Women threw children over barbed wire at Kabul airport as soldiers fired stun grenades and fired shots throughout the night to disperse desperate crowds. Afghanistan further plunged into chaos.
At least 12 people have died at the airport since Sunday Taliban The one who took the responsibility of security said that he was either shot or crushed while urging the crowd to disperse. A spokesman said today, ‘We don’t want to hurt anyone.
Meanwhile the British Defense Secretary ben wallace insisted that Westerners were being allowed in through the Taliban’s steel ring around the airport, after reports on Wednesday that British and German passport holders were unable to pass through and planes were departing half-empty.
“We have not sent a single empty plane home,” he said. We will use every possible space in our planes.
Mr Wallace also urged people not to give their children to British soldiers inside airport premises, saying unaccompanied children would not be landed on flights out of the country.
Elsewhere, Joe Biden continued to defend his decision to withdraw – insisting that chaos was inevitable while dismissing footage of the deaths of people from US planes as being ‘four or five days ago’.
Boris Johnson was also lambasted over the British government’s response to the crisis in a Commons debate, while Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab is facing calls to resign, when he emerged he would send Afghan translators out of the country. Failed to make an important phone call about evacuation. a junior minister.
Labor MP Tom Tugendhat summed up his sense of despair when he said: ‘That’s what defeat looks like.’
Children were thrown over barbed wire toward soldiers at Kabul airport to drive them out of the country as the west’s humiliating exit from Afghanistan continued
Soldiers opened fire and stun grenades throughout the night at the entrance to the northern military side of the airport to prevent thousands of crowds from entering the gates.
Thousands of Afghans have gathered at the north and south entrances of Kabul airport in hopes of securing seats on Western evacuation flights out of the country.
A British soldier escorts an Afghan girl away from the crowd at the gate, as Defense Secretary Ben Wallace urged people today not to send their children to soldiers because they won’t get seats on flights
As for the airlift of Western citizens and Afghans working for foreign governments, President Biden said the US military would remain until the evacuation of Americans ended, even if it meant a complete withdrawal. Stay ahead of the August deadline.
A Western security source in Kabul said a total of at least 8,000 people had been evacuated since Sunday.
A day earlier, armed members of the Taliban prevented people from entering the airport premises.
‘It’s an absolute disaster. The Taliban were firing in the air, pushing people, thrashing them with AK-47s,’ said a man who was trying to leave on Wednesday.
A Taliban official said commanders and soldiers fired in the air to disperse the crowd outside Kabul airport, but told Reuters: ‘We have no intention of injuring anyone.’
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said domestic air carriers and civilian pilots would only be allowed to fly into Kabul to conduct evacuation or relief flights with prior US Defense Department approval.
Biden, who is facing criticism over America’s withdrawal, said anarchy was inevitable. Asked in an interview with ABC News if the US troop exit could have been handled better, Biden said: ‘No. … The idea that there is, somehow, a way out without chaos, I don’t know how.’
A new government to replace President Ashraf Ghani in exile in the UAE could take the form of a ruling council with Taliban supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada, a senior member of the group said.
Afghanistan will not be a democracy. “This is Sharia law and that is it,” Wahidullah Hashimi, a senior Taliban official, told Reuters.
Ghani, who has been sharply criticized by former ministers for leaving Afghanistan, said after Taliban forces entered Kabul on Sunday that he had followed the advice of government officials. He denied reports that he had taken a large sum of money with him.
In a video posted on Facebook, Ghani said, “If I had stopped, I would have been watching the bloodshed in Kabul.
Meanwhile, the Taliban celebrated Afghanistan’s Independence Day on Thursday by declaring that it had defeated the “arrogant of the world’s power” in the United States, but could potentially face armed opposition from running the country’s frozen government. The challenges started to emerge.
From running out of cash from ATMs to worrying about food in this country of 38 million people dependent on imports, the Taliban face all the challenges of civilian government, which they removed without the level of international aid.
Meanwhile, opposition figures fleeing Afghanistan’s Panjshir Valley now speak of launching an armed resistance under the banner of the Northern Coalition, which aligned with the US during the 2001 invasion.
The Taliban have so far presented no plans for the government they plan to lead, other than to say that it will be guided by Sharia, or Islamic, law. But the pressure is increasing.
The head of the World Food Program in Afghanistan, Mary Ellen McGarty, warned: ‘We are facing a humanitarian crisis of incredible proportions before our eyes.
Thursday marked Afghanistan’s Independence Day, commemorating the 1919 treaty that ended British rule in the Central Asian nation.
The Taliban said, ‘Fortunately today we are celebrating the anniversary of independence from Britain. ‘We are at the same time another arrogant of world power as a result of our jihadist resistance, forcing the United States to fail and withdraw from our sacred territory of Afghanistan.’
Unbeknownst to the insurgents, however, was their violent suppression of protests on Wednesday in the eastern city of Jalalabad, in which demonstrations brought down the Taliban flag and replaced it with Afghanistan’s tricolor. At least one person died.
Urging people to return to work, most government officials remain hiding in their homes or attempt to flee the Taliban.
Afghanistan’s $9 billion foreign reserves remain in question, the vast majority now apparently frozen in the US. The head of the country’s central bank has warned the country’s physical US dollar supply is ‘near zero’ Will increase the prices of essential food while depreciating inflation. Its currency, the Afghani.
Meanwhile, the drought has lost more than 40% of the country’s crop, McGarty said. Many overtook the Taliban and now live in parks and open spaces in Kabul.
“This is truly Afghanistan’s hour of greatest need, and we urge the international community to stand with the Afghan people at this time,” he said.
Afghanistan’s two major border crossings with Pakistan, Torkham near Jalalabad and Chaman near Spin Boldak, are now open for cross-border trade. Pakistan’s Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed has said that hundreds of trucks have passed by.
However, traders are still under pressure to price their goods even higher given the insecurity on the roads, confusion at customs and economic conditions.
There has been no armed opposition to the Taliban. But videos from the Panjshir Valley north of Kabul, a stronghold of Northern Coalition militias allied with the US during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, show potential opposition figures gathering there. The region is the only province that has not come under the Taliban.
Those figures include members of the ousted government – Vice President Amrullah Saleh, who claimed on Twitter that he is the country’s rightful president, and Defense Minister General Bismillah Mohammadi – as well as Ahmed Masood, son of slain Northern Coalition leader Ahmed Shah. Huh. Masood.
In an opinion piece published by The Washington Post, Masood asked for arms and assistance to fight the Taliban.
He wrote, ‘I write today from the Panjshir Valley, with Mujahideen fighters ready to follow in my father’s footsteps, who are once again ready to take on the Taliban.
The Taliban is not a problem for the Afghan people alone. Under Taliban control, Afghanistan would undoubtedly become a base for radical Islamic terrorism; Here again a conspiracy will be hatched against democracy.
.