to the Kabul airport for evacuation, signaling that U.S. military flights are taking place beyond the airport perimeters in the Afghan capital.
MOSCOW — Uzbekistan says it has sent 150 Afghan refugees who fled from the Taliban takeover back to Afghanistan, in accord with their own wishes.
The ministry noted that Uzbekistan was cooperating with the countries working to evacuate their citizens from Afghanistan, including the United States, Russia, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and others. It said the country has allowed them to use its airspace and airports and provided the necessary technical and logistical support to help evacuate a total of 1,982 people.
Biden made the promise on Friday as he provided an update on the tense situation in Afghanistan. The president has been under mounting pressure over his decisions in Afghanistan, which led to the Taliban completely taking over the country on Sunday. The backlog, in turn, caused the military to close gates at the airport perimeter, where many people are trying to get on flights. The State Department was working on arranging additional places to take the evacuees.
Putin said that “we know the country well and became convinced that it’s counterproductive to try to enforce forms of government and social life that are alien to it.” Andrew Patterson, WFP’s deputy country director, told The Associated Press on Friday that after Faizabad, a provincial capital in the north, fell to the Taliban last week, the agency’s field office succeeded in negotiating access with the local Taliban command, and “we had truck on the road the next day.”
“Any future Afghan government must adhere to Afghanistan’s international obligations …. And ensure that Afghanistan never again serves as a safe haven for terrorists,” a statement from the alliance said.BERLIN — Germany’s foreign minister says the United States will use its Ramstein Air Base in western Germany as a temporary transit point to transport people from Afghanistan seeking protection to the United States.
He also noted that health rules are not being forgotten, posting photos of Afghans surrounded by doctors and a man getting a COVID-19 test, obligatory for all arrivals. Gen. Giorgio Battisti, in an interview on Sky TG24 TV Friday, also said the U.S. air base at Bagram should have been left operating during withdrawal to help evacuate civilians.
Noting that Bagram is some 40 kilometers from Kabul, he suggested it could have served as a “second escape valve” for thousands of citizens now clamoring to get into the one operational airport at Kabul or for those who can’t make it through Taliban checkpoints along the way.LONDON — Britain’s embattled foreign minister has defended his decision not to call while on vacation his Afghan counterpart about the evacuation of translators who had helped British forces.
Mateusz Morawiecki said Friday on Facebook that following his talks with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, Poland will be evacuating from Kabul 300 Afghans who “in recent years cooperated with” NATO. He did not elaborate what that cooperation entailed.Morawiecki said that Poland is taking seriously its obligations within the alliance and that the evacuation was “not the last word” from Poland in the NATO response to the crisis in Afghanistan. Poland has been a NATO member since 1999.
She said her Foreign Ministry had staff at the Kabul airport with “resources needed for further evacuation work,” and added that “transport capacity is available.”MADRID — Spain’s defense minister says the country’s military transport planes are leaving Kabul partly empty because chaos at the city’s airport is preventing Afghans from evacuating.
She said the U.S. has given assurances that its forces won’t leave the airport until the last person awaiting evacuation is out.WARSAW, Poland – A Polish diplomat says the most difficult thing in evacuating Afghans is finding and extracting them from pressing crowds at the Kabul airport. Poland has so far evacuated a few hundred people in three flights.
“The transport logistics goes very smoothly but the greatest challenge now is how to find these people. Even if we know where they are, and sometimes our consuls can see them 40-50 meters away, they have no possibility of getting closer,” Przydacz said. “We have evacuated approximately 9,000 people since August 14. Since the end of July, we have evacuated approximately 14,000 people,” it said.
Meanwhile, Foreign Ministry spokesman Christofer Burger said Germany is providing 100 million euros in immediate funding for humanitarian aid inside Afghanistan and neighboring countries. Until now the Taliban have said nothing of their plans to replace the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces, or what a replacement would look like.VATICAN CITY — The Vatican’s newspaper is calling on the international community to welcome Afghan civilians fleeing the Taliban, expressing incredulousness “that before deciding to abandon the country no one thought through such a foreseeable scenario or did anything to avoid it.
The Islamic-fundamentalist Taliban issued guidance to imams around Afghanistan on Thursday, saying they should use the weekly sermons and prayers to appeal for unity, urge people not to flee the country, and to counter “negative propaganda” about them. An imam in eastern Kabul, Bashir Wardak, said that Afghans should unite to stop the decadeslong bloodshed. “Allah has ordered us to peace and brotherhood so we must get united,” he said.
Indonesia’s foreign minister Retno Marsudi said in a tweet that the Friday flight that would land later in the day also carried five Filipinos and two Afghans, including the spouse of an Indonesian national and a local staff member of the Indonesian Embassy. Fewer stores have opened, and few cars could be seen on the streets. Taliban checkpoints have sprung up around the city, searching cars and checking documents. Some Taliban are patrolling in cars as well.MADRID — Top European Union officials will visit a Spanish military airport being used as a hub to receive Afghans flown out of Kabul before they are distributed to other countries in the bloc.
Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry in a tweet said Pakistan International Airlines will send its two planes to the Afghan capital on Friday to evacuate 350 passengers. For this purpose, Pakistan is issuing visas upon arrival to all diplomats, foreigners and journalists who want to leave Kabul over security concerns.The Defense Ministry on Friday said that the German military has carried out 11 evacuation flights so far, with more planned.
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