Signs point to Hazara Shias once again finding themselves a target of the Taliban. A recent Amnesty report found that Taliban militants were responsible for the murder of nine Hazaras in July, in the village of Mundarakht. Six of the men were shot and three were tortured to death, including one man who was strangled with his own scarf and had his arm muscles sliced off.
Attacks such as these have prompted a mass exodus of Hazara people over the border to Pakistan, and activists say that about 10,000 have arrived in the Pakistan city of Quetta, in Balochistan, where they are living in mosques and wedding halls, and renting rooms. Several Hazaras told the Guardian they had paid traffickers from £50 to £350 to get them across the border.
In contrast to the Turkish embassy which president Recep Erdogan just announced has returned to its building in the city after operating from the airport for two weeks, French diplomats have returned to Paris.
French Embassy U.S. (@franceintheus)
The team from the French Embassy in #Afghanistan returned to Paris today. Minister @JY_LeDrian pays tribute to their action and their courage. Our efforts continue
https://t.co/yj3xsZ4bm0
Two US congressmen criticized for a secret midweek visit to Kabul have defended their trip, claiming they were “uniquely situated” to undertake the fact-finding venture because they are military veterans.
Seth Moulton, a Democrat from Massachusetts, and the Michigan Republican Peter Meijer, both Iraq war veterans, flew out of Kabul on military aircraft, prompting a suggestion they took up resources and space desperately needed for evacuees.
Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, said the trip “was not a good idea” while officials at the Pentagon, caught by surprise, suggested the politicians had interfered with the US mission.
The daughter of a British shopkeeper who was killed in the terror attack on Kabul airport has begged the UK government to help bring her mother home.
Zohra Popal, 23, said her family feel “ignored” by the Foreign Office, which has not made contact since news of his death was confirmed. Her 60-year-old father, Musa, was among three British citizens, including a child, who were killed in the suicide attack.
Mohamed Niazi, 29, a taxi driver from Aldershot, Hampshire, was also among the victims, PA Media reports.
Popal said she fears for the life of her mother Saleema, 60, who remains in Afghanistan, and members of her family who she believe could be targeted by the Taliban.
I’ve never experienced pain like this. I feel like I’m falling to a thousand pieces. Most of us haven’t slept or eaten in days. I just want to hug my dad once more, and I want to kiss my mother.
My nephew, Hameed Popal, who is just 14 years old, is still missing after the bomb. And now I’m really worried about my mum and other siblings being targeted by the Taliban. I don’t think any of us could take another loss.
Her father was a British-Afghan who moved to the UK in 1999. He had been running the Madeena Supermarket in Hendon, north London, for more than 20 years. He and his wife flew to Kandahar in south Afghanistan in June to visit family, including their son and daughter who still live in the country.
Amid rising tensions after the Taliban takeover, they travelled to Kabul airport. He is said to have been waving his British passport at American soldiers at the gate when the blast happened.
His daughter added:
My mother, she had to crawl away, covered in blood and pieces of people. She saw everything. There was blood everywhere, she told us, and they were slipping in it when they were trying to get up.
It was so loud that some of them are still deaf and can’t hear each other. It was a living nightmare for them. Had we known anything like this would happen, we wouldn’t have let them go.
Her mother, who was watching from a distance, was uninjured, but their grandson Hameed, who was standing with his grandfather, remains missing.
My mum, she has no documents now because my dad was holding everything when he died. She and the rest of my family are still in danger, and we still might lose them. And yet we can’t get through to the Foreign Office. Their number is constantly engaged. We feel completely ignored. But we must get them to safety. I can’t live without them. We need the government’s help.
A Conservative MP who served in Afghanistan has called the situation in the country and branded the UK government’s handling of the withdrawal of troops as a “catastrophe”.
Johnny Mercer, the MP for Plymouth Moor View and a former British army officer, wrote in the Sunday Times that the exit from the country was “shameful”.
My rage is only quelled by tears, which inevitably give way to rage again. And so it goes on, day after day. The tears are for what has been lost: friends, fathers, bodies and minds. The rage is towards our leaders – that kind of generation-defining rage from which I hope defining change comes.”
He agreed that deploying troops to fight the Taliban would not have been the correct choice, but added: “But this self-inflicted hell? Other options were available. It’s unforgivable.”
Mercer, a former veterans minister, has been consistently critical of the government’s handling of the crisis, and claimed he had contacted the prime minister urging him to say something to the families of those who had died in the 20-year conflict, PA Media reports.
This must be a watershed. It is worse than ‘our Vietnam’. Welcome these Afghan refugees into your communities and your hearts. Even before this, they were the most war-torn, brutalised people on earth. I cannot believe what we have done to them.
A former Royal Marine has evacuated about 170 dogs and cats from an animal shelter in Afghanistan to the UK, a friend has told PA Media.
But Paul Farthing’s privately funded charter flight, which arrived at London’s Heathrow airport at about 7.30am today, was not carrying his 24 staff and dependants from the Nowzad shelter in Kabul.
Dominic Dyer, an animal welfare campaigner and supporter of Farthing, said the former marine was forced to travel back alone after being told it was not possible to find people to fill the plane’s seats, according to PA Media.
Dyer said the shelter staff were “still in their homes” with the charity in contact with them, adding that efforts would be made to try to get them out of Afghanistan were denied entry to the airport in Kabul on Thursday. The Taliban claimed they did not have the right paperwork.
They are [among] thousands of Afghans … that have a right to leave the country but actually have no safe passage out at the moment … Tragic and not the ending we wanted, but we fell victim to the chaos and the difficulties of getting through those gates.
Dyer claimed an appeal was put in to the British government “to see if we could fill seats with refugees within the airport”.
They told us there was no one they could find that could actually fill that aircraft. In fact, they had more air capacity than they had people, which probably tells you an awful lot about the final days of the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
He added that “all efforts were made to do what we could” but it was “not possible to find anyone”, with Farthing loading the animals with the help of service people and leaving “on his own”.
Farthing’s return to the UK comes after an audio recording of an expletive-laden message he reportedly left for a government aide was leaked. The recording, obtained by the Times, captured Farthing berating Peter Quentin, a special adviser to defence secretary, Ben Wallace, whom he accused of “blocking” efforts to arrange the evacuation flight after complaining it was distracting from a focus on evacuating the most vulnerable.
Dyer today rejected suggestions of “pets being put before people” as a “concoction of the Ministry of Defence” to “divert attention from a humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan”.
Pen Farthing, who was risking his life in Kabul to get his people and animals to Britain, was completely justified in holding Mr Quentin to account for his actions and I think it’s time Ben Wallace came clean on how this rogue adviser attempted to delay flight authorisation for Operation Arc into Kabul.
Hello and greetings to everyone reading, wherever you are in the world. Mattha Busby here to take you through the next few hours of developments in Afghanistan. Thanks to my colleague Alex Mistlin for covering the blog up until now. Please feel free to drop me a line on Twitter or message me via email (mattha.busby.freelance@guardian.co.uk) with any tips or thoughts on our coverage.
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