Here is Peter Beaumont’s full report on the news Poland is to end its airlift evacuations from Afghanistan:
About 19,000 people were evacuated from Kabul on Tuesday, according to a Reuters report. The figure lifts the total number airlifted out of Afghanistan since 14 August to 82,300, the White House said on Wednesday.
In the past 24 hours, 42 US military flights and 48 coalition flights helped evacuate people from the Afghan capital amid the Taliban takeover, it said.
A bit more on Poland’s decision to halt airlifts from AP:
A number of troops will remain briefly to carry out some procedures that include closing the base, Marcin Przydacz, a Polish deputy foreign minister, said.
Poland has used over a dozen planes to bring hundreds of evacuees to Warsaw. Some later travelled on to other countries.
The chaos at the airport has transfixed the world after the Taliban’s blitz across Afghanistan saw it seize control of a nation that received hundreds of billions of dollars in reconstruction aid and security support since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that followed the 11 September terror attacks.
Afghans poured onto the tarmac last week, and some clung to a U.S. military transport plane as it took off, later plunging to their deaths. At least seven people died that day, and another seven died Sunday in a panicked stampede. An Afghan security force member was killed Monday in a gunfight under unclear circumstances.
Thousands have thronged the airport in the days since, with the Taliban firing into the air in an attempt to control the crowds.
European nations, including American allies Germany and the United Kingdom, had pressed for a longer window to continue evacuations past the deadline next week. CIA director William Burns even travelled to Kabul on Monday to meet the Taliban’s top political leader. However, Biden has stuck to the deadline, even after an emergency online summit of the Group of Seven nations.
Patricia Lewis, director of the international security program at the Chatham House international affairs think-tank, said the practical deadline for the evacuations to stop was “the next couple of days.”
You can’t just say, ‘OK, midnight, we’ll stop now, we’ll just pack up gently’. There’s a huge amount of stuff that has to be done, including getting all the people out who are doing the job and all the equipment, all of the stuff that they need to get out, that they don’t want the Taliban to get hold of.
All of the allies are highly dependent on the U.S. for military cover, particularly air cover. They can’t put their own people at risk, so it really depends on when the US starts packing up.
Poland has halted its airlift evacuations from Kabul’s international airport over safety concerns, the government said, as Western nations prepare to end operations helping those fleeing the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan ahead of America’s looming withdrawal.
Marcin Przydacz, a Polish deputy foreign minister, said that a group taken from Kabul and now in Uzbekistan was the last evacuated by Poland. Another plane is on its way to Warsaw. He said his nation made its decision after consulting with the US and British officials.
After a long analysis of reports on the security situation we cannot risk the lives of our diplomats and of our soldiers any longer.
A total of 662 evacuees from Afghanistan landed at the American base in Sicily, the US Department of State said in a note.
The initial group of evacuees were flown out from Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul to al-Udeid Air Base, Qatar, and arrived at the Naval Air Station (NAS) in Sigonella, as part of Operation Allies Refuge, the U.S. Department of State’s mission for the safe evacuation of U.S. citizens, Special Immigration Visa applicants and other at-risk Afghans as quickly and safely as possible.
Capt. Kevin Pickard, commanding officer of NAS Sigonella, said:
To see how this base is able to pull in support, all across Italy, is truly impressive.
The people we’re helping are going to be joining our American family. We’re proud to welcome them with open arms.
Sigonella, known as the “Hub of the Med”, which is also a Nato and Italian air base, is serving as a transit location for evacuees before their onward movement to other locations.
“The base designated two barracks buildings as temporary lodging on base for evacuees, along with Halal dining, religious and recreation areas,’’ reads the statement.
The Navy release did not yet clarify for how long the refugees will remain in the base or which is their final destination.
Rear Adm. Scott Gray, Commander, Navy Region Europe, Africa, Central, said:
This is a short-notice mission that is a national priority for NAS Sigonella and team.
They have moved heaven and earth to be ready to take care of folks leaving a desperate situation and are treating them with dignity and respect. They didn’t just complete the mission. They went above and beyond to help the Afghan people to the best of their abilities and with hearts full of empathy.
The leader of a resistance movement to the Taliban has vowed to never surrender but is open to negotiations with the new rulers of Afghanistan, according to an interview published by Paris Match today.
Ahmad Massoud, the son of legendary Afghan rebel commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, has retreated to his native Panjshir valley north of Kabul along with former vice-president Amrullah Saleh.
“I would prefer to die than to surrender,” Massoud told French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy in his first interview since the Taliban took over Kabul. “I’m the son of Ahmad Chah Massoud. Surrender is not a word in my vocabulary.”
Massoud claimed that “thousands” of men were joining his National Resistance Front in Panjshir valley, which was never captured by invading Soviet forces in 1979 or the Taliban during their first period in power from 1996-2001.
He renewed his appeal for support from foreign leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron, and expressed bitterness at being refused weapons shortly before the fall of Kabul earlier this month.
Massoud said, according to a transcript of the interview published in French:
I cannot forget the historic mistake made by those I was asking for weapons just eight days ago in Kabul.
They refused. And these weapons – artillery, helicopters, American-made tanks – are today in the hands of the Taliban.
Massoud added that he was open to talking to the Taliban and he laid out the outlines of a possible agreement.
We can talk. In all wars, there are talks. And my father always spoke with his enemies,” he said.
Let’s imagine that the Taliban agreed to respect the rights of women, of minorities, democracy, the principles of an open society. Why not try to explain that these principals would benefit all Afghans, including them?
Massoud’s father, a francophile with close links to Paris and the West, was nicknamed the “Lion of Panjshir” for his role in fighting against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s and the Taliban regime in the 1990s.
He was assassinated by Al-Qaeda two days before the 11 September 2001 attacks.
Germany will keep evacuating people from Afghanistan as long as it is responsible to do so, Chancellor Angela Merkel told conservative lawmakers, adding, however, that this is only possible with the United States, two sources said.
Thousands of people are still desperate to flee the country after Kabul fell to the Taliban last week and before a 31 August deadline.
Germany’s Bundeswehr has so far flown more than 4,500 people out of Afghanistan, tweeted the foreign ministry. Around 3,700 of them are Afghan nationals, with women and girls making up about half the number.
Many journalists and human rights activists are among those who have been flown out, it said.
Broadcaster ARD had earlier reported that German evacuations may stop as soon as Wednesday.
“There will be no special path for Germany. All steps are being closely agreed with partners,” one source quoted Merkel as saying.
Merkel said in Tuesday there are intensive discussions on whether a civilian-operated airport in Kabul could be used after that deadline.
In the first week following the Taliban conquest of Kabul, Covid-19 vaccinations in Afghanistan have dropped by 80%, the UN agency UNICEF said, warning that half of the few doses delivered to the country so far are close to expiry.
The Taliban seized control of the Afghan capital on 15 August, having already captured most of the country earlier in the month after the United States decided to withdraw military forces after 20 years of war.
Since the Taliban takeover “there’s been an 80% drop in people reached with COVID-19 vaccines,” a spokesperson for UNICEF told Reuters.
In the week starting on 15 August, 30,500 people had been vaccinated in 23 of the 34 provinces of the country, whereas the previous week 134,600 people were inoculated in 30 provinces, according to figures provided by UNICEF, which coordinates the rollout of Covid-19 shots distributed across the world by the World Health Organization (WHO) vaccine programme Covax.
Noting the UN agency has been calling on all Afghan healthcare workers, including women, to return to work, the UNICEF spokesperson said:
The drop is understandable, as in situations of chaos, conflict and emergency, people will prioritize their safety and security first.
The spokesperson declined to comment about whether the drop in inoculations was also the result of Taliban’s possible vaccine scepticism, but warned about risks caused by a protracted slowdown in the vaccination campaign.
Nearly 2 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine delivered to Afghanistan, which is about half of the total so far, expire in November, the UNICEF spokesperson said.
WHO data show that only 1.2 million doses had been administered as of Aug. 20 in Afghanistan, which has a population of 40 million.
Gavi, which co-leads Covax with the WHO, said the programme has so far delivered over 4 million doses to Afghanistan.
Declining to comment on whether vaccinations had been hampered by the Taliban, a Gavi spokesperson told Reuters:
Our priority today is to work with UNICEF and WHO country offices (..) to ensure our ability to continue the country’s COVID-19 vaccination programme.
Britain’s failure to persuade the US to extend the evacuation from Afghanistan into September does not mean the “special relationship” with Washington is over, the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, has said.
He made the comment in an interview following the virtual G7 summit, which resulted in President Biden rejecting calls from the UK and other European partners for the evacuation mission from Afghanistan to be extended beyond 31 August.
Afghanistan’s only boarding school for girls has temporarily relocated to Rwanda, its co-founder has said, just days after a video of her burning class records to avoid Taliban recriminations was widely shared on social media.
Shabana Basij-Rasikh, who escaped Kabul with 250 students and staff, urged the world to “not avert your eyes” from the millions of girls left behind.
“See those girls, and in doing so you will hold those holding power over them to account,” said Basij-Rasikh in a tweet, as she vowed to return to Afghanistan.
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