Chaotic scenes at Kabul airport as Afghans flee Taliban

Thousands of Afghans gathered on the tarmac at Kabul International Airport within hours of the Taliban breaking through in the capital.

Chaotic scenes at Hamid Karzai International Airport captured on Monday by news crews and cellphones reflect terror and a desperate rush to flee the country, which is now overrun by Taliban militants as the full departure of forces approaches American.

A video shared on Twitter appears to show large crowds of people, including children, walking towards passenger planes on the tarmac. There does not appear to be any security or law enforcement in the area.

“No one can really leave,” Kamal Alam, a non-resident senior researcher at the Atlantic Council and senior advisor to the Massoud Foundation, told CNBC in a telephone interview. As of this writing, Alam was stranded in Afghanistan, his flight out of the country canceled. “If you don’t have a visa or passport, which the majority of Afghans don’t have, you don’t go.”

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country on Sunday evening, apparently for Tajikistan, as the Taliban entered the presidential palace and declared the war “over.” Ghani said he fled to avoid “a flood of blood.”

“The Taliban have won with the judgment of their swords and guns, and are now responsible for the honor, property and self-preservation of their compatriots,” Ghani said.

The rapid departure of senior Afghan officials – along with large sums of money – in recent days is what initially sparked the rush to leave and a surge of anger against the Afghan government, Alam said. He was at Hamid Karzai International Airport a few days ago.

“All VIPs were allowed to take off first, all their money was flown first… whether on commercial airlines or private jets from [an] unnamed Gulf country, ”he said, without specifying the country due to the sensitive nature of the issue.

“So people were seeing that, there was a lot of resentment and anger on the part of airport security, and that’s really where the rot started. That’s when the people started saying this government and this president are not worth defending, let’s get out of here. “

Another video posted on social media shows people struggling to board a plane.

Panic sets in as about 5,000 American troops return to the country to evacuate Western diplomats. The forces were charged, according to the State Department, with a “very targeted mission” to evacuate the personnel of the embassy in Kabul. On Sunday evening, the United States Embassy was transferred to the airport.

Before Sunday, Kabul was the last major city spared by militants.

A Taliban spokesman said the fighters intended to negotiate a “peaceful surrender” of the city.

Since President Joe Biden’s decision in April to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan before September 11, the Taliban have made amazing strides on the battlefield with the entire nation of 38 million people now under their control. .

The rapid disintegration of the Afghan security forces and the country’s government shocked the world and left many wondering how a collapse could come about so quickly after two decades of American nation-building and formation efforts.