Chaos at Kabul airport as dozens clamour for space on military planes

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Thousands of desperate Afghans are gathering at Kabul airport in chaotic scenes after the Afghan capital fell to the Taliban who have announced a new ‘Islamic Emirate’.

US troops are guarding the airport but all non-military flights are grounded after gunfire was heard nearby and while American personnel take over air traffic control.

Video from Kabul showed panicked stampedes to the gates of the airport, while some passengers were forced to get off their commercial flights when departures were stopped.

Hundreds of passengers were filmed thronging the tarmac by Afghan businessman Shoaib Barak who said he was forced to get off his KamAir flight after boarding and heard gunfire.

The speed of the Taliban advance has taken almost everyone by surprise and Afghans who had booked commercial flights to escape the Taliban face being forced to remain in Afghanistan.

Westerners will be evacuated by their home nations on military flights but the Taliban has said that it will not allow Afghan citizens to leave.

Tens of thousands of interpreters and officials who helped the Western-backed Afghan government are desperate to escape the country for fear of reprisals by the Taliban.

On Sunday the US led more than 65 nations in urging the resurgent Taliban to let Afghans leave the country, warning of accountability for any abuses. 

‘The United States joins the international community in affirming that Afghans and international citizens who wish to depart must be allowed to do so,’ Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote on Twitter as the State Department released a statement signed by its close allies. ‘Those in positions of power and authority across Afghanistan bear responsibility – and accountability – for the protection of human life,’ the joint statement said. 

A NATO official said all commercial flights had been suspended and only military aircraft were allowed to operate. The alliance said it was helping to keep the airport running. 

Following a meeting of the Government’s Cobra emergencies committee, Boris Johnson his priority was to get UK nationals and Afghans who had worked with them out of the country ‘as fast as we can’.

‘We are going to get as many as we can out in the next few days,’ he said.

Around 4,000 British nationals and eligible Afghans are thought to be in the city and in need of evacuation.

When the Operation Pitting rescue operation, involving 600 troops, was announced at the end of last week, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said it could carry on through the rest of the month.

However the speed of the Taliban advance suggests that there may only be a short window of a few days to get people out.

In a sign of the desperate situation the British ambassador Sir Laurie Bristow was said to be helping the small team of diplomats still in the country to process the applications of those hoping to leave.

There was particular concern for the safety of Afghans who worked with British forces when they were in the country as interpreters and other roles amid fears of reprisals if they fall into the hands of the insurgents.

The Taliban insisted that they were seeking a peaceful takeover of power and were prepared to offer an amnesty to those who had worked with the Afghan government or with foreign governments.

However those assurances were being treated with deep scepticism by many British MPs amid reports of threats to those who remain and their families.

Heavily armed Taliban fighters fanned out across the capital, and several entered Kabul’s abandoned presidential palace. Suhail Shaheen, a Taliban spokesman and negotiator, said that the militants would hold talks in the coming days aimed at forming an ‘open, inclusive Islamic government.’

But he refused to guarantee that Afghans would be allowed to leave the country, telling the BBC: ‘We need all Afghans to stay’. He said Taliban forces would not attack NATO teams overseeing evacuations, but said aid organisations and foreign embassies should stay, saying ‘We won’t hurt them’.

Boris Johnson has vowed to get as many as possible of the Afghans who worked with the UK out of the country as the Taliban stood poised to take control of the capital Kabul.

With President Ashraf Ghani fled, and insurgent fighters surrounding the capital, the Prime Minister said the situation was ‘extremely difficult’.

After chairing a meeting of the Government’s Cobra contingencies committee he said the UK was determined to work with allies to prevent the country again becoming a ‘breeding ground for terror’.

Britain has sent 600 troops – including Paras from 16 Air Assault Brigade – to assist in the operation.

Meanwhile other Western countries were scrambling to get their people out, with helicopters shuttling from the US embassy to the airport while smoke was seen coming from the embassy rooftop as diplomats burned sensitive material.

Two sources familiar with the situation at the airport could not confirm the reports of firing there, amid an exodus of Americans, their local allies and other foreigners.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken had said earlier on Sunday that U.S. embassy staff were ferried by helicopter from the diplomatic compound to the airport, about 5 km (3 miles) away on the northeastern side of the city.

‘We’re working to make sure that our personnel are safe and secure. We’re relocating the men and women of our embassy to a location at the airport,’ Blinken told ABC news.

Asked if the evacuation was evocative of the U.S. departure from Vietnam in 1975, he said: ‘Let’s take a step back. This is manifestly not Saigon.’   

Sources told Reuters that most U.S. staff were expected to be evacuated from Kabul in the coming day or two.

A NATO official said all commercial flights had been suspended and only military aircraft were allowed to operate. The alliance said it was helping to keep the airport running.

France and Germany, members of NATO, said on Sunday they were moving their diplomats to the airport and sending military transport planes to Kabul to evacuate their citizens and their Afghan helpers.

A U.S. intelligence assessment earlier in the week had said Kabul could be encircled in 30 days and could fall to the Taliban within 90 days, but the insurgents captured most of Afghanistan’s major cities in less than a week and entered the capital on Sunday.

Some 4,200 people remained in the U.S. embassy until Thursday, when the Taliban’s rapid gains forced the Biden administration to begin flying in thousands of troops to help pull out many of the remaining diplomats.

The deployment included an additional 1,000 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division, who President Joe Biden said on Saturday would help evacuate citizens and ensure an ‘orderly and safe’ drawdown of U.S. military personnel.

On Sunday, U.S. officials said they were weighing whether more troops were needed. Another 3,000 are on standby in Kuwait.

Washington invested billions of dollars over four U.S. administrations in Afghan government forces, giving them advantages over the Taliban, but they were unable to defend the country in the face of the militants’ advance, Blinken told CNN.

The United States’ original mission in Afghanistan, launched to oust al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, had been fulfilled, Blinken said, saying Washington had prevented further attacks by militants harbored by the Taliban.

But Biden has faced rising domestic criticism after sticking to the plan to withdraw, which was agreed under his Republican predecessor Donald Trump. On Saturday, Biden defended his decision, saying an ‘endless American presence in the middle of another country’s civil conflict was not acceptable to me’.

Republican lawmaker Michael McCaul said a Taliban takeover would revive the threat to the United States.

‘We are going to go back to a pre-9/11 state. A breeding ground for terrorism,’ he told CNN on Sunday.

Biden met with his national security team on Sunday by secure videoconference from the presidential retreat at Camp David to hear updates on evacuations and the security situation, a White House official said.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat like Biden, said at a news conference that the safety of U.S. personnel and of Afghans who supported the Americans should be Washington’s top concern.

‘Job number one is for us to bring back, first, all American personnel … But second, all of the brave Afghans who helped our military, they have to be provided an exit to come to America,’ Schumer said.