Taliban mock Western evacuation efforts as Kabul airport chaos worsens

The Taliban mocked Western attempts to organize evacuation flights out of Afghanistan on Saturday amid the worst scenes of chaos at Kabul airport since the militants took control a week ago.

The Taliban said the chaos was not their responsibility. “The West could have had a better plan to evacuate,” a spokesman said.

Security risks could not be ruled out but the group was “aiming to improve the situation and provide a smooth exit” for people trying to leave, the spokesman said.

Earlier, the US and Germany advised their citizens in Afghanistan not to travel to the airport as thousands of civilians crushed up against wire fences and concrete blast walls outside the terminal building in a desperate attempt to reach rescue aircraft.

The advisory came after Taliban co-founder Mullah Baradar arrived in Kabul for talks with other leaders to hammer out a new Afghan government after the Taliban’s lightning advance across the country.

Images circulated on social media this week of Afghans rushing toward a US C-17 transport plane and clinging to its side. A separate video showed what appeared to be two people falling from a military plane as it flew out of Kabul.

Since then, crowds have grown at the airport where armed Taliban have urged those without travel documents to go home. At least 12 people have been killed in and around the single runway airfield since Sunday, NATO and Taliban officials said.

“Because of potential security threats outside the gates at the Kabul airport, we are advising US citizens to avoid traveling to the airport and to avoid airport gates at this time unless you receive individual instructions from a US government representative to do so,” the US Embassy advisory said.

Switzerland postponed a charter flight from Kabul because of the chaos.

“The security situation around Kabul airport has worsened significantly in the last hours. A large number of people in front of the airport and sometimes violent confrontations are hindering access,” the Swiss Foreign Ministry said after canceling a charter flight from Kabul.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said it was “mathematically impossible” for the US and its allies to evacuate the tens of thousands of Afghan personnel and families by Aug. 31, when US forces are due to quit Afghanistan and hand control of the airport to the Taliban.

Borrell said his officials had complained to the Americans that their security at the airport was excessively strict, and was hampering attempts by Afghans who worked for the Europeans to enter.

British forces at the airport also complained that while their officers were empowered to make decisions on the ground, the Americans passed every issue up the chain of command and waited for a decision, which was causing paralysis.

The Pentagon said 3,800 people had been evacuated from Kabul on US military and chartered flights in the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 17,000 since the Taliban takeover. It is not known how many people with Western passports remain in Afghanistan.

Saudi Arabia has called a special meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Riyadh on Sunday to discuss events in Afghanistan.

The Taliban completed their sudden advance across the country as US-led forces pulled out, coinciding with what German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday was the “breathtaking collapse” of the Afghan army.

The Taliban official said the group planned to ready a new model for governing Afghanistan within the next few weeks, with separate teams to tackle internal security and financial issues.

“Experts from the former government will be brought in for crisis management,” he told Reuters.

The new government structure would not be a democracy by Western definitions, but “it will protect everyone’s rights,” the official added.

The Taliban, who follow an ultra-hard-line version of Sunni Islam, have presented a more moderate face since returning to power, saying they want peace and will respect the rights of women within the framework of Islamic law.

When in power from 1996-2001, also guided by Islamic law, they stopped women from working or going out without wearing an all-enveloping burqa and stopped children from going to school.

Baradar will meet militant commanders, former government leaders and policy makers, as well as religious scholars among others, the official said.

The White House said on Friday that the US government did not know exactly how many Americans were currently in Afghanistan, though officials have indicated that it is in the thousands.

Army Major General William Taylor, with the US military’s Joint Staff, told reporters that military transport planes carrying nearly 6,000 passengers left on Friday. Taylor said the United States had airlifted a total of about 13,000 evacuees during the operation.

Individual Afghans and international aid and advocacy groups have reported harsh retaliation against protests, and round-ups of those who had formerly held government positions, criticized the Taliban or worked with Americans.

“We have heard of some cases of atrocities and crimes against civilians,” said the Taliban official on condition of anonymity.

“If (members of the Taliban) are doing these law and order problems, they will be investigated,” he said. “We can understand the panic, stress and anxiety. People think we will not be accountable, but that will not be the case.”

Former officials told harrowing tales of hiding from the Taliban in recent days as gunmen went from door to door. One family of 16 described running to the bathroom, lights off and children’s mouths covered, in fear for their lives.

Baradar, the chief of the Taliban’s political office, was part of the group’s negotiating team in the Qatar capital of Doha.

Reported to have been one of the most trusted commanders of the former Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar, Baradar was captured in 2010 by security forces in Pakistan’s southern city of Karachi and released in 2018.

The delay in forming a new Afghan government or even announcing who will lead a new Taliban administration underlines how unprepared the movement was for the sudden collapse of the Western-trained forces it had been fighting for years.

The Taliban, whose overall leader Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada has so far been silent publicly, must also unite disparate groups within the movement whose interests may not always coincide now that victory has been achieved.

As Western nations have struggled to speed up evacuations, President Joe Biden confronted criticism about the planning for the withdrawal of US troops.

“I have seen no question of our credibility from our allies,” Biden told reporters on Friday. “As a matter of fact, the exact opposite … we’re acting with dispatch, we’re acting, committing to what we said we would do.”