Britain is racing to evacuate nearly 2,700 British and Afghan citizens from Afghanistan amid chaotic scenes at Kabul airport.
Flights out of Kabul have been suspended as thousands of desperate Afghans rushed on to the runaway in a panic to escape the Taliban-controlled capital.
The UK now has less than a fortnight to evacuate 900 British passport-holders who are still in Afghanistan along with 1,600 interpreters and other locally employed staff.
Of the interpreters, 800 have been given visas and another 800 are awaiting the outcome of security checks. A further 1,800 Afghan citizens are eligible for the relocation scheme but have not registered.
Hundreds of Afghan special forces will also be airlifted out of Kabul and brought to safety in Britain because their lives are now at risk.
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Defence sources said the airport had temporarily suspended all flights but it was hoped it would be up and running by tomorrow as US Marines fly in to guard it. A further 250 British paratroopers are also flying in to boost the numbers of those on the ground and help with processing of those hoping to come to the UK.
A defence source said: “The threat at the airport is not the Taliban, it is crowd control. People want to get out, that’s a dangerous situation in itself.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sending-back-troops-wont-solve-afghan-chaos-boris-johnson-insists-8hpgrtnpq “It is not just interpreters, we want to get the Afghan special forces out. They spent years fighting the Taliban. We are getting people out who were in a front-facing role and are now at risk.”
Once the airport is up and running the RAF can move 1,000 people a day.
A government source said that the British citizens and Afghan support staff have to be evacuated by the end of the month, when US troops enabling flights in and out of Kabul are scheduled to leave. US troops are in control of the airport and the airspace around it.
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Video from this morning showed Afghans running alongside a US C-17 and trying to jump into the wheel cavities as mass military evacuations of foreign citizens took priority over the fate of fleeing civilians. Another video appeared to show stowaways falling from underneath the plane as it took off.
Commercial flights had been halted last night as the Americans took charge of air traffic control, handing priority to military flights and effectively trapping thousands of Afghans with tickets to leave the country.
The US military then suspended all flights from the airport today as troops attempted to remove Afghans who had entered the airfield. The suspension was “while we make sure the airfield is secure”, an official told CNN.
At least seven people were killed as crowds stormed the airport, seeking routes out and the protection of Nato military forces that have set up camp there. The dead included those who fell from a departing American military transport jet, senior officials said.
“It was a night I’ll never forget,” Ahmad, 30, told The Times. “There was a rumour that the Taliban captured the airport. People panicked, picked up their luggage and ran to get on the plane.”
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Videos posted on social media showed people trying to clamber on to commercial aircraft stranded at the terminal, away from the protected military area commandeered for the evacuation. US soldiers fired warning shots to keep the crowds away before sending an Apache helicopter to buzz the runway and keep people back.
“The crowd was out of control,” an official told Reuters. “The firing was only done to defuse the chaos.”
Ahmad said the shots only served to fuel the pain. “People didn’t know where to go, they were desperately climbing into planes,” he said. “And then I saw a nine-year-old girl crushed to death.”
The chaos came hours after the Taliban took control of the presidential palace in Kabul as President Ghani fled the country. Senior Taliban leaders told The Times they would accept nothing less than “absolute power”, dismissing calls to accept a transitional government to oversee a peaceful transfer of control. “We did not fight to share power with anyone,” one said.
The United Nations security council is to hold an emergency session today on the crisis. Boris Johnson has urged allies not to recognise the Taliban takeover, but China indicated that it was ready to do so. “The situation in Afghanistan has changed significantly,” the Chinese foreign ministry said. “We respect the will and the choice of the Afghanistan people.”
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Imran Khan, Pakistan’s prime minister, long criticised for his tolerance of the Taliban, proclaimed that “they have broken the chains of mental slavery in Afghanistan”. The ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence services, has supported the Taliban for three decades despite its partnership with the United States.
Donald Trump’s former national security adviser denied that the blame for the crisis could be placed solely on the former president, who signed a withdrawal deal with the Taliban in February last year.
Asked by Times Radio if the Trump administration was responsible, the retired lieutenant general HR McMaster, who served under Trump from 2017 to 2018, said: “Well, I think there’s a lot of blame to go around.”
He added: “It should come as no surprise, right? If you have three American presidents in a row who are saying it’s not worth it.”
British military planes took 300 people yesterday. Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, appeared to fight back tears as he told LBC radio of his concern for those Afghans at risk of retaliation for their work with the British.
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“Some people won’t get back and we will have to do our best in third countries to process them,” he said. He admitted it was “not on the cards” for troops to return to Afghanistan.
Johnson conceded that the Taliban would be Afghanistan’s next rulers but said they must be persuaded not to allow the country to become once again “a breeding ground for terrorists”.
Taliban fighters were ordered into Kabul city centre last night after it was confirmed that Ghani had fled abroad with his two top security officials. A Taliban spokesman said the group was in control of all 11 Kabul districts.
Shortly afterwards Ross Wilson, the US ambassador, arrived by Chinook helicopter at the airport carrying the American flag that had been on top of the US embassy as workers burnt secret documents inside the compound.
Sir Laurie Bristow, the British ambassador, earlier abandoned his official premises, moving to the airport to oversee visa appeals from Afghans at risk of reprisals because of their links with Britain.
Northern Ireland is to consider offering sanctuary to Afghan refugees, according to Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the Democratic Unionist leader. “I think we have a duty to those people to see if we can provide them with sanctuary,” he said.
Suhail Shaheen, a Taliban spokesman, vowed there would be “no revenge” against those who worked with foreign forces and the Ghani government. However, the reality unfolding already under Taliban control is one of reprisal killings and the enslavement of women. The spokesman refused to guarantee that Afghans would be allowed to flee. “Our policy is that no one should leave the country,” he told the BBC. “We need all Afghans to stay.”
He said the Taliban were building an “open, inclusive Islamic government”, pledged that the fighters would not attack Nato forces and called on foreign embassies and aid organisations to stay.
The decision to leave Afghanistan to its fate after 20 years of western intervention prompted scathing criticism. Tom Tugendhat MP, Conservative chairman of the Commons foreign affairs committee, called the precipitous withdrawal of Nato forces Britain’s “biggest single foreign policy disaster since Suez”.
Hamid Karzai, the former president of Afghanistan, announced that he was forming a peace council to oversee a bloodless handover of power alongside Abdullah Abdullah, the Ghani government’s chief negotiator with the Taliban. They will be joined by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a notorious Islamist warlord who made peace with the Ghani government five years ago. He was designated a terrorist by the US in 2003.
Abdullah, who has remained in Kabul, denounced Ghani’s flight into exile, which came a day after the president had promised to stand and fight. “God will make him accountable and [the] people of Afghanistan will judge,” Abdullah said.
In his first comments after fleeing, Ghani said he had been confronted with a “hard choice, to face the armed Taliban who wanted to enter the palace or leave my dear country”. In a Facebook message, he said: “In order to avoid a flood of bloodshed, I thought it was best to get out.”
In Kabul, a sense of disbelief had descended with the darkness overnight after a day punctuated by fear and rumour. Reports of looting served as a premise for the Taliban to advance into the city centre, after holding their forces at the outskirts since Sunday morning.
Their arrival on the fringes of the capital after taking other cities and districts provoked panic as people tried to reach the airport or escape by road. Cash machines were emptied of notes.
The UN warned of a looming refugee crisis, though it was unclear what options remained for Afghans to leave. The Taliban’s capture of the main border crossing to Pakistan left Kabul’s civilian airport the only route out of the country not under Taliban control.
