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Home » Afghanistan » Kabul Airport Open For Business…Getting Past Taliban Checkpoints Is A Whole Different Matter
Afghanistan

Kabul Airport Open For Business…Getting Past Taliban Checkpoints Is A Whole Different Matter

Matthew Klint Posted onAugust 18, 2021November 14, 2023 14 Comments

a building with people walking in front of it

The world heard Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid promise yesterday that the Taliban would respect women’s rights, not let Afghanistan become a haven for terrorism, and forgive those who fought against it. But even as Kabul Airport is once again open and running, beatings and blockades at Taliban checkpoints surrounding the airport undermine such assurances.

Kabul Airport Open, But Perimeter Checkpoints Keep Travelers Out

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Taliban “erected checkpoints at the entrances to the airport, whipping and beating Afghans who attempted to cross.” For a regime that has promised amnesty for those who once opposed it, it appears the new government has a list of names that it is intently searching for. Airport access roads are deliberately targeted as such people are those mostly likely to attempt to leave the nation.

The job of the Taliban is made easier by the layout and roads leading to Hamid Karzai International Airport. When I was in Kabul, I experienced multiple checkpoints leading to the airport and there was only one main airport access road…precisely to defend against Taliban and other forces from breaching the airport perimeter. Now the Taliban can use the limited points of egress and regress to control movement.

Thousands of Afghans who worked for western governments remain trapped in Kabul, even as the U.S. intensifies its Kabul Airlift operations and other nations send in planes in order to evacuate personnel and refugees.

Already, this has severely compromised rescue attempts, with a German Airbus A400M Atlas departing Kabul with only seven passengers onboard yesterday.

U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan noted assurances from the Taliban that civilians would be allowed safe passage to the airport, but that does not seem to be case at least thus far. “We intend to hold them to that commitment,” said Sullivan, but it isn’t clear how.

Sullivan further sought to downplay the chaos of the last two days:

“When a civil war comes to an end with an opposing force marching on the capital, there are going to be scenes of chaos, there are going to be scenes of people leaving the country.That is not something that can be fundamentally avoided.”

Thus far, the United States has re-located 3,200 people, including 1,200 U.S. citizens and 2,000 Afghans granted immigrant visas for the USA.

Up to 15,000 U.S. citizens remain in Afghanistan and the plan is to evacuate them and Afghans who supported U.S. efforts in an airlift operation capable of transporting up to 9,000 passengers per day.

But getting to the airport is a whole different mater. Reports across Taliban strongholds include:

  • summary executions of government soldiers
  • forced marriages between women and Taliban fighters
  • unprovoked attacks on civilians

All of these accounts underscore the difficulty of even reaching the airport safely.

CONCLUSION

We should know later today whether the checkpoints will be tightened or loosened. In the meantime, thousands of Afghans wait apprehensively, unsure of whether they will even make to the airport. Meanwhile, flights depart with open seats.

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About Author

Matthew Klint

Matthew is an avid traveler who calls Los Angeles home. Each year he travels more than 200,000 miles by air and has visited more than 135 countries. Working both in the aviation industry and as a travel consultant, Matthew has been featured in major media outlets around the world and uses his Live and Let's Fly blog to share the latest news in the airline industry, commentary on frequent flyer programs, and detailed reports of his worldwide travel.

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14 Comments

  1. Paolo Reply
    August 18, 2021 at 7:01 am

    The Taliban are little more than cave-dwelling neanderthals, deeply rooted in a cretinous theology. We should anticipate severe retribution against those even obliquely connected to foreigners, and for anyone who dares challenge them in any way.
    The scumbags in CCCP Beijing are already cosying up to them, in anticipation of access to lithium , iron ore and other resources.
    Such a miserable ( and tragic) failure of western intelligence…

    • GUWonder Reply
      August 18, 2021 at 7:31 am

      What failure of “western intelligence”? This kind of outcome has been predictable and even assumed to have been more or less inevitable despite the public posturing. And the public may eventually find out that the internal time assessments weren’t even off.

      • Paolo Reply
        August 18, 2021 at 7:56 am

        Yes, the outcome was inevitable; the abject failure was the assessment of timing and the lack of planning to facilitate the evacuation of those in need. For example, retired senior officers in the ADF ( Australian Military) have been warning our government for many months to expedite the process for approving visas for Afghanis left vulnerable in the event of a Taliban takeover ( and to start getting them out). The government did sweet FA, or so it seems. When they finally acted the first evacuation flight, overnight, had 26 people on it.
        While there were more taken out on the US flights, I gather American intelligence/ logistics has been almost as lamentably poor.

        • Scott Reply
          August 18, 2021 at 12:32 pm

          Hard to process/approve foreign documents when you are busy patrolling the state borders and verifying that people aren’t outside of a set distance from their homes to make sure the covid isn’t moving around. I assume they are spending a little time on administering vaccines too, but not much.

  2. GUWonder Reply
    August 18, 2021 at 7:27 am

    It’s tens of thousands of Afghans who worked for or directly on behalf of US entities and are trapped.

    In Kabul, it’s become rather typical for dozens of relatives to shelter together in a home, hoping that there is safety in numbers when the Taliban comes to the door and wants in or wants to grow its list of “the enemies of the Emirate”. So where there are say a handful of men and women in a given home/building who ought to be considered SIV-eligible based on their work, there are also a lot of other relatives whom they won’t be able to easily leave behind.

    And given how the Taliban and its thuggish regional supporters operate, the left behind male relatives of SIV-eligibles will be at risk of torture, execution or compulsory drafting by the Taliban for the “crimes of the relative”; and the unmarried, divorced or widowed female relatives will be at risk for forced “marriage”, which is actually nothing but a life of rape and slavery until discarded by the unIslamic Taliban militants.

    Expect to see Pakistan and Iran flooded with many more Afghan refugees than they can handle, and then sadly these very same refugees will be made into pawns and leverage even as the suffering will continue for generations more.

  3. Santastico Reply
    August 18, 2021 at 8:25 am

    While hell broke out there, Sleepy Joe has caved in his own cave in Camp David nursing home. It makes Carter look smart. What a disgraceful president.

    • GUWonder Reply
      August 18, 2021 at 11:36 am

      Short of flooding Afghanistan with a lot more indefinitely-stationed American troops after becoming US President, the situation would have been the same or worse this year. Trump already signed over Afghanistan to the Taliban in 2019 and again in 2020, promising them open-hunting season by May 2021. Biden delayed delivering on the Trump deal by a few months, and that delay is why the Taliban decided to seize territory and advance its position like it did this year.

      Biden made one big mistake, but it’s one any POTUS pulling out would make: that of publicly pretending as if an unsustainable, stooge government had more life left to it than it did. But that’s all part of the typical show when an occupying/propping power is quitting its client but wants to try to avoid the blame/reputation of directly knocking out its own client government.

      Does anyone really believe that Trump and the worshippers of Lord Trump really wanted the US to maximize the number of Afghans to be evacuated out of Afghanistan and to the US under the Trump plan in the event that Trump and/or his successor as US President.

      The way Biden delivered for Trump on Afghanistan is — wittingly or not — in line with minimizing the US taking in Muslim refugees. Since hostility to Muslim refugees is a trademark of Trump and the worshippers of their Lord Trump, shouldn’t they be thanking Biden for not maximizing the US intake of those US-assisting Afghans who are refugees or in need of refuge/asylum?

  4. PM1 Reply
    August 18, 2021 at 8:54 am

    Enjoyed re-reading your trip report from Afghanistan in 2013 Matthew!

  5. Joe Chivas Reply
    August 18, 2021 at 10:10 am

    It looks like Joe Biden has now botched two pull outs in his life. One resulted in the Taliban retaking control of Afghanistan. The other resulted in Hunter.

    • Kevin Reply
      August 19, 2021 at 7:51 am

      @Joe Chivas

      LOL – Fantastic! I’m going to steal that!

  6. Dani Reply
    August 18, 2021 at 9:22 pm

    What the hell did 15,000 Americans do in Afghanistan? This must not be consular or military service. Does anyone know?

    • GUWonder Reply
      August 19, 2021 at 12:22 am

      Some are Afghan-Americans who live there or were visiting family and friends. Maybe some even moved there to work remotely during the pandemic. [There are some Afghani Swedish citizens who have even been taking their paid Swedish parental leave time in Afghanistan with babies/toddlers and other children]. But I doubt these kind of people are the majority of the US and European citizens needing evacuation.

      A huge number of the US citizens who need evacuation from Afghanistan are aid/humanitarian/social workers, government contractors, other employees of US and other non-Afghan companies doing business in Afghanistan, private security contractors, support service technicians and so on.

  7. GUWonder Reply
    August 19, 2021 at 2:31 am

    So did the Bactrian gold also get evacuated from Afghanistan?

    The Taliban has a history of destroying Afghanistan’s long cultural heritage — both Islamic and pre-Islamic heritage. And with the money and sanctions tightening, they may plunder and pillage however and wherever they can in order to fund themselves and to try to keep the country under their control.

  8. GUWonder Reply
    August 19, 2021 at 3:46 pm

    Here’s an excellent take on how “the intelligence” on Afghanistan wasn’t off:

    https://www.justsecurity.org/77801/cias-former-counterterrorism-chief-for-the-region-afghanistan-not-an-intelligence-failure-something-much-worse/

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