As reports of an explosion outside Kabul airport roll in, the US Government remains adamant that Tuesday (31 August) will remain the deadline for evacuation
Currently, officials have confirmed blasts at Abbey gate and Baron hotel. Earlier today (26 August), several Governments warned that an attack was imminent outside Kabul airport, Afghanistan. However, the area remained crowded as thousands of individuals attempt to leave the country.
“The threat is credible”
British Armed Forces Minister James Heappey said this morning that: “The threat is credible, it is imminent, it is lethal. We wouldn’t be saying this if we weren’t genuinely concerned about offering Islamic State a target that is just unimaginable.”
Baron hotel is the holding spot for people who are being processed to arrive in the UK. At this moment, 13 are confirmed dead. ISIS-K, a regional hybrid of ISIS, are suspected to be responsible for the blast. The ISIS group in Afghanistan are enemies of the Taliban, which creates even more room for volatility when all international security forces exit the country.
A Taliban spokesperson confirmed to Reuters that children were among the dead.
US remains inflexible on deadline
The Afghanistan exit deadline for all countries and soldiers is fixed at 31 August.
Yesterday, allies of the US attempted to lobby for an extended deadline of evacuation via an emergency G7 meeting convened by the UK. However, the US President Joe Biden remains inflexible on the exact date of troops exiting Afghanistan.
After the meeting, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said: “We all agreed that it is our moral duty to help the Afghan people and to provide as much support as possible as conditions allow.
“In this meeting of the G7, we discussed evacuations, immediate humanitarian aid, longer-term development assistance and possible scenarios for refugees in need of protection.”
President von der Leyen then spoke about refugee quotas across the EU bloc, indicating that the humanitarian budget for the year would go from 50 million euros, to 200 million euros. In the UK, the Home Office has announced that it will house 20,000 Afghans. This number has been critiqued by politicians as a low-ball estimate, with Labour leader Keir Starmer describing it as “too small.”
Plane evacuations are nearly over
President Biden stood by his assertation of an exit date, despite pleas from the G7 to create more time for evacuation. Soldiers are working to keep transport corridors open, but after today, it is highly unlikely that any further plane evacuations will take place. The Afghanistan exit deadline means that civilian evacuations must end today, with soldiers the last to leave.
He commented: “We’re acting in consultation and cooperation with our closest friends and fellow democracies.”
But other countries have indicated that they would have preferred a longer deadline to evacuate their nationals and more asylum-seekers. Canada left Afghanistan on Thursday, indicating that they would have liked more time to evacuate more people.
Western Governments, in a joint statement, suggest that the actions of the Taliban will be the decisive factor in their response to the occupation: “The legitimacy of any future government depends on the approach it now takes to uphold its international obligations and commitments to ensure a stable Afghanistan.”
Will the West be able to hold the Taliban accountable?
However, Amnesty International revealed that nine Hazara men were tortured and killed last month by the Taliban in Ghazni province. Six men were shot while three others were tortured and killed, including one man who was strangled with his own scarf and had his arm muscles sliced off.
The Hazara people are an ethnic minority, considered an enemy by the Taliban.
Reports of the Taliban conducting door-to-door searches in Kabul continue to flow in. One witness says that the Taliban shot dead a family member, when they were unable to find the journalist they were looking for.
Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, said: “Every effort must now be made to safely evacuate Afghans who fear revenge attacks by the Taliban and have to leave the country.
“To fail them would be an unforgivable betrayal.”
