SAN DIEGO: A terrible panic has erupted sending hundreds to Afghanistan’s Kabul airport to try and escape the Taliban. The people are left to their own defenses as President Ashraf Ghani hides away having fled his country. The former leader, soft on the Taliban, left Afghan citizens to their own defenses. Including Afghan women who see 20 years of self-expression crushed.
National Review reports,
“A U.S. official reportedly told Fox News that the runway is “not secure” after hundreds of people “breached” the airport walls and filled the runway. All U.S. military and charter flights are suspended until the runway can be cleared.”
Prior to the airport closure, the scene turned deadly while an Air Force jet evacuated personnel.
“Videos showed a group of Afghans hanging onto the plane just before takeoff and several falling through the air as the airplane rapidly gained altitude over the city,” says AP.
Afghans are desperate to escape the Taliban’s takeover as the government collapses with no resistance. The Taliban’s final conquest was Afghanistan’s capital city Kabul and its five million people. This is a not-so-shocking conclusion after a swift advance overrunning other major cities across the country in just over a week.
However, what we have seen as the frightened masses try to flee is more than shocking. And should not be happening.
Latest pictures from Kabul Airport. People are on their own now while the world watches in silence. Only sane advise to Afghan people…RUN pic.twitter.com/RQGw28jFYx
— Sudhir Chaudhary (@sudhirchaudhary) August 16, 2021
Ghani facilitates Taliban takeover after 20-year ousting by U.S.-led forces
Those killed include separate incidences.
“Senior American military officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing operation, told The Associated Press that the chaos left seven dead, including several who fell from the flight. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said U.S. forces killed two people he described as carrying weapons in the melee,” AP reports.
Amid the pandemonium, U.S. troops shot and killed two armed men at the airport after the men approached American troops deployed to the airport to facilitate the evacuation of Americans and other individuals, a U.S. official reportedly told the Wall Street Journal.
“He said 1,000 more U.S. troops would be deployed to secure the airfield and back up the 2,500 already there,” Kirby said.
You can only imagine what Afghans feel in the country and those who live outside of it seeing a different flag flying than the one of their birth. Hearts are heavy around the world.
Where is our U.S. State Department? NATO, the International community?
We still don’t know the status of Americans left in the chaos. They continue to be trapped as U.S. evacuation flights and all commercial flights are temporarily suspended as of Monday morning.
What advice can we tell these frightened people, what assurances can we give? They did not ask for this. They are running from it. And Americans still there is the result of Biden’s lack of security planning and gross lack of contingencies. The worst scenarios are now here tearing at our human compassion for the afflicted.
Women fear freedoms, accomplishments won since 2001 are gone.
Reports from Afghans inside the country say plane ticket costs have sky-rocketed. The rising cost of burqas leave women who cannot afford them at risk. In Kabul, women wore traditional burqas but others dressed in an array of styles, signaling a ‘new dawn’ gained after Taliban forces were toppled 20 years ago.
“As the Taliban close in on Kabul, women inside the city are getting ready for what may be coming. “Before, most of our customers were from the provinces,” says Aref. “Now it is city women who are buying them.”
“One of these women is Aaila, who is haggling with another shopkeeper over rapidly inflating burqa prices. “Last year these burqas cost AFS 200 [£2]. Now they’re trying to sell them to us for AFS 2,000 to 3,000,” she says. As the fear among women in Kabul has grown, the prices have risen,” reports The Guardian
Women fought hard to be themselves; now face hateful men.
An Afghan woman in Kabul: ‘Now I have to burn everything I achieved’
Afghanistan’s minister of education Rangina Hamidi told the BBC: “I feel the fear that every mother has in Afghanistan, the fear that every woman has in Afghanistan,” reports The London Economic.
“She spoke about hearing gunshots and moving her daughter and other children living in her house to a safer part of it with no windows. “It’s very very difficult to predict if we will make it into the morning,” Hamidi said.
Yet the Taliban insists it is their “inclusive government” that is the “will and want of the people.”
