When Kabul fell to the Taliban, less than 24 hours after President Ashraf Ghani visited the edge of the capital to inspect its defences, it was inevitable that people would try to flee
WHEN THE evacuation of Saigon began in March 1975, fixed-wing flights were quickly abandoned. Keeping runways open under artillery fire was too difficult. Instead, the American army used helicopters to bring people from all over the South Vietnamese capital to aircraft-carriers in the South China Sea. In landlocked Kabul, the American government does not have that option as it tries to evacuate its own citizens and Afghans who have worked for the United States.
The chaos was predictable. For weeks, flights out of Kabul had been packed with foreigners and those Afghans lucky enough to have passports, visas and money. When the city, less than 24 hours after President Ashraf Ghani visited the edge of the capital to inspect its defences, it was inevitable that people would try to flee. The airport is now the only part of Kabul not held by the militants.
Over the coming weeks, the evacuation could lift away tens of thousands of people. The Pentagon has said that at least 22,000 Afghans who qualify for “special immigrant visas” will be airlifted out, at a rate of 5,000 per day. Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, told her Christian Democratic Union party that 10,000 will be admitted. Britain has said 2,700, including 900 Britons and 1,600 Afghans, will be taken to the United Kingdom. How exactly this will work is unclear.
The last-minute panic to rescue interpreters and others who have worked for foreign armies could have been avoided. America’s SIV programme has been in existence since 2009. Yet it has been taking years to issue visas to former workers. By June 16,000 Afghan workers and their families had been resettled under the programme, but 18,000 applications were still waiting to be processed. In Britain the government by June had resettled only around 1,300 interpreters and their families.
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