Dozens of westerners board commercial flight from Kabul

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) – Dozens of foreigners, including Americans, boarded a commercial flight to Kabul airport on Thursday in the first large-scale evacuation since the withdrawal of U.S. forces and the NATO from Afghanistan at the end of last month.

The departure of some 200 Westerners on a Qatar Airways flight to Doha marked a significant breakthrough in the chaotic coordination between the United States and the new Afghan Taliban leadership.

The Taliban have promised to let foreigners and Afghans leave with valid travel documents, but a multi-day standoff over charter planes at another airport has cast doubt on the Taliban’s assurances.

Earlier today, as the group prepared to embark, Qatar’s special envoy Mutlaq bin Majed al-Qahtani said it was a “historic day”.

“Call it what you want, a charter flight or a commercial flight, everyone has tickets and boarding passes,” al-Qahtani said from the tarmac at Kabul airport, adding that another flight commercial would take off on Friday. “I hope life will return to normal in Afghanistan.”

A senior US official, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media, provided the number of Westerners expected on board and said two very senior Taliban officials helped facilitate the departure. The 200 include Americans, green card holders and other nationalities, the official said.

The flight represents the first to depart from Kabul airport since US forces left the country in late August, their departure accompanied by a frenzied airlift of tens of thousands of foreign and Afghan citizens fleeing the Taliban. Scenes of chaos, including Afghans falling to their deaths after clinging to a taking off military plane and a suicide bombing that killed 169 Afghans and 13 US servicemen, came to define the difficult end of the two-decade war of the United States. United States.

A foreign diplomat, also speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media, said another 200 foreigners, including Americans, would leave in the coming days.

It is still unclear what the resumption of international flights over the next few days will mean for the tens of thousands of Afghans desperate to flee the new Afghan Taliban leadership for fear of what their rule will hold.

Hundreds of other Afghans at risk after the Taliban takeover due to their past work with the Americans gathered for more than a week in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, waiting permission to embark on private chartered evacuation flights out of the country.

Although the Taliban assured the world that they would let passengers with valid travel documents leave the country, many of those stranded at the northern airport did not have such papers.

Following the evacuation by the United States of more than 100,000 people from the country following the troop withdrawal, extensive damage to the Kabul airport has raised questions as to when the plaque Transportation hub could resume for scheduled commercial flights. Technical experts from Qatar and Turkey worked on the resumption of operations.

Al-Qahtani told reporters that the airport’s radar was now active and covered about 112 kilometers after US forces left it unusable. Authorities were coordinating with Pakistan as they attempted to secure regional control of the airspace, he added.