As Kabul fell to Taliban throes, thousands of foreigners and Afghans rummaged ways to flee to safety while US military helicopters whisked American diplomats to Kabul’s airport. Sporadic gunfire at Kabul international airport fanned fear of Taliban rule leading to a fracas during evacuation. The US took control of the air traffic to safeguard a massive air-lift. NATO allies had pulled out their troops ahead of Biden administration’s intended 31 August withdrawal.
Some complained the U.S. was failing to move fast enough to bring to safety Afghans at risk of reprisal from the Taliban for past work with the Americans and other NATO forces. Educated Afghan women have some of the most to lose under the fundamentalist Taliban, whose past government, overthrown by the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, sought to largely confine women to the home.
An Italian journalist, Francesca Mannocchi, posted a video of an Italian helicopter carrying her to the airport, an armed soldier standing guard at a window. Mannochi described watching columns of smoke rising from Kabul as she flew. Some were from fires that workers at the U.S. Embassy and others were using to keep sensitive material from falling in Taliban hands.
Hundreds or more Afghans crowded in a part of the airport away from many of the evacuating Westerners. Some of them, including a man with a broken leg sitting on the ground, lined up for what was expected to be a last flight out by the country’s Ariana Airlines. U.S. officials reported gunfire near the airport Sunday evening and urged civilians to stop coming. U.S. military officials later announced closing the airport to commercial flights, shutting one of the last avenues of escape for ordinary Afghans.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, whose government had been one of many expressing surprise at the speed of the U.S. withdrawal, told reporters in Berlin on Sunday that it was “difficult to endure” watching how quickly the Taliban took control of Afghanistan and how little government troops were able to do to stop them.
